by John Greenleaf Whittier  (1807 – 1892)

“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine Light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire: and as the celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.”

        COR. AGRIPPA,
           Occult Philosophy, Book I. chap. v.

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

                                       EMERSON

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, —
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,
The **** his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingàd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, —
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp’s supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse ****** his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The **** his ***** greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, —
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where’er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! — with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, —
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
Dame Mercy Warren’s rousing word:
“Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge of ******* to fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog’s wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;
Lived o’er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away.
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the ***.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Concheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days, —
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon’s weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,
The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel’s ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint, —
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! —
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-**** and bread-cask failed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham.”
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature’s heart so near
v That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne’s loving view, —
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle’s eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i’ the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;
The muskrat plied the mason’s trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear, —
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love’s unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe’er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home, —
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The ****** fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
There, too, our elder sister plied
Her evening task the stand beside;
A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest,
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
How many a poor one’s blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household ***** lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago: —
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle’s hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth’s college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar’s gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation’s reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater’s keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man’s-buff,
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame’s winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
‘Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trainëd thought and lore of book.
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be,
Who, following in War’s ****** trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason’s monstrous growth,
Made ****** pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery’s lash the freeman’s will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor’s free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will’s majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The ***** and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio’s Kate,
The raptures of Siena’s saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath’s surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high
And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock!
Through Smyrna’s plague-hushed thoroughfares,
Up sea-set Malta’s rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh,
The Lord’s quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should stand
Upon the soul’s debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull’s-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love’s contentment more than wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O’er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O’er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature’s subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball’s compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells’ sound;
And, following where the teamsters led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty’s call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother’s aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer’s sight
The Quaker matron’s inward light,
The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac we studied o’er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood’s meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
A   nd daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica’s everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti’s Mainote Greeks,
A Turk’s head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death:
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that ***** to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands’ incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century’s aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends — the few
Who yet remain — shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.

Written in  1865

Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.

