Were to Her river flows beneath divine silence of know,
Spreading across Her rocky distance spooning ecstasies.

Painted on hues brushed upon forms tingling blissfulness,
Washed upon Her oasis weight upon weight taken grace.

Pleasure laid upon Her summer collecting sensual texture.
Being to Her vastness breath embracing penetrating awe.

Closer turns closer further then kissing-kisses wait for.

poem by James C. Matthews

http://www.facebook.com/bluelist

Thanks James! xoxo!
xoxo,
FF

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
An Essay on Man: Epistle I
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
              1 Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
              2 To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
              3 Let us (since life can little more supply
              4 Than just to look about us and to die)
              5 Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;
              6 A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
              7 A wild, where weeds and flow’rs promiscuous shoot;
              8 Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
              9 Together let us beat this ample field,
            10 Try what the open, what the covert yield;
            11 The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore
            12 Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
            13 Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies,
            14 And catch the manners living as they rise;
            15 Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
            16 But vindicate the ways of God to man.
I.
            17 Say first, of God above, or man below,
            18 What can we reason, but from what we know?
            19 Of man what see we, but his station here,
            20 From which to reason, or to which refer?
            21 Through worlds unnumber’d though the God be known,
            22 ‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
            23 He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
            24 See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
            25 Observe how system into system runs,
            26 What other planets circle other suns,
            27 What varied being peoples ev’ry star,
            28 May tell why Heav’n has made us as we are.
            29 But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
            30 The strong connections, nice dependencies,
            31 Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
            32 Look’d through? or can a part contain the whole?
            33 Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
            34 And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?
II.
            35 Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,
            36 Why form’d so weak, so little, and so blind?
            37 First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
            38 Why form’d no weaker, blinder, and no less!
            39 Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
            40 Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
            41 Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
            42 Why Jove’s satellites are less than Jove?
            43 Of systems possible, if ‘tis confest
            44 That Wisdom infinite must form the best,
            45 Where all must full or not coherent be,
            46 And all that rises, rise in due degree;
            47 Then, in the scale of reas’ning life, ‘tis plain
            48 There must be somewhere, such a rank as man:
            49 And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)
            50 Is only this, if God has plac’d him wrong?
            51 Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
            52 May, must be right, as relative to all.
            53 In human works, though labour’d on with pain,
            54 A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
            55 In God’s, one single can its end produce;
            56 Yet serves to second too some other use.
            57 So man, who here seems principal alone,
            58 Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
            59 Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
            60’ Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
            61 When the proud steed shall know why man restrains
            62 His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains:
            63 When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
            64 Is now a victim, and now Egypt’s God:
            65 Then shall man’s pride and dulness comprehend
            66 His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end;
            67 Why doing, suff’ring, check’d, impell’d; and why
            68 This hour a slave, the next a deity.
            69 Then say not man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault;
            70 Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought:
            71 His knowledge measur’d to his state and place,
            72 His time a moment, and a point his space.
            73 If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
            74 What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
            75 The blest today is as completely so,
            76 As who began a thousand years ago.
III.
            77 Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
            78 All but the page prescrib’d, their present state:
            79 From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
            80 Or who could suffer being here below?
            81 The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
            82 Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
            83 Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food,
            84 And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.
            85 Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
            86 That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n:
            87 Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
            88 A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
            89 Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
            90 And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
            91 Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
            92 Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!
            93 What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
            94 But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
            95 Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
            96 Man never is, but always to be blest:
            97 The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
            98 Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
            99 Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind
          100 Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
          101 His soul, proud science never taught to stray
          102 Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
          103 Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
          104 Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav’n;
          105 Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,
          106 Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
          107 Where slaves once more their native land behold,
          108 No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
          109 To be, contents his natural desire,
          110 He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire;
          111 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
          112 His faithful dog shall bear him company.
IV.
          113 Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense
          114 Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
          115 Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
          116 Say, here he gives too little, there too much:
          117 Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
          118 Yet cry, if man’s unhappy, God’s unjust;
          119 If man alone engross not Heav’n’s high care,
          120 Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
          121 Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
          122 Rejudge his justice, be the God of God.
          123 In pride, in reas’ning pride, our error lies;
          124 All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
          125 Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
          126 Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
          127 Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
          128 Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
          129 And who but wishes to invert the laws
          130 Of order, sins against th’ Eternal Cause.
V.
          131 Ask for what end the heav’nly bodies shine,
          132 Earth for whose use? Pride answers, ” ‘Tis for mine:
          133 For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow’r,
          134 Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev’ry flow’r;
          135 Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew,
          136 The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
          137 For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
          138 For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;
          139 Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
          140 My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies.”
          141 But errs not Nature from this gracious end,
          142 From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
          143 When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
          144 Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
          145 “No, (‘tis replied) the first Almighty Cause
          146 Acts not by partial, but by gen’ral laws;
          147 Th’ exceptions few; some change since all began:
