Nightciris• Show poetry

Erm..."ciris" roughly means bird in Latin, so that would be how I got my username. But please, do call me Elena or Ciris. Whatever you prefer. =D And yes, I have had four years of formal Latin training, but independently translate (still working on the Aeneid) when I find a moment.

What else to say about me? It is hard to define oneself in a few short paragraphs. I read constantly, and with hardly any discrimination among genres. Tokein, Robert Jordan, and George R.R. Martin satisfy my fantasy nerd; Jane Austen and Georgette Hayer toy with my romantic side (such as it is). I read poetry more often than I write it, particularly Yeats and all his tales of folklore and legend.

I love history and its wars; the glory, the bitterness, and the zeal that drives men to do great and terrible things.

I am a faithful friend and a bitter enemy--I hold grudges for years and never apologize. But my nearest and dearest will never walk alone, as I would hand them the moon if I could. I dream, I sing, I write, I draw; I laugh loudly and at odd times, embarass myself when trying to be graceful and can *never* recall the right word I want.

I am an only child who is fiercely independent, and does not need your help. That is, until I break down and reach for my pen, and then the phone. I speak with ink in letters and self-drawn tattoos, my life story washed off with each shower.

I am illogical and passionate, I stick to my guns and generally don't give a damn. I write small, in thin scrawls, striving for elegance that does not always come. Mostly I am an old soul in a young body.

I am not on everyday, but I am always writing.







If
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!


Well, while I will never be a man, the sentiment is just the same. I love this poem, it picks me up every time. And hopefully it does the same for you, too.


When You Are Old
by W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


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Mendacem oportet esse memorem.
(A liar needs a good memory.)
~Quintilian

Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.
(There is no one great ability without a mixture of
madness.)
~Seneca

O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem.
(O you who have suffered greater things, God will
grant an end to these also.)
~Virgil

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From Cicero's First Oration Against Cataline, or
Oratio Prima In Catilinam Habita:

Vivit? Immo vero etiam in senatum venit, fit publici consili particeps, notat et designat oculis ad caedem unumquenque nostrum.
(He lives? Nay more, he even comes into the senate,
he becomes a participant of the public council, he
notes and marks with his eyes for slaughter each one
of us.)
Nihil agis, nihil morliris, nihil cogitas quod non ego
non modo audiam sed etiam videam paneque sentiam.
(You do nothing, you contrive nothing, you think
nothing which not merely do I hear but also see
and plainly know.)
Nobiscum versari iam diutius non potes: non feram, non patiar, non sinam.
(You cannot live with us for any longer: I will not
bear it, I will not endure it, I will not allow
it.)

These are my translations and are subject to personal preference and interpretation.

**********

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
~Winston Churchill

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.'
(House of Commons, 13 May 1940)
~Winston Churchill