Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)
(Original manuscript of "Anthem for Doomed Youth", showing Sassoon's revisions, 1917)
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
(Songs of Experience, 1794)
Janis Joplin (1943 – 70)
Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends
So, Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz
— Pearl, 1971.
Robert Stevenson (1850 – 94):
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
(Requiem, 1887)
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939):
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(The Second Coming, 1919)
Thomas Macaulay (1800 – 59):
To every man upon the earth
Death cometh soon or late
And how can [a] man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his Gods
(Horatius, Lays of Ancient Rome, 1842)
Aeschylus (c 525/524 – c 456/455 BCE):
[He] who learns must suffer.
And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our own despite, against our will,
comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
(Agamemnon, Oresteia, 458 BCE)
Euripides (480 – 406 BCE):
To the dear lone lands untroubled of men,
Where no voice sounds, and amid the shadowy green
The little things of the woodland live unseen.
(Bacchae, 405 BCE)
Bhagavad Gita:
Now I am become Death,
The Destroyer of Worlds.
(400 BCE)
Laurie Anderson (1947):
I don't know about your brain — but mine is really bossy …
(Babydoll, Strange Angels, 1989)
Martin Luther (1483 – 1546):
A might fortress is our God, a trusty shield and weapon;
He helps us free from every need that hath us now o'ertaken.
The old evil Foe now means deadly woe; deep guile and great might
Are his dread arms in fight; on earth is not his equal
(A Might Fortress, c1528)
Jewel (1974):
In the end, only kindness matters …
