« Celui qui veut dispenser la lumière doit connaître les ténèbres qu'il est amené à éclairer.» Lao Tseu
Dies iræ, dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla
Quantus tremor est futurus
Quando Judex est venturus
Cuncta stricte discussurus !
Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum
Coget omnes ante thronum
Mors stupebit et natura
Cum resurget creatura
Judicanti responsura
Liber scriptus proferetur
In quo totum continetur
Unde mundus judicetur
Judex ergo cum sedebit
Quidquid latet apparebit:
Nil inultum remanebit
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus ?
Quem patronum rogaturus
Cum vix justus sit securus ?
Rex tremendæ majestatis
Qui salvandos salvas gratis
Salva me, fons pietatis
Recordare, Jesu pie
Quod sum causa tuæ viæ :
Ne me perdas illa die
Quærens me, sedisti lassus :
Redemisti Crucem passus :
Tantus labor non sit cassus
Juste Judex ultionis
Donum fac remissionis
Ante diem rationis
Ingemisco, tamquam reus :
Culpa rubet vultus meus :
Supplicanti parce, Deus
Qui Mariam absolvisti
Et latronem exaudisti
Mihi quoque spem dedisti
Preces meæ non sunt dignæ ;
Sed tu bonus fac benigne
Ne perenni cremer igne
Inter oves locum præsta
Et ab hædis me sequestra
Statuens in parte dextra
Confutatis maledictis
Flammis acribus addictis
Voca me cum benedictis
Oro supplex et acclinis
Cor contritum quasi cinis
Gere curam mei finis
Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
Pie Jesu Domine
Dona eis requiem. Amen
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth ;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear ;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day !
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Advice to a Prophet, by Richard Wilbur
When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,
Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.
Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone's face ?
Speak of the world's own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,
If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip
On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the dove's return,
These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken ?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken
In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.
Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.