Selected Haiku by Issa

Don’t worry, spiders,

I keep house

casually.

New Year’s Day—

everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

The snow is melting

and the village is flooded

with children.

Goes out,

comes back—

the love life of a cat.

Mosquito at my ear—

does he think

I’m deaf?

Under the evening moon

the snail

is stripped to the waist.

Even with insects—

some can sing,

some can’t.

All the time I pray to Buddha

I keep on

killing mosquitoes.

Napped half the day;

no one

punished me!

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to

dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to

assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to

which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect

to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes

which impel them to the separation.

Sonnet 29

William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The bustle in a house

The morning after death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon earth,—

The sweeping up the heart,

And putting love away

We shall not want to use again

Until eternity.

Declaration of Independence

[Adopted in Congress 4 July 1776]

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to

dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to

assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to

which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect

to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes

which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that

among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure

these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just

powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of

government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people

to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its

foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to

them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence,

indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed

for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown

that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than

to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the

same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is

their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide

new guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient

sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains

them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present

King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all

having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these

states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and

necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate

and pressing importance, unless suspended in their

operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so

suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation

of large districts of people, unless those people would

relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a

right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,

uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their

public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into

compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for

opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of

the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to

cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers,

incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at

large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime

exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and

convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these

states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for

naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to

encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions

of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing

his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the

tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their

salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither

swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their

substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies

without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and

superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction

foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our

laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for

any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants

of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by

jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended

offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a

neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary

government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it

at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the

same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable

laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our

governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring

themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all

cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of

his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned

our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign

mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation

and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty

and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages,

and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the

high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the

executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall

themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has

endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the

merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is

undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and

conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the

most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by

repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which

may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have

warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an

unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the

circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to

their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties

of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably

interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the

voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce

in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold

the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in

General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for

the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of

the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these

united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states;

that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that

all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and

ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they

have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish

commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may

of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance

on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our

lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.