“The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.”
“Martin Buber suggested that evil prevailed because of the inability of man to imagine the real. Yet human beings do have that capacity. Lord Byron, a poet favored by Alfred Nobel, captured the stark essence of a post-nuclear world in his poem "Darkness":
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless; and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day,…
All earth was but one thought — and that was Death…”
A Prescription for Hope (1985)
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Bernard Lown 23
American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and… 1921–2021Related quotes
Sonho que sou a Poetisa eleita,
Aquela que diz tudo e tudo sabe,
Que tem a inspiração pura e perfeita,
Que reúne num verso a imensidade!<p>Sonho que um verso meu tem claridade
Para encher todo o mundo! E que deleita
Mesmo aqueles que morrem de saudade!
Mesmo os de alma profunda e insatisfeita!
Quoted in Trocando olhares (1994), p. 131
Translated by John D. Godinho
Book of Sorrows (1919), "Vaidade"
The Artist and His Mirror, W. Baziotes, in Right Angle Vol. III, no. 2, Washington DC, June 1949
1940s
Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II
Context: Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream — oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!
Book ii, line 270.
The Course of Time (published 1827)