Favorite verses
About
On this page I have a couple of pieces of text I really like. No this isn't for bible verses! I really wish I could memorize these particular passages, but I've never been very good at remembering thing for long, so instead I've written them here.
The Paradox of our Age, by the Dalai Lama
Here's a quote I really like from the Dalai Lama and have hanging in my living room. If you look online there are actually disputes where this came from, but I'd like to believe it was the Dalai Lama and bought the wall hanging itself from Buddist Monks visiting my campus.
We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgment;
More experts, but more problems;
more medicines but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble in crossing the street to meet
the new neighbour.
We built more computers to hold more copies than ever,
But have less real communication;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall men but short characters;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.
... His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
Bellbirds, by Henry Kendall
Bellbirds by Henry Kendall is one of Australia's best loved poems. It's also a poem that resignates with me and one that I memorized and recited during my grade 10 English class. Sadly I can't remember the lyrics anymore, but I've put them here so I don't have to. Hope you find it as beautiful as I do. :)
By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.
The silver-voiced bell birds, the darlings of daytime!
They sing in September their songs of the May-time;
When shadows wax strong, and the thunder bolts hurtle,
They hide with their fear in the leaves of the myrtle;
When rain and the sunbeams shine mingled together,
They start up like fairies that follow fair weather;
And straightway the hues of their feathers unfolden
Are the green and the purple, the blue and the golden.
October, the maiden of bright yellow tresses,
Loiters for love in these cool wildernesses;
Loiters, knee-deep, in the grasses, to listen,
Where dripping rocks gleam and the leafy pools glisten:
Then is the time when the water-moons splendid
Break with their gold, and are scattered or blended
Over the creeks, till the woodlands have warning
Of songs of the bell-bird and wings of the Morning.
Welcome as waters unkissed by the summers
Are the voices of bell-birds to the thirsty far-comers.
When fiery December sets foot in the forest,
And the need of the wayfarer presses the sorest,
Pent in the ridges for ever and ever
The bell-birds direct him to spring and to river,
With ring and with ripple, like runnels who torrents
Are toned by the pebbles and the leaves in the currents.
Often I sit, looking back to a childhood,
Mixt with the sights and the sounds of the wildwood,
Longing for power and the sweetness to fashion,
Lyrics with beats like the heart-beats of Passion; -
Songs interwoven of lights and of laughters
Borrowed from bell-birds in far forest-rafters;
So I might keep in the city and alleys
The beauty and strength of the deep mountain valleys:
Charming to slumber the pain of my losses
With glimpses of creeks and a vision of mosses.