one person said: "peace is nothing but illusion
all I want is retribution"
[from "Pure Power" by Zardonic]
that's something I can identify with, which is why
I decided to write this heap of lines
————————————————————————————————
on a shooting range in a boondock la[ɛ]nd
with gloves pU̲t on; sta[ɛ]nd
in front of an autocratic ruler chained
by his hands to two moola safes'
[greed]
handles looking way
like an old-fangled car directing wheel
[steering wheel]
have this die-hard fool restrained
so that he, more or less, is still
I'm not a scho[ɑ]lar who can wave
around a degree in the medics field
but it's obvi this high-hat dO̲U̲chebag's plagued
with megalomania in a neglected condition
but there's a dreadfully effectual treatment
and he'll get it like villains
quite a gruesome fate
is looming upon this power-befuddled ****
like darkened clouds that, beyo[ɑ]nd a doubt, are soon to rain
["dark end"]
like waveriders, he's go[ʌ]nna serve
["surf"]
as a punchbag for I'm in quite a mood to raze
gonna wI̲nd up as nada short
of a ****** loon today
like Battinson, clepe me Vengeance
but I'm more something like the Zorro-looking caped
anti-autocratic vigila[ɛ]nte
from the Norsefire-ruled UK
[V from "V For Vendetta"]
meets someone whose work field's tormenting
like victimizers who pertain
to LE in one tsar-sized off-putting state
[law enforcement]
you know, the one that's go[ɑ]t a putrid trait
of always posing as a side you shouldn't blame (it's all the West!)
(now, let's go back to the foul autocrat)
like a jerky boss that you disdain
I give this no[ɑ]b a cool g'day
by douching him from a bo[ɑ]ttle full of straight-
-fro[ʌ]m-a-cooler H2O; just a fE̲w secs break
for him, & once it's U̲p, I ****** this base
being fro[ʌ]m a stE̲wpot great
with **[ɑ]t-a## noodles aimed
into this hU̲mbug's stupid face
[the "hang noodles on the ears" expression]
pepper it with some ground 7-po[ɑ]t to boost the taste
feel how I, like a husband who betrayed
his devoted, yet testy, wife, get rudely gazed
at, racked, beda[ɛ]mned (by who?)
by food-lacking men from Africla[ɛ]nd
[Africa]
ask him: "is the provided food okay?"
zero gratitU̲de displayed
all that comes from this sno[ɑ]t's bazoo's complaint
but nO̲[ɑ]t that I'm surprised
a typical pro[ɑ]sperous gobshite
the tack priorly applied
I do the same with a bucket full of maroonish paint
[autocrats have blood on their hands, hence "maroonish paint"]
like that music producer famed for dull future bass
I put on his viscous head a **** bucket
[Marshmello]
whereafter pick a wedge up & drum it
[golf wedge]
and, like a heap, I barely get started
[worn-out car]
like an unprepped passenger on an insane car ride
with no seat restraints applied
he's about to have a way hard time
I'm a cosmetic surgeon that operates part-time
fix his blamed jawline in just twain sharp swipes
with a steel bat, then yield some keen slaps
that meet his kneecaps until the knees snap
like the Baba Yaga hitman detached
from his peaceful life by someone ge[ɪ]tting him mad
[John Wick]
get his nails removed
which is pretty much the same that you do
when you repaper a room
[wall nails]
having perforated his fingertips
I ge[ɪ]t 'em plastered
a few minutes later, I rip them things
off 'kin/sim. to wax strips
he gets his phA̲[eɪ]lanxes smitten with
a freaking ratchet
[rathet wrench]
pro[ɑ]b'ly, he regrets
that his bo[ɑ]dy's still not dead
pick U̲p a pistol, set
a drum-like clip in, get
it cocked, then shoot lead around his silhouette
till the clip has zero ammunition left
seems like this once co[ɑ]cky piece of dreck
has gotten his khaki chinos wet
but if I've go[ɑ]t him in a sweat
like a summer jo[ɑ]gger being dressed
in venthole-deficient threads
for this brash dude, there's bad news
like me when I write some sick bloodshed
sadly for him, I've not finished yet (uh-uh)
like a runner that's go[ɑ]t some distance left
to complete, & it's not as dark as things can get
'cause, like the heroine o[ʌ]f M. Streep in "Death
Becomes Her" after falling fro[ʌ]m that string of steps
I've got a somewhat twisted head
[Madeline Ashton; the staircase fall scene]
so consider this as an insult-to-inju[—]ry sesh
grab a brace of scissors
for garden mainte[—]nance; Richard
Trager comes into play; begin ta
amputate his fingers; operate at leisure
disarticulate 'em I̲nto twenty eight **** pieces
cauterizing the remains with illuminated cI̲gars
fling into his piggish face some tissues
and some pain relievers
tell this nazissistic patient "hE̲A̲l up"
["****" in the sense of being "severely intolerant or dictatorial"]
let him relax for eighteen minutes
over the spa[ɛ]n of whI̲ch I put on play "La Chica
Rockabilly" & some other ro[ɑ]ckabilly
jams to make the whole vibe a mite less grisly
like an NA brown bear that is gravely injured
["mightless grizzly"; North American]
(as, in fact, this tragic-fated bleeder)
whereafter spray him with a
["wither"]
can of gas & make his dicta—
—torial a## go ablaze akin ta
a straw-fabricated figure
during gala days at the late of winter
[Maslenitsa effigy]
telling this piece of trash "in case you wI̲[ɪ]nd up
in somewhat of Hades, give a
warm shalom to the infamous ******"
consider this autocratic ****
a sugar daddy's skirt
'cause he's gotten what he was asking for
————————————————————————————————
oh, & one thing more to say: the
nullified, like ruler's presiding terms, dictator
was known among some as "toilet sprayer"
like a scuttered urinator

Human directives, veracities unverified  
Bellies belching with anger, murderers
Udders dripping hate, foundling banters
Hunters striking the hungered, unfortunate
Glare sight to seek the truth, hold me lets sink
Tear motions and debates of inequality

My Dafur, the realm of the fur, demise
All armed in Sudan, the arid, a battlefield
Emergency alarms sirens from 2003
The indefinite complications and hunger
A land of the displaced, starving nomads
Hear me out in these non-dissolving conflicts

