Source: The Round House
“I am the immense shadow of my tears”
"Palm Sunday", a sermon delivered at St. Clement's Church, New York City (ndg), originally published in The Nation as "Hypocrites You Always Have With You" (ndg)
Palm Sunday (1981)
Context: Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.
“Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears.”
"The Honored Dead" (1863) memorialized the Union dead; a popular piece for declamation among schoolchildren, also published as "Our Heroes Shall Live"
Miscellany
Context: Oh, tell me not that they are dead — that generous host, that airy army of invisible heroes. They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this nation. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society, and inspire the people with nobler motives, and more heroic patriotism?
Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. It was your son, but now he is the nation's. He made your household bright: now his example inspires a thousand households. Dear to his brothers and sisters, he is now brother to every generous youth in the land. Before, he was narrowed, appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to all. Before, he was yours: he is ours. He has died from the family, that he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgotten or neglected: and it shall by and by be confessed of our modern heroes, as it is of an ancient hero, that he did more for his country by his death than by his whole life.
“When I wake up, my pillow’s cold and damp with tears. But tears for what? I have no idea.”
Source: Kafka on the Shore
“Why tear off a single page when you can throw away the book?”
Torches Together.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)
“Falling tears in my heart,
Falling rain on the town.
Why this long ache,
A knife in my heart.”
Il pleure dans mon cœur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur?
"Il pleur dans mon cœur" line 1, from Romances sans paroles (1874); Sorrell p. 69
Source: One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition
"The Deluge at Norderney"
Source: Seven Gothic Tales (1934)
