Saturday, November 04, 2006

One gaze only.

Our hands were firmly cemented
By a fast balm which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string.

So to engraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one;
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.

As 'twixt two equal armies Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls—which to advance their state
Were gone out—hung 'twixt her and me.

And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.

-- from The Ecstasy by John Donne.

One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.

--
Psalm 27: 4 by King David.


Psalm 27: 13, 14 says,
"I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.

Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

wahh i actually understood it.. i wanna visit donne with isaball too..

ms in brisbane. haha.

purplecross said...

;) well done ming. I'm proud of you. heh. It's good to have someone to appreciate Donne with.

and i think your isaball is having a ball of a time in england. she even went to paris!!

Anonymous said...

*whimpers*
yeah i figured soy milk would've been an alternative to skim milk so i went to get it today.
i don't know what sort of parallel universe Homebrand (like No Frills of cold storage supermarket) Soy Milk exists in, but when i saw "soya beans" as the first ingredient, i naturally assumed it to be tau huay drink, BUT! it was BROWN IN COLOUR. and didn't taste in the remotest sense like tauhuay drink! however, it does taste good with museli (and my status is now miss museli majesty, not cereal queen, cuz museli cheaper la!) and housemate #1 tried it with coffee and it didn't taste like alien brains. so i guess i can avoid pus-ish milk now :)

Anonymous said...

poems like this and me don't clique. i need external help in understanding.

anyway, psalm 27 is one of my fav psalms.

emily said...

no wonder i got C for lit. ha. where's the ecstasy in the poem...? it ought to be The Agony. forgive me. i kinda lost my PC skills.

oh but psalm 27 i can understand (: good thing the Bible was written without too many cheem words. syntactically straightforward too.

editorially yours... (:

Anonymous said...

ms says: yes! paris is like across the causeway for izzy!
are all things equal?