Guantanamo bay detention a prison vicious
A base for “war in terrorism”, reciprocal laws
Inhumane human interrogations persists
A breach, a revolt, the hunger riots devolve
Force-feeding, torturous measures applied
All undressed, humiliated, genitalia exposed

A Rwanda slain in divide and rule
Civil clashes, mashes, all trashed
Swaying war rapes, tapes, the raves
Machetes slashing necks and hands
A lust of power, a genocide slaughter
The Tutsi slewed and unsewn from a patch

Autocratic regime boring divisions
Territorial ethnic cleansing, a holocaust
The oppression of Jews, Romanis, Poles
Homosexuals, the disabled and mentally ill
Indifference pooled in pits and camps
The institutional social indoctrination

The honor and killing to expose shame
The violation and dishonor of moral fabric
For what is “good”, “bad”, fixated moral values
Buried waists and head, awaiting stones to hit
Confessional secrets of only what lays within
A torment watching witnesses, all dangling

Marxists calls ships to stow ashore
Masses kidnapped, confused in deceit
Invalid contracts awaits signatures
The white immigrants to be enslaved
All aboard, now abroad to revolve labor
Wage packages taken to pay for freedom

Humans bought and sold to be owned
Slaves yorked and counted as assets
Bounded to serve plantations and homes
A human, non human, a chattel, a slave
A debt *******, offended and *****
Untamed and made to obey a master

A falling global strings unturned
Tunes strumming hate, war and pain
Human trafficking, violence, inequality
Child abuse, civil conflicts, capitalists
Commercialism, zero hour contracts
For if we have no rights, I have none
For if we have no peace I have none

