I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

quote by Francis Bacon
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A Fable

A fable surrenders itself to the union of brothers,
Some fall into favourable terms with the mothers.

poem by Naveed Akram
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The Autumnal Romance

1903
I watch you as coldly as never,
But can’t keep this pine in my breast,
Today sun’s in smoke of havens,
And sadness makes heavy a breath.

I know, I breed just a fable –
At least, trust to fables, - but you?…
Like needless oblations, in alleys,
Leaves fall in the mournful hue.

We’re joined by the fate that was blinded:
Would God join us ‘there’ – behind sky?…
Don’t laugh, if in spring days, delighted,
You’ll step on the lives that here die.

poem by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
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It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.

quote by Irwin Edman
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Songs Of The Innocence

Songs of the inocence and the songs of love,
The fables of Absalom are like the histories of your mind;
But some characteristics are passed onto us by our parents.
Songs of the innocence and the games of skilled players,
Who is my checkmate on this side?
For bats are the only mammals that flies today and,
In 1611 the King James Version of the Bible was written.
From Botany to Zoology to muse up with the world,
The fables of Absalom are like the histories of your mind;
But men and women are like the dogs and the cats playing around.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Proem

O antique fables! beautiful and bright
And joyous with the joyous youth of yore;
O antique fables! for a little light
Of that which shineth in you evermore,
To cleanse the dimness from our weary eyes,
And bathe our old world with a new surprise
Of golden dawn entrancing sea and shore.

We stagger under the enormous weight
Of all the heavy ages piled on us,
With all their grievous wrongs inveterate,
And all their disenchantments dolorous,
And all the monstrous tasks they have bequeathed;
And we are stifled with the airs they breathed;
And read in theirs our dooms calamitous.

Our world is all stript naked of their dreams;
No deities in sky or sun or moon,
No nymphs in woods and hills and seas and streams;
Mere earth and water, air and fire, their boon;

[...] Read more

poem by James Thomson
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Nobody sees the obvious, nobody observes the ordinary. There are more miracles in a square yard of earth than in all the fables of the Church.

quote by Robert Anton Wilson
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The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

quote by William Feather
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Sometimes Poetry's More Similar to Politics Than I'd Care to Think About

O, metaphor!
O, simile!
O, allegory!
Jelly beans!
O, fable, myth!
Oh, silly me -
Disguising what
I really mean.

poem by Heidi K. Haskell
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Men do not invent Myths. They only invent fables, and tell lies. True Myths create themselves, and find their expression in the men who serve their purpose.

quote by Denis Johnston
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I Have Decided

I have decided,
Im gonna live like a believer,
Turn my back on the deceiver,
Im gonna live what I believe.
I have decided,
Being good is just a fable,
I just cant cause Im not able.
Im gonna leave it to the lord.
Theres a wealth of things that I profess,
I said that I believed,
But deep inside I never changed;
I guess Id been deceived.
cause a voice inside kept telling me,
That Id change by and by,
But the spirit made it clear to me,
That kind of lifes a lie.
I have decided,
Im gonna live like a believer,
Turn my back on the deciver,
Im gonna live what I believe.

[...] Read more

song performed by Amy Grant
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Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

quote by Thomas Aquinas
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Fables

Old wives's fables,
Be an example to others;
Gossips and busybodies,
Talking about things that they should not;
You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Bequeathing a Heart

Bequeath my heart unto a fable
That I may love and be loved
That the tales of my youth
May still ring true to some degree
I ask that I grow not old, alone
Embittered by each passing year
In the solitary gloom, forlorn
By the anguish of the unrequited heart
Yet to know the union of another
That I may become the tragedy of the unwriten
Unable to gift my heart in such a way
That I no longer able to love
That I am unable to be loved
Let those tales, those words once written
Prove not to be of a false hope
It is to all such fables I now ask of you
To love as it has been written
Bequeath my heart unto them

poem by Matthew Holloway
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Do What Is Right Always

Fables,
False doctrines,
Endless genealogies to wake up from your sleep;
But the ultimate result of life is beside you,
And you have to do what is right always in this life.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye.

quote by Thomas Jefferson
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I'd work to make it hip again to spend time in our fabled and fabulous land. But with a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother, I would probably be better suited as mayor of New York.

quote by Geraldo Rivera
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Leporello's List

Far better fables anodyne
than stories that are scary,
Don Giovanni drinking wine
with no Commendatore,
la ci darem a charming chant,
Donn’ Anna never kissed,
the thoughts of Wittgenstein and Kant
on Leporello's list.

David Denby reconsiders Roberto Benigni's 'Life is Beautiful' in The New Yorker, March 15,1999 ('In the Eye of the Beholder: Another look at Roberto Benigni's Holocaust Fantasy') . Denby writes:

Comedy and art, Benigni wants us to believe, not only to keep the human spirit aloft but save lives. 'Life is Beautiful' is soothing and anodyne - a hopeful fable of redemption. It is also one of the most unconvincing and self-congratulatory movies ever made.

3/10/99

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Legend Fable

centuries-old stand carved stone tablets
hundreds of tsunami warning stone markers
fabled tsunami waves devouring land lives
devastation legendary loss dwarfs memories
scale wave force shadow outruns warnings

witness awareness realities lost in three generations
generation enduring disaster becomes aged survivors
experience memory disaster to their children passes
experience more distant to their grandchildren passes
three generations fades forgotten from living memories

experience reality legend myth fable forget
three generations till people warnings forget
community crucial knowledge people forget
busy with lives love jobs experiences people forget
all except wise souls tsunami warnings heeding forget

poem by Terence George Craddock
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You Take the Cake

If I didn't provide you with munchies,
You wouldn't find a munch to crunch.
You would complain about the labor.
That it takes for you to make your lunch.

If I didn't provide you with munchies,
You wouldn't find a munch to crunch.
You would complain about the labor.
That it takes for you to make your lunch.

You take the cake.
With nothing brought from you to the table.
You take the cake.
With judgements passed and faked fables.
You take the cake...
And you leave no one a taste.

If I didn't provide you with munchies,
You wouldn't find a munch to crunch.
You would complain about the labor.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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