Bertolt Brecht

IN PRAISE OF DOUBT
 

“Praised be doubt! I advise you to greet
Cheerfully and with respect the man
Who tests your word like a bad penny.
I’d like you to be wise and not to give
Your word with too much assurance.
Read history and see
The headlong flight of invincible armies.
Wherever you look
Impregnable strongholds collapse and
Even if the Armada was innumerable as it left port
The returning ships
Could be numbered.
Thus one day a man stood on the unattainable summit
And a ship reached the end of
The endless sea.
O Beautiful the shaking of heads
Over the indisputable truth!
O brave the doctor’s cure
Of the incurable patient!
But the most beautiful of all doubts
Is when the downtrodden and despondent raise their heads
and
Stop believing in the strength
Of their oppressors.
[…]
There are the thoughtless who never doubt
Their digestion is splendid, their judgment is infallible.
They don’t believe in the facts, they believe only in themselves.
When it comes to the point
The facts must go by the board
Their patience with themselves
Is boundless. To arguments
They listen with the ear of a police spy.
The thoughtless who never doubt
Meet the thoughtful who never act.
They doubt, not in order to come to a decision but
To avoid a decision. Their heads
They use only for shaking. With anxious faces
they warn the crews of sinking ships that water is dangerous.
Beneath the murderer’s axe
They ask themselves if he isn’t human too.
Murmuring something
About the situation not yet being clarified, they go to bed.
Their only action is to vacillate.
Their favorite phrase is: not yet ripe for discussion.
Therefore, if you praise doubt
Do not praise
The doubt which is a form of despair.
What use is the ability to doubt to a man
Who can’t make up his mind?
He who is content with too few reasons
May act wrongly
But he who needs too many
Remains inactive under danger.

Sir Philip Sidney

O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show

O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show;

So children still read you with awful eyes,

As my young dove may, in your precepts wise,

Her grant to me by her own virtue know;

For late, with heart most high, with eyes most low,

I craved the thing which ever she denies;

She, lightning Love displaying Venus' skies,

Lest once should not be heard, twice said, No, No!

Sing then, my muse, now Io Paean sing;

Heav'ns envy not at my high triumphing,

But grammar's force with sweet success confirm;

For grammar says,--oh this, dear Stella, weigh,

For grammar says,--to grammar who says nay?

That in one speech two negatives affirm!

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU

The Lover: A Ballad

At length, by so much importunity press'd,

Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast;

This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame,

Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame:

I am not as cold as a virgin in lead,

Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head:

I know but too well how time flies along,

That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.

But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy

Long years of repentance for moments of joy,

Oh! was there a man (but where shall I find

Good sense and good nature so equally join'd?)

Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine;

Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design;

Not over severe, yet not stupidly vain,

For I would have the power, tho' not give the pain.

No pedant, yet learned; no rake-helly gay,

Or laughing, because he has nothing to say;

To all my whole sex obliging and free,

Yet never be fond of any but me;

In public preserve the decorum that's just,

And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust;

Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow,

But not fulsomely pert, nor yet foppishly low.

But when the long hours of public are past,

And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last,

May ev'ry fond pleasure that moment endear;

Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear!

Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,

He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud.

Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,

And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.

And that my delight may be solidly fix'd,

Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix'd;

In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,

Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide.

From such a dear lover as here I describe,

No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;

But till this astonishing creature I know,

As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so.

I never will share with the wanton coquette,

Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.

The toasters and songsters may try all their art,

But never shall enter the pass of my heart.

I loath the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise:

Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies:

And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told,

We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.

ROBERT HAYDEN

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

ELIZABETH BISHOP

At the Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening,

down by one of the fishhouses

an old man sits netting,

his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,

a dark purple-brown,

and his shuttle worn and polished.

The air smells so strong of codfish

it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.

The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs

and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up

to storerooms in the gables

for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.

All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,

swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,

is opaque, but the silver of the benches,

the lobster pots, and masts, scattered

among the wild jagged rocks,

is of an apparent translucence

like the small old buildings with an emerald moss

growing on their shoreward walls.

The big fish tubs are completely lined

with layers of beautiful herring scales

and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered

with creamy iridescent coats of mail,

with small iridescent flies crawling on them.

Up on the little slope behind the houses,

set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,

is an ancient wooden capstan,

cracked, with two long bleached handles

and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,

where the ironwork has rusted.

The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.

He was a friend of my grandfather.

We talk of the decline in the population

and of codfish and herring

while he waits for a herring boat to come in.

There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.

He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,

from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,

the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water’s edge, at the place

where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp

descending into the water, thin silver

tree trunks are laid horizontally

across the gray stones, down and down

at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

element bearable to no mortal,

to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly

I have seen here evening after evening.

He was curious about me. He was interested in music;

like me a believer in total immersion,

so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.

I also sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

He stood up in the water and regarded me

steadily, moving his head a little.

Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge

almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug

as if it were against his better judgment.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,

the dignified tall firs begin.

Bluish, associating with their shadows,

a million Christmas trees stand

waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended

above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,

slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,

icily free above the stones,

above the stones and then the world.

If you should dip your hand in,

your wrist would ache immediately,

your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn

as if the water were a transmutation of fire

that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,

then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the cold hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.  

Wendy Cope

Bloody Men 

Bloody men are like bloody buses
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.
You look at them flashing their indicators, 
Offering you a ride. 
You're trying to read the destinations, 
You haven't much time to decide.
If you make a mistake, there is no turning back. 
Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze 
While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by 
And the minutes, the hours, the days.