I’ve watched the film “Dead Poets Society” last week, and I found it’s really classic. But ironically, I never heard the name of this film until someone recommended another film “The Way Back” (I may talk about that later) which was shot by the same director. This movie do not like the kind of film shot in 1980′s, the scenes remind me of “Scent of a Woman”, have very high qualities. Somehow that’s not the point, the point is the poems in this file attracted me. I don’t have that good command of English, so I can certainly not understand the full spirit of these poems, that’s why I want to take a note here, it will be in handy.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
– Henry David Thoreau:Walden,or Life in the Woods
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up&emdash;for you the flag is flung&emdash;for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths&emdash;for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
The arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler,long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other,as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim;
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that,the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh,I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,and I—
I took the less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
– William Shakespeare
She Walks In Beauty
She walks in beauty,like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more,one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er he face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure,how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek,and o’er that brow,
So soft,so calm,yet eloquent,
The smiles thatv win,the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
– George Gorden Byron
Last but not least, in the end of the film, when the students stand upon the desk, when the words “Oh, captain. My captain.” spit out their mouth. I was totally moved and I yelled in my heart, “Fuck the regulations!“
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