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Dark Quotes


nicana

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  • 2 years later...

I found this poem, which in many ways is quite dark. I was in two minds about including the second stanza, since it is a bit more hopeful, but hopefully you can appreciate the poem even with it included.

 

O, breathe not his name

Thomas Moore

O, breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,

Where cold and unhonor’d his relics are laid:

Sad, silent, and dark, be the tears that we shed,

As the night dew that falls on the grass o’er his head.

 

But the night dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,

Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;

And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,

Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.

Edited by EirikDaude
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Thanks for the poem, Eirik. I, being a nosy little, er, fellow, was interested in who the poem was about. Like for instance, one of my favourite poems posted in the inspirational quotes thread, was apparently really about a British Empire Official that started an illegal raid into Boer territory and was then disowned by the British government to protect the political career of the politician that had actually organised it. 

 

Anyway, I did not have any luck, but my chatGPT powered Bing - that pops up all the time, grrr, told me this,

 

This poem is a beautiful elegy that mourns the death of a loved one. The speaker urges the reader to not speak the name of the deceased, but instead let it rest in peace. The poem is a poignant reminder of the power of grief and the importance of honoring the dead.

 

Do you know anything about it? Because I kind of took a different interpretation than the AI.

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Thomas Moore was an Irish poet who wrote the poem as an elegy for his friend Robert Emmet, who was executed for rebellion against the English. Emmet's last words were “When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.”

 

These words are why he is not named in the poem.

 

Though of course it is really about our Great Lord Lady of the Grave. Very apt.

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13 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Thank you, that satisfies an itch and is very interesting too. 

This is the intro to the poem on the page in which I found it, in case you want a little more detail:

 

Quote

Goaded by his friends Robert Emmet and Edward Hudson, members of a group of revolutionaries known as the United Irishmen, Moore wrote an impassioned plea for his fellow students to oppose the imminent Act of Union with England. This “Letter to the Students of Trinity College,” published in December 1797 in The Press, the voice of the United Irishmen, was signed “A SOPHister,” but Moore’s parents and his tutor knew the author to be Moore and begged him not to endanger his future by such outspokenness. Moore took their warnings seriously and ever after moderated his political writings by satire blunted with humor. The warnings were well founded: after an armed rebellion in 1798, Hudson was imprisoned and exiled, and Emmet wounded. Moore was called to testify in a Trinity investigation about his association with the rebels, but he answered only questions about himself, and was allowed to remain in school. Emmet was hanged five years later, and the last words of the speech he gave after his sentencing, on September 19, 1803, have passed into Irish legend and literature: “When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.” Moore memorializes his friend’s wish for honorable obscurity in one of his most memorable Irish Melodies, “O, Breathe Not His Name,” and Joyce later incorporated and undercut Emmet’s words as reported by Moore by including them in the sirens’ song in Ulysses (1922). Moore’s song is characteristically sentimental, but it testifies to the strength of his friendship, his hope for Ireland, and to his talent for versifying:

 

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  • 5 weeks later...

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

 Friedrich W. Nietzsche

 

*makes my best Trolloc face, possibly ruined by my sparkly outfit and glitter covered weapons* 😁

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  • 2 weeks later...

“Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.”

 Frank Herbert, Dune

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  • 5 months later...

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