a medieval blacksmith, insO̲—
—much as lyrical material of mine gets cast sim. to cold
weapons; I'd say, as anything mind-distracting, like dope
["destructing"]
lyric-writing acts in the role
of temp rise, 'cause it unshadows the mind
like da[ɛ]mn skies, dissipating clouds of lack of delight
which is whY̲ I clepe
it as "mind eclipse" (lack of the light)
hence all the grimness seen in mY̲ bar sheets (chernukha)
like someone having a flight, a bored, tragedy wight
["aboard"]
lashings of spite I add in my lines
a geek practicing harassment in rhymes
as a pastime; an antihero, like Frank Castle I side
with on going against baddies with vice (lesser evil)
'cause you can't battle a knight
or a savage canine, or seize a bastion by
means of any kind of chatting (good luck managing that, gandhists)
get real; chances of collapsing
a toughened up corrupt regime by tranquil, brawl-free rallies
are as high as a bA̲nged up substance addict
can be (highly unlikely); though I keep the anti-autocratic
subject matter frontline, for ones who half-a##edly indite
their lyrics, it's casket too, like
a box for somebody pA̲ssed, like the time
of the plague (past); thA̲t's something I'm
more than glad to provide
you with; tra[ɛ]nslation: you ain't sA̲fe, chumps
[a casket isn't a safe, hence "it's casket" means "it isn't/ain't safe"]
like an offer to have a sled ride
"dude, let's slay some"
["sleigh"]
said the voice of the Islamist radical-like rapper in my
bean (Shady); "let's bring a da[ɛ]ng mayhem"
["bin Shady": Osama bin Laden + Slim Shady, who's a lyrical terrorist]
it added with passion, then I'm
like: "sounds like a blast of a time" (kaboom)
but no[ɑ]t to you, be—cause I'm on my violent bullsh#t (again)
like a jihadi loony; with these lines I'm suited
up with, you'll be blasted like plants bY̲ a shrE̲wd wind
or like a head of state ordained to invade
a neighboring state
in this **** field, I feel
like Max Payne with a gauge
[shotgun]
in a prey-tE̲E̲ming weald
hunting as sport; slay just to main—
—tain some relish & killing skills
you're like misbehavior-free slaves
in this field; translation: you're tame (lyrically)
["tranSLAYtion"]
therefore, you're unwished-for
like anyone & anything with a high lack of approval
[by "high lack of approval" I mean "dissent"]
on politics of the regime of some dastardly ruler (dastardly ruler)
drunk by the power he keeps a tight grA̲sp on & moola (power & moola)
just like Vlad the mean puta (Vlad the mean puta)
code name's lavato[—]ry shooter (lavatory shooter)
you jacklegs remind
me of simple cases or the Batman that time
when he wound up with his bA̲ck damaged by
Bane, 'cause I get you cracked with no strife
just like trash, you would wi[aɪ]nd
up in the dumps if you set your crap next to mine
and let ones being into rap scrutinize
your level of lyrical threat's to splatter a high—
—ball glass or stuff like
that, punks; me? like an armor-clA̲d man, a night—
["knight"]
—mare; Dante strapped with a scythe
[Dante from the "Devil May Cry" video game series]
the way I whack, it's so tight
that I have my device playing some phA̲t beats as I
masterly slice you hacks into stripes
like the Senyera; rap di̲letta[ɑ]nti
and political oppressors are picked as targets
and I may be read as a vigila[ɑ]nte
'cause I go after you like
V; like 2 sawbones having a fight with their scalpel-like knives
[I go after the aforementiond figures in my lyrics]
["after U [which is followed by V]"; V from "V for Vendetta"]
a pa[ɛ]radox while A̲t it 'cause I go autocratic, despite
["pair of docs"]
the views thA̲t I stick by; other words, I kick A̲## as if I
were dealing a jA̲cka## foot strikes
[I'm against unjustified maltreatment of animals, that sentence is just for wordplay]
a rebel thinker with a wrA̲pped up in rhymes
sick, hazardous mind bringing lyrical disasters & crimes
oh, there's one I'm imagining right
now; a rap-writing dabbler, besides an autocratic *****, wi[aɪ]nds
up inside a hearse
with me being A̲t the wheel like
a town that's rife in terms
of poison-pushing; a psychopA̲th when I drive
["atterville"; "****** path"]
speed up to 150 miles per
hour on a track in Alpine
heights, pound a go[ɑ]ddamn curb
barrier breaching it & sending the wagon in flight
open out the driver door
and jump out with a 'chute backpA̲ck on my spine (bye-f#cking-bye!)
watching the car go down, just like a war
criminal busted, & whereafter burst, like
brain arteries of a nazissistic scoundrel; like reports
saying an autocratic piece of trash nullifies
his presiding terms
I'm bA̲d news when I'm
on my lyric-writing horse
[the "high horse" expression]
like cavalry; I'd like a dastardly, vice-ridden autocrat to reply
["riding horse"]
with lyrics to any of the crA̲p I've devised
in opposition to authoritarianism
should I send some to the office with galore of rE̲A̲r-licking minions
of that "it's all the nasty West" guy
or that's suicide?

Adolf ******
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"******" redirects here. For other uses, see ****** (disambiguation).
Adolf ******

Adolf ****** in 1937
Führer of Germany
In office
2 August 1934 – 30 April 1945
Deputy
Rudolf Hess (1933–41)
Position vacant
Preceded by Paul von Hindenburg
(as President)
Succeeded by Karl Dönitz
(as President)
***** Chancellor of Germany
In office
30 January 1933 – 30 April 1945
President Paul von Hindenburg (until 1934)
Deputy
Franz von Papen (1933–34)
Position vacant
Preceded by Kurt von Schleicher
Succeeded by Joseph Goebbels
Leader of the **** Party
In office
29 June 1921 – 30 April 1945
Deputy Rudolf Hess
Preceded by Anton Drexler
Succeeded by Martin Bormann
Personal details
Born 20 April 1889
Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary
Died 30 April 1945 (aged 56)
Berlin, Germany
Nationality
Austrian citizen until 7 April 1925[1]
Citizen of Brunswick after 25 February 1932
Citizen of the German ***** after 1934
Political party National Socialist German Workers' Party (1921–45)
Other political
affiliations German Workers' Party (1920–21)
Spouse(s) Eva Braun
(29–30 April 1945)
Parents
Alois ****** (father)
Klara Pölzl (mother)
Occupation Politician
Religion See: Religious views of Adolf ******
Signature
Military service
Allegiance German Empire
Service/branch Bavarian Army
Years of service 1914–20
Rank
Gefreiter
Verbindungsmann
Unit
16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment
Reichswehr intelligence
Battles/wars World War I
Awards
Iron Cross First Class
Iron Cross Second Class
Wound Badge
Adolf ****** (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ]; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the **** Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP); National Socialist German Workers Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of **** Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. ****** was at the centre of **** Germany, World War II in Europe, and the Holocaust.

