|
SAMHAIN LYRICS
"The Fifth Season" (2001)
1. A Dialogue Of Self And Soul
2. A Winter Night
3. Byzantium
4. Perilous Path
5. O Dull Cold Northern Sky
6. A Dialogue Of Self And Soul (Symphonique Version)
1. A Dialogue Of Self And Soul
by: William Butler Yeats
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.
I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
"Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul
The consecretes blade upon my knees
Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady's dress and round
The wodden scabbard bound and wound
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn
i{My Soul.} Why should the. imagination of a man
Long past his prime. remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination. scorn the earth
And interllect is wandering
To this and that. and t'other thing,
Deliver from the crime. of death and birth.
i{My self.} Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery --
Heart's purple -- and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night,
And claim as by a soldier's right
A charter to commit the crime once more.
i{My Soul.} Such fullness. in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken dea, dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.
i{My Self.} A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies? --
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what's the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?
I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing.
2. A Winter Night
by: Robert Burns
When biting Boreas., fell and doure,
Sharp shivers through.' the leafless bower;
When Phobus gies. a short-lived glower,
Far south the lift,
Dim-darkening through the flaky shower,
Or whirling drift:
Ae night the storm. the steeples rocked,
Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked,
While burns, with snawy wreeths upchoked,
Wild-eddying swirl,
Or through the mining outlet bocked,
A winter night
Down headlong hurl.
Listening, the doors. and winnocks rattle,
I thought me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
Of winter war
And thro' the drift,
Deep-lairing, sprattle,
Beneath a scar.
Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing!
That, in the merry months of spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes of thee?
Whare wilt thou cower thy chittering wing
And close thy eye?
Even you on murdering errands toiled,
Lone from your savage homes exiled,
The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled
My heart forgets,
While pityless the tempest wild
Sore on you beats.
3. Byzantium
by: William Butler Yeats
THEEE unpurged. images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken. soldiery are abed;
Night resonance. recedes, night walkers' song
After great, cathedral gong;
Aaaa starlit, or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,All mere complexities,
The furyyy. and the mire. of human veins.
Before me floats. an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade
For Hades' bobbin. bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind ,the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and has no breath
Breathless mouths., may summon;
I hail. the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
(More miracle than bird or handiwork,)
Byzantium
Planted on the star-lit. golden bough,
Can like the cocks. of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon. embittered, scorn aloud
In glory. of changeless metal
Common. bird or petal
And allcomplexities. of mire or blood.
At midnight. on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs,
flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten. spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
4. Perilous Path
by W. Blake
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.
Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
5. O Dull Cold Northern Sky
By Robert L. Stivenson
O dull cold northern sky,
O brawling sabbath bells,
O feebly twittering Autumn bird that tells
The year is like to die!
O still, spoiled trees, O city ways,
O sun desired in vain,
O dread presentiment of coming rain
That cloys the sullen days!
Thee, heart of mine, I greet.
In what hard mountain pass
Striv'st thou? In what importunate morass
Sink now thy weary feet?
Thou run'st a hopeless race
To win despair. No crown
Awaits success, but leaden gods look down
On thee, with evil face.
And those that would befriend
And cherish thy defeat,
With angry welcome shall turn sour the sweet
Home-coming of the end.
Yea, those that offer praise
To idleness, shall yet
Insult thee, coming glorious in the sweat
Of honourable ways.
6. A Dialogue Of Self And Soul (Symphonique Version)
|
|
