Great Poetry

[vulcanlogician]

"Faces" by Kahlil Gibran

I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that was but a single countenance as if held in a mould.

I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was.

I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face in which all things were graven.

I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.




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"A Hand-Mirror" by Walt Whitman

HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is 
    it? Is it you?)
Outside fair costume—within, ashes and filth,
No more a flashing eye—no more a sonorous voice 
    or springy step,
Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, ve-
    nerealee's flesh,
Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and 
    cankerous,
Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
No brain, no heart left—no magnetism of sex;
Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go 
    hence,
Such a result so soon—and from such a beginning!