Songs From Babylon Berlin

"Babylon Berlin features music in German, Russian, Yiddish, and English, with popular songs like "Du bist alles" (You are everything) by Woods of Birnam capturing themes of longing and connection ("I was alone in my dreams... Today I saw you standing at my door"), while other tracks like "Frilingvint" (Spring Wind) explore hope and finding love amidst the era's chaos, often with poetic lyrics about nature (swallows returning) and home."

AI

German lyrics

Ein Tag wie Gold,
in den Adern 100.000 Volt,
eine Nacht, wie Samt und Seide!
Ein Tag wie Gold,
ihr habt doch alles, was ihr wollt,
eine Nacht, schöner kann es nicht sein!

Zwei Schritt’ nach links,
zwei zurück dann nach vorn.
Jetzt oder nie,
wir sind zum Tanzen geboren.
Alles bebt, alles lebt,
hak dich ein.
Kann es sein, dass wir verrückt sind?

Ein Tag wie Gold,
in den Adern 100.000 Volt,
eine Nacht, wie Samt und Seide!
Leben, ist es nur ein Traum?
Schön wär's, ich glaube kaum,
dass es wahr ist.
Pass auf, weil man sehr leicht vergisst,
nicht bleibt, wie es ist.

Grüße nach Moskau, Paris, und nach Wien.
Wir winken euch zu,
alles kommt nach Berlin.
Alles schrill, jeder will, allen war immer klar, dass wir verrückt sind.

Ein Tag wie Gold,
was übrig bleibt, das wird verzollt.
Ein Schimmern,
denn was kümmern mich Bilanzen,
lass uns Tanzen!

English translation

A Day Like Gold
A day like gold,
100,000 volts in my veins,
a night, like velvet and silk!
A day like gold,
you've got everything you want,
a night, it couldn't be more beautiful!

Two steps to the left,
two steps back to the front.
It's now or never,
We were born to dance.
Everything shakes, everything lives,
hook in.
Could it be that we're crazy?

A day like gold,
100,000 volts in my veins,
a night, like velvet and silk!

Life, is it just a dream?
One could only hope, but I don't think,
that it's true.
Be careful, because it's easy to forget,
things don't stay the way they are.

Greetings to Moscow, Paris, and Vienna.
We wave to you,
everyone is coming to Berlin.
Everything is shrill, everyone wants, everyone always knew that we are crazy.

A day like gold,
what is left is declared.
A shimmer,
cause what do I care about balance sheets,
let's just dance!

Lyrics by https://lyricstranslate.com/

Babylon Berlin is one of best TV series I have seen.The series was filmed in Germen with Germen actors and includes a host of characters. It depicts Germany before Hitlers take over. There are a few dubbing choices. I chose Germen with English subtitles.

Babylon Berlin

This is a great German series and includes some great period musical takes.

Roslin Waits: Another Clue to the Chalice?

“The Holy Grail neath ancient Roslin Waits.
The blade and chalice guarding o’er gates.
Adorned in masters loving art, She lies.
She rests at least beneath the starry skies stacked.”

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown

A Poem, a Code, a Hint

The author of the De Vinci Code, Dan Brown used this poem as code to give the current set of seekers a hint as to where to find the Holy Grail.

"In London lies a knight a Pope interned. His labor's fruit a Holy wrath incurred. You seek the orb that ought to be on his tomb. It speeks Rosy Flesh and seeded womb."

Dune Messiah Epilogue

No bitter stench of funeral-still for Muad' dib,
No knell nor solemn rite to free the mind
From avaricious shadows,
He is the fool saint,
The golden stranger living forever
On the edge of reason.
Let your gaurd fall and he is there!
His crimson peace and sovereign pallor
Strike into our Universal prophetic webs
To the verge of a quiet glance-there!
Out of bristling star-jungles.
Mysterious, lethal, an oracle without eyes,
Catspaw of prophecy, whose voice never dies!
Shai-hulud, he awaits there upon the strand
Where couples walk and fix, eye to eye,
The delicious ennui of love
He strides through the long cavern of time,
Scattering the fool-self of his dream.

-The Ghola's Hymn

Alia Atreides, A Host of Characters

The Telling of the Priestess Alia’s Trance Through Song

“She rides the sandworm of space! She guides it through all storms. Into the land of gentle winds.
Though we sleep next to the snake’s den, she guards our dreaming souls.
Shunning the desert heat, she hides us in a cool hollow.
The gleaming of her whole teeth, guides us in the night.
By the braids of her hair, we are lifted up to heaven!
Sheet fragrance, flower-scented,
Surrounds us in her presence.”

Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert

A Lament for a Woman Left Behind on Arrakis

“Far within the fortress citadel, so deep within that the sound sometimes lost itself in the flow of city noises, a ten-string rebaba tinkled with a song of the Jihad, a lament for a woman left behind on Arrakis:

‘Her hips are dunes curved by the wind,
Her eyes shine like summer heat,
Two braids of hair hang down her back-
Rich with water rings, her hair!
My hands remember her skin,
Fragrant as amber, flower scented…
I am stricken by love’s white flame!’ ”

Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert

A Song Popular on Nara j Worlds and Sung by a Young Fremen

“A wind has blown the land away.
And all the men!
Who is this wind?

The trees stand unbent.
Drinking where men drank.
I’ve known too many worlds,
Too many men,
Too many trees,
Too many winds”

The Legends of New Earth

“Wild on the wind rose the righteous wrath of Maalvin,
Borne like a brand to the burning of the Barrens.
Arms of hands of rebels perished then,
Stars nor moons bedecked that midnight.
IMT made the sky-
Fall!

…

Black with their blood was the brick of that barrow,
Toppled the tall towers, crushed to the clay.
None might live who flouted Mallvin,
Earth their souls spurned spaceward, wailing- IMT made the sky-
Fall!”

Cities in Flight, James Blish

The Bragging Song

“I was born about ten thousand years from now…
When we land upon the Moon I’ll show then, how.

Why, I once signed on with Amra, and I damn near lost my skin;
For the blood it flowed like water when the fighting did begin
I’m the only tar who’s e’er jumped ship from Vandervecken’s crew---
And that’s about the strangest thing a man will ever do.”

‘This is about all I can remember of this ditty, for I was already two sheets to the wind when they got started.’ JF

Vandervecken, Protector, Larry Niven

The Opium-Eater’s Soliloquy

Without any apology I reproduce here some verses which appeared in 1894, about the time when the Royal Opium Commission came to India:

They began by mourning over my degraded moral state,
Then my physical decadence they would anxiously debate.
Then they raised a pious eye,
And they heaved a pitying sigh,
And they shuddered as they pondered on my melancholy fate.
Now, I never had reflected on the matter thus, at all,
For my luxuries were few, and my expenditure was small.
I was happy as the day,
In my own abandoned way,
Till they said they must release me from the bonds that held me thrall.
I’d been cheered up at my Chandoo ⁴ shop, for years at least two score,
To perform my daily labour, and was never sick or sore;
But they said this must not be;
So they passed a stern decree,
And they made my Chandoo seller shut his hospitable door.
Now they’re sending out Commissions with the philanthropic view
Of inducing us to part with sev’ral crores of revenue;
For all opium traffic’s sin,
And, although it brings in tin,
Our nefarious trade papaverous, they say we must eschew.
Who’d have thought that my redemption would have cost so many lakhs
(For they saddle their expenses on my fellow-subjects’ backs).
What with deficits to square,
And Commissions everywhere,
On the “hoarded wealth of India” I shall prove a heavy tax.
If I’d only cultivated, now, a taste for beer or gin,
Or had learnt at Pool or Baccarat my neighbour’s coin to win,
I could roam abroad o’ nights,
And indulge in these delights,
And my soul would not be stigmatized as being steeped in sin!
But as mine’s a heathen weakness for a creature-comfort, far
Less pernicious than their alcohol, more clean than their cigar,
They have sent their howlings forth,
From their platform in the North,
And ’twixt me and my poor pleasures have imposed a righteous bar!

Drug Smuggling and Taking in India and Burma by Roy K. Anderson

---

4:Chandoo, the Indian name for prepared or clarified opium used in smoking. The Burmese name for it is Beinsi.

A Persian Allegory

Three men, one under the effects of alcohol, one under the effects of opium, and the last under the effects of hemp, arrived one night at the closed gates of a city. “Let us break down the gates,” said the alcohol drinker in a fury of rage, “I can do it with my sword!” “Nay,” said the opium eater, “We can rest here outside in comfort till the morning, when the gates will be opened, and we may enter.” “Why all this foolish talk?” whined the one under the effects of hemp. “Let us creep in through the key-hole. We can make ourselves small enough!”

Drug Smuggling and Taking in India and Burma by Roy K. Anderson

The Song of Roland

Screen shot from Amazon

---

"The lord and King of France, Charles the Great
Has spent seven long years fighting Spain.
He has conquered the highlands and the plain.
Before him not a single fort remains,
No town or city wall for him to break,
But Saragossa, on a high mountain
Ruled by King Marsilly the Saracen.
He serves Mohamed, to Apollo prays,
But even there he never will be safe."

---

The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett

A Song Sung by a Man Waiting to Die

A lark, caught in the hunters net,
And sang sweater then than ever,
As is the falling melody
Might wing and net dissever?