****** was a decorated veteran of World War I. He joined the German Workers' Party (precursor of the NSDAP) in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power. The failed coup resulted in ******'s imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, ****** gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and **** propaganda. ****** frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy.

******'s **** Party became the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, leading to his appointment as chancellor in 1933. Following fresh elections won by his coalition, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into the Third *****, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of National Socialism. ****** aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the denunciation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories that were home to millions of ethnic Germans, actions which gave him significant popular support.

****** actively sought Lebensraum ("living space") for the German people. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the primary cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British and French declarations of war on Germany. In June 1941, ****** ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa. Failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, ****** married his long-time lover, Eva Braun. On 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Under ******'s leadership and racially motivated ideology, the regime was responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews, and millions of other victims whom he and his followers deemed racially inferior.

Contents
Early years
Ancestry
Childhood and education
Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich
World War I
Entry into politics
Beer Hall Putsch
Rebuilding the NSDAP
Rise to power
Brüning administration
Appointment as chancellor
Reichstag fire and March elections
Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act
Removal of remaining limits
Third *****
Economy and culture
Rearmament and new alliances
World War II
Early diplomatic successes
Alliance with Japan
Austria and Czechoslovakia
Start of World War II
Path to defeat
Defeat and death
The Holocaust
Leadership style
Legacy
Religious views
Health
Family
****** in media
See also
Footnotes
References
Citations
Sources
External links

a new blue tie,
a freshly ironed smile.

a political ****** expression,
a polished pair of leather dress shoes.

the democracy's corruption police,
becomes a system of spoils.

they chose their heirs,
before the election,
even begins.

talents lost in initiatives hands.
respect changes them,
leaving justice behind in the process.

trying to make sense of nothing,
is what this free land has become.

an oligarchic form of life,
and an autocratic vision of the future.

the Islam of Malcolm X isn't the Islam of today... it isn't really the prescription of Nietzsche had before the Heraclitus flux took sway and said: waterfall or lottery... it really, really, really doesn't matter. the Islam of the 1960s isn't the Islam of today... too tinged with Sieg Heil... although less the Ave Caesar salute and more akin to: who's up for ****, *******? the Islam has changed... if i was wise enough i'd have converted, to mind you... but i thought: putting my faith by only having a library of only one book... i thought... n'ah... that's a bit extreme, can i at least have a comic book strip to add to that massive library? no? oh well, no, sorry, at least one book mentions several authors who tried to imitate but failed on the last hurdle, at least i can revise that, and completely erase the two extensions that borrowed from Hinduism; 'cos' like it ******* mattered.. don't test me, i'm anticipating death like  suicide-vest child... come on! let's start the Slavic crusade!

