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Charles Baudelaire - Elevation

Above the valleys, over rills and meres,
Above the mountains, woods, the oceans, clouds,
Beyond the sun, past all ethereal bounds,
Beyond the borders of the starry spheres,
My agile spirit, how you take your flight!

Like a strong swimmer swooning on the sea
You gaily plough the vast immensity
With manly, inexpressible delight.
Fly far above this morbid, vaporous place;

Go cleanse yourself in higher, finer air,
And drink up, like a pure, divine liqueur,
Bright fire, out of clear and limpid space.

Beyond ennui, past troubles and ordeals
That load our dim existence with their weight,
Happy the strong-winged man, who makes the great
Leap upward to the bright and peaceful fields!

The man whose thoughts, like larks, take to their wings
Each morning, freely speeding through the air,
—Who soars above this life, interpreter
Of flowers’ speech, the voice of silent things!

Autumn - Rainer Maria Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling as from way off,
as though far gardens withered in the skies;
they are falling with denying gestures.

And in the night the heavy earth is falling
from all the stars down into loneliness.

We all are falling. This hand falls.
And look at others: it is in them all.

And yet there is one who holds this falling
endlessly gently in his hands.

Old tent-maker, your body is a tent,
Your soul a sultan from the eternal world.
Death’s messenger gives the call to journey on,
And strikes the tent, and lets the sultan go.

— Omar Khayyam

As I rode out one day not long ago
By narrow roads, and heavy with the thought
Of what compelled my going, I met Love
In pilgrim’s rags coming the other way.
All his appearance seemed to speak such grief
As kings might feel upon the loss of crown;
And ever sighing, bent with thought he came,
His eyes averted from all passers-by.
Yet as we met he called to me by name
And said to me, “I come from that far land,
Where I had sent your heart to serve my will;
I bring it back to court a new delight.”
And then so much of him was fused with me,
He vanished from my sight, I know not how.

— Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova translated by Mark Musa (Bloomington, 1962)

And this is love—
The vertigo of Heaven
Beyond the cage of words,
Suddenly to be naked
In the searchlight of truth …

— Rumi

Walking along a narrow path at the foot of a mountain
I come to an ancient cemetery filled with countless
tombstones
And thousand-year-old oaks and pines.
The day is ending with a lonely, plaintive wind.
The names on the tombs are completely faded,
And even the relatives have forgotten who they were.
[...]

— The Zen Poetry of Ryokan

I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! For Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones: “To Him we shall return.”

— Rumi, Rumi: Poet and Mystic translated by Reynold A. Nicholson (London, 1950)