Some poignant, emotional and spiritual insights into the meaning of life and the importance of courage and honor in living it!

Four Stanzas

1
How like life on dark, faceless, friendless nights
Favors me to searching for strange delights:
Cold love, without definition or shape,
So calm! With seductive furor invites!
Offers no hope for freedom or escape!
Nearer to the fierce, opalescent fire
Failure will soothe my unpious desire
With a more sporting, gratifying mate:
Thoughts of death, a willingness to expire,
Enough of tragedy to challenge fate!
For how much like life to set the place and time,
To seize the morbid and embrace the sublime!
But I hold no special attitudes or views
Ah, when choosing between drudgery and crime;
Death is just a moment of unpleasant news!

2
All of them with the crystallized, soul-slaying eyes
Who are so easily shaken, but never stirred,
Your defeat is devised, your suffering the prize;
To them, love is no more than a four-letter word!
Pleasure is sought for its pain and brutality
And is the friend that secretly despises you.
For hope is the guilt that always advises you
Grief is the only path to immortality!
For who contemplates life as a celebration?
And dwells not in the moment from despair and urge?
Mankind's nobleness lives under subjugation
And only at brief periods does it emerge.

3
Loneliness is the reward encountered at the end
When one has no more need for gods or societies.
Self-pity over all things does triumph and transcend,
And only scoffs at the world's afflictions and anxieties!
For death is no more than a final admonishment,
Having never to deserve peace and tranquillity.
It is a swift and uncomplicated punishment
Awaiting all men regardless of class or ability!
Yet like wanderers between battlefield and classroom
We yearn to die for all sorts of whims, to pass the test
That are relished at birth but delivered at the tomb:
We can lie and cheat for truth--and humanity will be blessed!

For all the world is ambivalent to hate and love
And unrequited in its antipathy and lust.
We may scream for peace and dream to reach the stars above,
But honesty is the only absolute that all men trust!

4
While time, in its weary, reluctant adnation with fate
Remains the final concession we struggle to deserve,
And though strength and courage and integrity are all great,
Wisdom is the rarest treasure we must strive to preserve!
For lofty is the dreamer whose voice cannot be assuaged:
He is that symbol of life the whole world has lived to find!
For dauntless is man's gallantry when his heart is enraged--
Only then, can he share his dreams of goodness with mankind.
And because the hero is submerged in each man's spirit,
Great deeds and charity he does not often envision.
Hope is forever heard by those who exist to hear it;
Despair belongs only to men of limited vision!
Even now, while our convictions wane and darkness creeps in,
While fearless faith and unfaltering bravery are stilled,
Ah, though our energies must fade and our armies grow thin,
We can feel secure that somewhere some dream has not been killed.