perhaps it's not about not thinking certain thoughts,
or feeling certain emotions...
but perhaps it just is...
i say, we need the Sophists these days to
apply the fishing-net tactic to deciphering or
simply selectively reflecting our vocabularies...
strait-jacket vocabularies are there in plain sight...
i mean... wait a minute...
i jumped from jazz into pop music on the headphones,
from Miles Davis' *kind of blue defining
moment of the flamenco sketches right into the bog
of one direction - so i guess this is where
the antidote for art being too subjective comes in...
well, they sorted that problem already...
objectivity in art is around us as we speak,
it means "artists" that are manufactured,
art in the age of mechanical reproduction
(Walter Benjamin), it means more props than artists,
the problem got solved, it means reaching an
autocratic plateau of plugging in and sharing
a non-individualistic stream of emotion,
the opposite of democracy is autocracy, it isn't
despotism... i don't know why democracy doesn't
understand that it's ugly sister (autocracy)
is the enemy and not a Genghis Khan style of government...
democracy in the form of autocracy is a failed
attempt at Utopia... it suggests the system is perfect...
it means the institutions go about their daily business
like children in the playground who ******* and wet
themselves (the bankers), and still not one does anything
about it... what was once a demo tape of a indie band
becomes an automatic big seller big grosser E.P.,
just because the tragedy came, and they drove the touring
bus off a bridge in Sveeden... *******...
you ain't fighting dictators, you're fighting your change
from democracy into autocracy... where things
seem so perfect they can hardly ever change,
they're automated, they're not demographically sound...
sure, i'm the clown, i'll juggle a few big words around...
but in term of art? well, pop music has reached
the limit of what "philosophers" argued against...
to be frank... jealousy got to them that argued
for counter-productive constraints...
now they rebel against this objective construct of
artists in the shadows, writing text and tune and needing
some amateur to perform... and where do you
seek their rebellion? in the subjectivity they once
argued against: that famous Rage Against the Machine
protest against the X-factor...
so wait, first you argue against the subjectivity
of the artistic expression, then you postulate the non-existence
of the self: countered as the dasein for all subjectivity,
then you miss artistic objectivity with the karaoke
and what comes as the **** utopia with French
euthanasia tourists in Switzerland and Belgium...
you missed the argument you favoured, i.e.
artistic objectivity, i.e. performers, not people who write
the hit singles, Hiroshima Karaoke,
well, aren't we all objective now, that we have to source
our feelings in the expressions we once made angst against?
odd, isn't it? you never knew how well established
the counter argument became...
it's pop culture, it's evidently going to become viral...
but you see the power of subjective art...
it spreads like an infection, no point arguing against it...
objectivity in art is already a well established
virus, it doesn't really bite into your soul,
it bites, but you just get the odd body chicken ****...
that's what i mean about how a self-assured-without-a-self
democracy morphs into autocracy...
the fake Utopia of the well-established social
institutions actually being bankrupt, starting
with the post-colonial charity companies,
lying sharks and interest rates at 2000% per annum
i'm starting to think of Islam... leeches and hypocrites...
so your pointless critique of the subjectivity of the arts
became your most sling-shot friction strained weapon
to aim at the industry of art objectified,
in the age of mechanical reproduction true art = dodo...
it's on its way out... i hardly think that
50 years from now you'll find someone as idiotic
as me writing poetry for the love of the **** thing...
you'll get Utopian plateaus, anaesthetic democracy in
the realm of humanism, and hanging over you
autocracy... immovable foundations, cos' everything's
just perfect, time to invade another Libya where
some genius ensured the people knew their place
and who kept order on the pretence of
keeping weapons of mass destruction and
dog leashes... but there you will be ****-strapped going
huh? i thought subjectivity in art was bad?
n'ah mate, that's the only thing that made art good...
you got your ******* Karaoke, live with it!
the English Renaissance of the 1960s ain't coming back,
even if you gave Belfast back to the Dublin crew...
i say we need another Protagoras to get
the vocabulary inflation up to speed...
i say devalue the words self, ego... and make the
psychologists bums..
i say devalue the words nation, british and hamburger
to make the anglophile influence on Europe
a bit like sniffing a mortar of ******* off a penny...
i say reestablish the virtues of Japanese feudalism,
scare depressed teenagers with the words:
your only way out is by Hara Kiri.
something must come from a poem like this...
i have rage... you reason with it...
i'm not going to reason a calm into my heart with the words
i just wrote... n'ah... n'ah n'ah... that ain't happening...
it only took one needle in a haystack to give me prompt...
the ailments of subjectivity in art...
that got me, bull's eye reddened mad...
you ain't turning me into Darwinian grey matter!
this is democracy at its most despotic...
let me try democracy first, before i join the legion of dentists
with happy middle-class lives in autocracy...
can't blame ****** in this guise of organising people,
'cos' there just ain't no ******...
that got me hot wired and hired to argue...
first they say: art deserves no subjectivity...
fair enough: 1 man draws a rhombus a 1000 men draw a square...
but now that we can finally see objectivity being applied
to art, we only get pop: **** jazz, classical, rock and speedy-indie...
we get manufacture... as you once hated those with
personal intention to add to the democratic demographic,
now you turn against them for disturbing the status quo...
well, happy are those that come to the sun's repeat jargon
and happily doubt the roundabout...
because criticising art as subjectively orientated
really spared you art having ascribed objectivity to its cause
of attaining mechanical reproduction,
and the subjective placebo... neither thinking nor feeling
anything deeper than nervous yoga twitching dances...
spare me the ******* details if you come up with
a more accurate historical pinpoint.

