Cloud Poetry

Li Po (Chinese, 701-762 AD) wrote dream poems depicting spiritual journeys, sometimes making his countrymen forget their problems in unthinking garity, and for such joyful escapism was criticized by his peers and later, Communists. He was explicitly anti-Confucian in his thought and behavior, expressing his admiration for the man of impulse over moral and intellectual qualities (such as patient li...

The Roman Elegies (originally published under the title Erotica Romana in Germany, later Römische Elegien) is a cycle of twenty-four poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They reflect Goethe's Italian Journey from 1786 to 1788 and celebrate the sensuality and vigour of Italian and Classical culture. Written mainly after his return to Weimar, they contain poems on many sexual themes.

Litany in Time of Plague, When I consider how my light is spent, The Sick Rose, A Birthday

Let America be America again, Dreams, Dream Deferred

1. 永鹅 Ode to the Goose by 骆宾王 Luo Bing Wang (640-684 AD), 2. 静夜思 Thoughts in the Silent night by 李白 Li Bai (701-762 AD), 3. 悯农 Toiling Farmers by 李绅 Li Shen (772-846 AD), 4. 春晓 Spring Morning by 孟浩然 Meng Hao Ran (689-740 AD), 5. 七步诗 Seven Steps Verse by 曹植 Cao Zhi (192-232 AD)

John Burroughs (1837-1921) was an American naturalist and conservationist who spent most of his life in the Hudson Valley. He is best known for his observations on birds, flowers, and rural scenes, as well as religion, philosophy, and nature.

A collection of 366 poems by the writer Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374, Arezzo) in service of his love for Laura, a woman he had met once on a Good Friday. Other themes throughout the Canzoniere are equally important: religion, poetry, politics, time, glory. The love theme itself should be considered as the nucleus around which Petrarca develops his deep psychological analysis: thanks to his poems...

Baudelaire in French and English

Hafiz describes holy dervishes

One of the seven greatest Latin hymns of all time, Stabat Mater Dolorsa is based upon the prophecy of Simeon that a sword was to pierce the heart of his Mother, Mary. The hymn originated in the 13th century during the peak of Franciscan devotion to the crucified Jesus and has been attributed to Pope Innocent III, St. Bonaventure, or Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306)

Select poems from Hafez (1315-1390), a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy".

Footprints On The Sands Of Time Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! – For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther th...

From classic English poets and writers

Excerpts from George Kuber’s “The Shape of Time”, Remarks on the History of Things. Drawing upon insights in anthropology and linguistics, Kubler replaced the notion of style as the basis for histories of art with the concept of historical sequence and continuous change across time.

Excerpts from “Musical Literacy” by Jerrold Levinson, Journal of Aesthetic Education Spring 1990

T.S. Eliot’s classic poem

Short stories by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893). A protégé of Gustave Flaubert, he was a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives and destinies in disillusioned, even pessimistic terms. “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing”.

Classic Walt Whitman poem, 1892

Some interesting excerpts and such

Classic poem by T.S. Eliot written in 1922, The Waste Land is in part personal, the voices projected universal. Eliot later denied that he had large cultural problems in mind, but, nevertheless, in The Waste Land he diagnosed the malaise of his generation and indeed of Western civilization in the 20th century.

Allen Ginsberg’s Classic poem “Howl”, 1955

Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Wagner, and others on Asceticism

Problems to sharpen the young, recreational math problems

Excerpts from Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet

Ma'at, Symbol of Order Ma'at, Goddess of Truth, Balance, Order... Ma'at, unlike Hathor and Nephthys, seemed to be more of a concept than an actual goddess. Her name, literally, meant 'truth' in Egyptian. She was truth, order, balance and justice personified. She was harmony, she was what was right, she was what things should be. It was thought that if Ma'at didn't exist, the universe would become...