          148 And what created perfect?”—Why then man?
          149 If the great end be human happiness,
          150 Then Nature deviates; and can man do less?
          151 As much that end a constant course requires
          152 Of show’rs and sunshine, as of man’s desires;
          153 As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
          154 As men for ever temp’rate, calm, and wise.
          155 If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design,
          156 Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?
          157 Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
          158 Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
          159 Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar’s mind,
          160 Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
          161 From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs;
          162 Account for moral, as for nat’ral things:
          163 Why charge we Heav’n in those, in these acquit?
          164 In both, to reason right is to submit.
          165 Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
          166 Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
          167 That never air or ocean felt the wind;
          168 That never passion discompos’d the mind.
          169 But ALL subsists by elemental strife;
          170 And passions are the elements of life.
          171 The gen’ral order, since the whole began,
          172 Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
VI.
          173 What would this man? Now upward will he soar,
          174 And little less than angel, would be more;
          175 Now looking downwards, just as griev’d appears
          176 To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
          177 Made for his use all creatures if he call,
          178 Say what their use, had he the pow’rs of all?
          179 Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
          180 The proper organs, proper pow’rs assign’d;
          181 Each seeming want compensated of course,
          182 Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
          183 All in exact proportion to the state;
          184 Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
          185 Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:
          186 Is Heav’n unkind to man, and man alone?
          187 Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
          188 Be pleas’d with nothing, if not bless’d with all?
          189 The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
          190 Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
          191 No pow’rs of body or of soul to share,
          192 But what his nature and his state can bear.
          193 Why has not man a microscopic eye?
          194 For this plain reason, man is not a fly.
          195 Say what the use, were finer optics giv’n,
          196 T’ inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav’n?
          197 Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er,
          198 To smart and agonize at ev’ry pore?
          199 Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
          200 Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
          201 If nature thunder’d in his op’ning ears,
          202 And stunn’d him with the music of the spheres,
          203 How would he wish that Heav’n had left him still
          204 The whisp’ring zephyr, and the purling rill?
          205 Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
          206 Alike in what it gives, and what denies?
VII.
          207 Far as creation’s ample range extends,
          208 The scale of sensual, mental pow’rs ascends:
          209 Mark how it mounts, to man’s imperial race,
          210 From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
          211 What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
          212 The mole’s dim curtain, and the lynx’s beam:
          213 Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
          214 And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
          215 Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
          216 To that which warbles through the vernal wood:
          217 The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!
          218 Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
          219 In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
          220 From pois’nous herbs extracts the healing dew:
          221 How instinct varies in the grov’lling swine,
          222 Compar’d, half-reas’ning elephant, with thine:
          223 ‘Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier;
          224 For ever sep’rate, yet for ever near!
          225 Remembrance and reflection how allied;
          226 What thin partitions sense from thought divide:
          227 And middle natures, how they long to join,
          228 Yet never pass th’ insuperable line!
          229 Without this just gradation, could they be
          230 Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
          231 The pow’rs of all subdu’d by thee alone,
          232 Is not thy reason all these pow’rs in one?
VIII.
          233 See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,
          234 All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
          235 Above, how high, progressive life may go!
          236 Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
          237 Vast chain of being, which from God began,
          238 Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
          239 Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see,
          240 No glass can reach! from infinite to thee,
          241 From thee to nothing!—On superior pow’rs
          242 Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
          243 Or in the full creation leave a void,
          244 Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroy’d:
          245 From nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
          246 Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
          247 And, if each system in gradation roll
          248 Alike essential to th’ amazing whole,
          249 The least confusion but in one, not all
          250 That system only, but the whole must fall.
          251 Let earth unbalanc’d from her orbit fly,
          252 Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;
          253 Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl’d,
          254 Being on being wreck’d, and world on world;
          255 Heav’n’s whole foundations to their centre nod,
          256 And nature tremble to the throne of God.
          257 All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?
          258 Vile worm!—Oh madness, pride, impiety!
IX.
          259 What if the foot ordain’d the dust to tread,
          260 Or hand to toil, aspir’d to be the head?
          261 What if the head, the eye, or ear repin’d
          262 To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
          263 Just as absurd for any part to claim
          264 To be another, in this gen’ral frame:
          265 Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
          266 The great directing Mind of All ordains.
          267 All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
          268 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
          269 That, chang’d through all, and yet in all the same,
          270 Great in the earth, as in th’ ethereal frame,
          271 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
          272 Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
          273 Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
          274 Spreads undivided, operates unspent,
          275 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
          276 As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
          277 As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
          278 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
          279 To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
          280 He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
X.
          281 Cease then, nor order imperfection name:
          282 Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
          283 Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
          284 Of blindness, weakness, Heav’n bestows on thee.
          285 Submit.—In this, or any other sphere,
          286 Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
          287 Safe in the hand of one disposing pow’r,
          288 Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
          289 All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
          290 All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
          291 All discord, harmony, not understood;
          292 All partial evil, universal good:
          293 And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
          294 One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

i post what i like.
i like what i post.
i write what i feel.
i feel what i write.
i tell the truth.
because why lie?
i am who i am.
because i simply don’t know any other way to be.

~frantic femme~

“re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul.”

~Walt Whitman~

THURSDAY @

Magnan Metz Gallery

Music, Films, Spoken Word, Poetry, Art
521 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001 / T: 212.244.2344 / F: 212.244.7544
 http://www.magnanmetz.com

see you there!
xoxo,
frantic 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“This major event has developed into a full blown party with international curators and collectors.

Larry Litt will be taking photos for the new “This or This?” Cupbearer Project going on the UN’s Safe Planet environmental action website and their facebook page.

Be a part of the solution Thursday, 8 pm, Magnan Metz Gallery, 521 West 26th St.

drinks and finger food. 

No single use plastic cups will be used at this event.

See you tomorrow.

Peace and Pleasure,
Larry”

~Larry Litt from The Blame Show~
 http://www.facebook.com/BlameShow