What Would You Fight For?

René Magritte

The Menaced Assassin

What Would You Fight For?

I am not sure I would always fight for my life.

Life might not be worth fighting for.

I am not sure I would always fight for my wife.

A wife isn't always worth fighting for.

Nor my children, nor my country, nor my fellow-men.

It all deprnds whether I found them worth fighting for.

The only thing men invariably fight for

Is their money. But I doubt if I'd fight for mine, anyhow

not to shed a lot of blood over it.

Yet one thing I do fight for, tooth and nail, all the time.

And that is my bit of inward peace, where I am at one

with myself.

And I must say, I am often worsted.

~ D. H. Lawrence ~

Alone

René Magritte

The False Mirror

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

~ Edgar Allan Poe ~

The Owls

René Magritte

The Companions of Fear

The Owls

Under the overhanging yews,

The dark owls sit in solemn state,

Like stranger gods; by twos and twos

Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.

Motionless thus they sit and dream

Until that melancholy hour

When, with the sun's last fading gleam,

The nightly shades assume their power.

From their still attitude the wise

Will learn with terror to despise

All tumult, movement, and unrest;

For he who follows every shade,

Carries the memory in his breast,

Of each unhappy journey made.

~ Charles Baudelaire ~

Richard Corey

René Magritte

The Son Of Man

Richard Corey

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

~ Edwin Arlington Robinson ~

A Dream Within A Dream

René Magritte

Le Beau Monde

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

~ Edgar Allan Poe ~

I May, I Might, I Must

René Magritte

The Spirit of Adventure

I May, I Might, I Must

If you can tell me why the fen

appears impassable, I then

will tell you why I think that I

can get across it if I try.

~ Marianne Moore ~