Cloud Poetry

A collection of 366 poems by the writer Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374, Arezzo) in service of his love for Laura, a woman he had met once on a Good Friday. Other themes throughout the Canzoniere are equally important: religion, poetry, politics, time, glory. The love theme itself should be considered as the nucleus around which Petrarca develops his deep psychological analysis: thanks to his poems inspired by Laura (laurus is the symbol for poetry) the poet aspires to reach glory, which in turn can fight the all-destroying power of time.

Baudelaire in French and English

Hafiz describes holy dervishes

One of the seven greatest Latin hymns of all time, Stabat Mater Dolorsa is based upon the prophecy of Simeon that a sword was to pierce the heart of his Mother, Mary. The hymn originated in the 13th century during the peak of Franciscan devotion to the crucified Jesus and has been attributed to Pope Innocent III, St. Bonaventure, or Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306)

Select poems from Hafez (1315-1390), a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy".

Footprints On The Sands Of Time

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream! –

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act, — act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

From classic English poets and writers

Excerpts from George Kuber’s “The Shape of Time”, Remarks on the History of Things. Drawing upon insights in anthropology and linguistics, Kubler replaced the notion of style as the basis for histories of art with the concept of historical sequence and continuous change across time.

Excerpts from “Musical Literacy” by Jerrold Levinson, Journal of Aesthetic Education Spring 1990

T.S. Eliot’s classic poem