I have known this much talked about search for true love for over 10 years and I am aged 22 years now. There was this unforgiving loneliness till I was 17 years of age given that I am the only child of my parents who lives with them in a lonely campus of a research institute away from the small city.

A tumultuous relationship filled with resentment to the brim about my parents keeping me their only 'issue' was brought to the hilt and I was weary of being their arguably most beloved 'machine' who was supposed to live sticking to the 'guidelines' laid by them as the ideal only son.

We aren't from a landlord's family and have limited resources, so I was supposed to suffice in my parents' love and affection, studying at a fairly consistent dedication to bring forth the results worthwhile landing me a good job.

But who has been able to control a Romeo-in-the-making?

Answer: Nobody!

But my Juliet wasn't yet on the horizon till age 17, when I mistakenly took my first girlfriend who was my classmate till class 7, to be my last love. Period. Then for the first time I was introduced to the idea of 'love' by this sweet girl whom I dub "G3" over 11 months elder to me. I had proposed her, but it was not a pre-emptive proposal.

Our period of courtship had started over Orkut which was the most popular social website at that time. It was just friendship initially until I had unsuccessfully proposed two bimbets other than my first girlfriend. One of those two unsuccessful attempts was with her best-friend-once-upon-a-time.

I had told her about them both, she had even tried apparently helping me propose her best friend when I had told her that I had even written a song for my childhood crush over the years I had been away from my old school.

Her first reaction was, "I would die for having such a boyfriend! Wish it was I for whom the song was composed."

Then when I proposed my childhood crush, G1, I couldn't even mention about the song and she rejected my proposal. Period. I was distraught, I was broken & I was amazed at how easily she could've undermined my liking for her from the past 7 years.

To take my attention off the disappointment posed by my first rejection. I proposed a different girl, G2, non-seriously, knowing that another rejection was lurking behind the curtains of time.

Rejection 2 successfully diverted my mind away from the mess created. Anyways, I did have a girlfriend for myself. After all, people love guys who sing melodiously and can play guitar apart from having decent appearance, and believe me- I used to look this chocolatey young guy until I was 19 years of age.

The girl who later went on to have the place vacated by my first crush was her same best-friend-once-upon-a-time 'G3'. She went on varied lengths in narrating her own break-up story with the guy she was with. I got a second-hand  piece as my first girlfriend. It was no issues, at least till she was bickering about how he had broken her 'heart-of-a-self-proclaimed-princess' and we started having arguments and serious tiffs over what had been happening in her life.

We broke-up. I had enough of the hardships brought by myself upon her. She had taken to crying harshly over phone. I resented myself. I failed to identify that it was not true love indeed but only a mirage of the idea.

I next concentrated in studies and this time I prevailed over the hurdles offered by examinations and a second girlfriend, 'G4', who refused to openly accept she was going about with me was attracted to me. She'd go see the Taj Mahal at Agra and the Hawa Mahal at Jaipur with me apart from spending the night in the same hotel room but would still reckon me with my pending reappear supplementary exams and wouldn't openly accept a failure as her man. I was frustrated by her autocratic behaviour and opted for a different girl, 'G5'.

G5 was the prettiest of my first 3 GF's as far as looks were considered. We romanced around Delhi's historical places and malls; holding hands around cinemas and Old Fort walls in New Delhi. But still I was as ****** as I was when I was born.

May 7, 2010 was a scorching hot day with the sun ablaze overhead and me going on the busiest highway of India. I was going back to my home and met with a serious road accident en route that kicked me out of my senses into a frozen comatose state.

I somehow survived the life-threatening coma and was moving around in 52 long weeks, limping heavily all thanks to my parents and the kind physiotherapist. Thanks to a poor memory, I initially performed extremely below average at college.

