Short Poems

If you are still alive when you read this,
close your eyes. I am
under their lids, growing black.

Think not, because thine inmost heart means well,
Thou hast the freedom of rude speech: sweet words
Are like the voices of returning birds
Filling the soul with summer, or a bell
That calls the weary and the sick to prayer.
Even as thy thought, so let thy speech be fair.

Day's coming up now, joy's returned,
Sorrow's dark cloud-castles captured and burned;
Over the mountain-tops glowing
Light-king his armies is throwing.
'Up now, up now!' calls the bird,
'Up now, up now!' child-voice heard,
Up now my hope in sunshine. '

Gone from this world, are very many rich men,
Wealth accompanied them not, nor their children,
After burying the dead, came back the bereaved,
Good deeds alone consorted him to chasten.

Shun advice
at any price -
that's what I call
good advice.

Ah, Gold! 'tis filthy lucre, honour's shame,
For which so many a Judas still sells truth!
It is the devil's lure; yet good men use it,
And many a dove for sacrifice within
The temple's been sold for it.

Oh, seek, my love, your newer way;
I'll not be left in sorrow.
So long as I have yesterday,
Go take your damned tomorrow!

I know that God is ever such as this,
Darkly disclosing counsels to the wise;
But to the simple, speaking fewest words,
Plain teacher found.

God created by religion and its followers no longer exists;
That miserable God born out of necessity does not exist;
He who had for long befooled man with promises of Paradise,
That God created by the ignorant does not exist.

God bless our good and gracious kind,
Whose promise none relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.