Great Regulars: Even worse than the silly notion

that lovers are not truly cognizant of their happiness is the mistaken idea that they should "seize the present." According to this speaker, life is lived "less in the present" than in the future, and even less in the present and future combined as in the past.

This speaker is convinced that "The present/Is too much for the senses,/Too crowding, too confusing--/Too present to imagine."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Frost's Carpe Diem

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The speaker plunges in immediately describing the disturbing event that seems to occur routinely: "The old woman across the way/is whipping the boy again." And as the neighbor lady is corporally punishing the boy, she loudly condemns him testifying so that her neighbors can hear about "her goodness and his wrongs."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Hayden's The Whipping

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The speaker then claims that when the "Old Devil" transforms his "baleful eye" into "stars that melt into the gloom of night," the speaker again loses his "courage" which "quickly flies." The speaker at this point even loosens his disdain for the evil one by calling him "my dear fellow." The speaker has been transformed himself from openly acknowledging the evil of the "Old Devil" to addressing him as a chum. At this point, the speaker reveals that his winning this fight "is slim."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Johnson's The Temptress

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He discovers that the illness caused by his earlier errors is actually helpful, and he exclaims, "O benefit of ill!" He understands again that the pairs of opposites that operate on the physical level of existence can, in fact, become valuable teachers.

He finally understands, "That better is by evil still made better." In order to comprehend the good and the true, the artist needs to have the contrast of the bad and the false, which is evil.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 119

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As each insect, bird, flower, and tree struggles to contribute its own unique offering, it demonstrates all of the attributes that a duality-based existence requires. The human observer/speaker, who has surveyed all of this activity, determines that those activities include fear and love. The creatures all act out of a combination of fear and love.

The bad news is, "those who love the garden/that in the radiant vacancies they inhabit/there is only the gardener/to love them back."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Solway's The Garden

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In "After This," Guruji reminds his devotes that even after he leaves his body, his soul will retain the one and only desire that is left to a self-realized saint: he will not wish to return to an incarnation, "Unless to mingle the dewdrop tears of other prisoned soul with mine,/And show them the way that I my freedom won." He will gladly return in order to give others the methods by which he earned his "freedom."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's After This

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