Then I was all prepared to attack at all future examinations and nothing could stop me. I breezed past another girl 'G6', this was my last failure. She was confused between me and a different guy. Neither me nor any other guy with a high self-prestige would entertain the idea of being weighed as an option. I again moved on.

Then comes the continuing story of my true love. True love is the one that lasts forever successfully. She is incidentally my 7th chance upon the love pathway and last. I am sure this is her- my soul-mate.

She is my gateway to the 7th heaven, I find her presence in every aspect of my life. She is 6 years and 9 months younger to me and her descent in my life has been the best thing in my life. I celebrate and rejoice each day in her presence. Our tastes are so similar that we feel merely our X- & Y-chromosomes are different.

We patiently wait for time to last till the day till we perish after blessing our grandchildren. We live 250 kilometres away from each other and have only known each other through voices and photos. We are yet to meet. Till then I wait for the day my master degree gets over and she gets into a medical college.

Now I will end this post by saying that there's no end of love and no beginning of it - you just have to wait, identify and hold on to your truest love.

When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
when grief has been made so public, and exposed
to the critique of a whole epoch
the frailty of our conscience and anguish,

of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
among us, those who were doing us some good,
who knew it was never enough but
hoped to improve a little by living.

Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished
to think of our life from whose unruliness
so many plausible young futures
with threats or flattery ask obedience,

but his wish was denied him: he closed his eyes
upon that last picture, common to us all,
of problems like relatives gathered
puzzled and jealous about our dying.

For about him till the very end were still
those he had studied, the fauna of the night,
and shades that still waited to enter
the bright circle of his recognition

turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he
was taken away from his life interest
to go back to the earth in London,
an important Jew who died in exile.

Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
his practice now, and his dingy clientele
who think they can be cured by killing
and covering the garden with ashes.

They are still alive, but in a world he changed
simply by looking back with no false regrets;
all he did was to remember
like the old and be honest like children.

He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
the unhappy Present to recite the Past
like a poetry lesson till sooner
or later it faltered at the line where

long ago the accusations had begun,
and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
how rich life had been and how silly,
and was life-forgiven and more humble,

able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
a set mask of rectitude or an
embarrassing over-familiar gesture.

No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit
in his technique of unsettlement foresaw
the fall of princes, the collapse of
their lucrative patterns of frustration:

if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life
would become impossible, the monolith
of State be broken and prevented
the co-operation of avengers.

Of course they called on God, but he went his way
down among the lost people like Dante, down
to the stinking fosse where the injured
lead the ugly life of the rejected,

and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,
deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
our dishonest mood of denial,
the concupiscence of the oppressor.

If some traces of the autocratic pose,
the paternal strictness he distrusted, still
clung to his utterance and features,
it was a protective coloration

for one who'd lived among enemies so long:
if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,
to us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion

under whom we conduct our different lives:
Like weather he can only hinder or help,
the proud can still be proud but find it
a little harder, the tyrant tries to

make do with him but doesn't care for him much:
he quietly surrounds all our habits of growth
and extends, till the tired in even
the remotest miserable duchy

have felt the change in their bones and are cheered
till the child, unlucky in his little State,
some hearth where freedom is excluded,
a hive whose honey is fear and worry,

feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape,
while, as they lie in the grass of our neglect,
so many long-forgotten objects
revealed by his undiscouraged shining

are returned to us and made precious again;
games we had thought we must drop as we grew up,
little noises we dared not laugh at,
faces we made when no one was looking.

But he wishes us more than this. To be free
is often to be lonely. He would unite
the unequal moieties fractured
by our own well-meaning sense of justice,

would restore to the larger the wit and will
the smaller possesses but can only use
for arid disputes, would give back to
the son the mother's richness of feeling:

but he would have us remember most of all
to be enthusiastic over the night,
not only for the sense of wonder
it alone has to offer, but also

because it needs our love. With large sad eyes
its delectable creatures look up and beg
us dumbly to ask them to follow:
they are exiles who long for the future

that lives in our power, they too would rejoice
if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,
even to bear our cry of 'Judas',
as he did and all must bear who serve it.

One rational voice is dumb. Over his grave
the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:
sad is Eros, builder of cities,
and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.