At dusk the hunter took his prey,
The lark his freedom never
All birds and men are sure to die
But songs may live forever.

The song was sung to a maiden in Norman French, the language of the Lords.

The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett.

The Demise of Juan Ponce De Leon at the Fountain of Youth

JUAN PONCE DE LEON:

DREAMER AND SEARCHER FOR THE FOUNTAIN OF PERPETUAL YOUTH.

(1460-1521

"The tropic breeze fanned a fairy tale, a tale of the sheltering palms,
Where the grimy sea cow sunned herself, in the bay where the ground-swell calms.
It sang a song of a fountain clear in the depth of the tropic glade,
Where the bubbles sparkle clear and cool, o’er the rocks of brown and jade.
It spoke of the waters healing, which to bathe in meant joyous youth,
To the gray-haired and decrepit, with wrinkles and hollowed tooth.
And the breeze came to the ears of men, who believed it to be no lie.
So the agéd De Leon chimeras chased, in the land where he was to die."

“God’s will be done!” cried he. “Blessed be His holy name!”

"In sorrow and with downcast faces, the Spaniards turned about, and wearily, dejectedly, mournfully, wended their way back to the camp of the friendly Olatheta.

The good Knight Ponce de Leon traveled through much of this beautiful land of Florida, fought many a stiff fight with the native inhabitants, and finally sailed back to the isle of Porto Rico, bearing marvelous tales of this land of promise, but no water which would restore the aged to youth and beauty. He journeyed to Spain, was received right graciously by the King, and came back to his island home, expecting to remain there in peaceful pursuits, until his demise.

Yet, still hoping to find that mystical and fabled fountain, he finally fitted out two caravels, and, with a larger force than had followed his banner in the first expedition, resolved to again explore the western coast of beautiful Florida.

This journey was to be his undoing. At every point naked savage’s fought desperately against his mailed warriors. In one of these encounters he was attempting to rescue one of his comrades, when he was hit by an arrow in the thigh. The barb penetrated the protecting armor to the bone. He was rescued by his faithful followers and was carried to his ship, weak and fainting from the loss of blood. It is said by some, that, although the arrow was withdrawn, a part of the arrow-head, which was of flint, did not come wholly away.

Suffering and delirious, the brave old navigator was borne to the harbor of Matanzas in Cuba, where was a settlement which he, himself, had founded. His adventurous companions lifted the pallet upon which he lay on the upper deck, where the cooling breezes might alleviate his fever, lowered it into a boat, and, when the shore was reached, carried him tenderly into an unfinished house, which he was having constructed. They brought his suit of mail, his banner, and his sword, placing them around him so that he might feel at home. Delirium now seized the care-worn explorer, and thus he lay for days, as, in fancy he saw himself a boy again, climbing the bold rocks of the Sierras after young eagles, contending in the courtyard with his brothers, or chasing the brown deer in the leafy forests.

Then the camp and battle scenes passed before his eager vision; voyages over vast seas among beauteous islands; expeditions through palms and moss-grown mimosas; journeying to the villages of brown-skinned natives.

One night, peace came to the old warrior, and there was weeping and sorrow among his staunch and battle-scarred companions.

They carried the body of the good knight to the Isle of Porto Rico, where they first gave him a sepulcher within the castle, but eventually his ashes were deposited beneath the high altar of the Dominican church in San Juan de Puerto Rico, where they rested for more than three hundred years."

Famous Discoverers and Explores of America, Charles Haven Ladd Johnston, transcribed by Project Gutenberg

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Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth, Men of the West

Treasure Map

Shimmer me timbers me buckos. I had the map all along. .

Map to the location to the treasure on Treasure Island

"Fifteen men on a deadmans chest-
Yo-yo-yo and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo-yo-yo and a bottle of rum!"

When winter first begins to bite:

The wind so whirled a weathercock
He could not hold his tail up;
The frost so nipped a throstlecock
He could not snap a snail up.
‘My case is hard!’ the throstle cried,
And ‘All is vane’ the cock replied;
And so they set their wail up.

Bilbo Baggins

As found in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Tales from the Perilous Realm

Neverwhere

"Crimson the cuts in the carcass,
Fast falls the foe,
Dauntless devout defender.
Bravest of boys."

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere is a dystopian novel that takes place under the streets of London. With its host of intense, melodramatic characters it will keep transfixed.

The Goblins Song

Clap! Snap! The black crack!
Grip, grab! Pinch, nab!
And down, down to Goblin town-
You go my lad!
Clash, crash! Crush, smash!
Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!
Pound, pound, for underground!
Ho, ho! My lad!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!
Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
Work, work! Nor dare to shirk!
While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
Round and round far underground
Below my lad!

---

As it were Thorin and company unknowingly made camp on the “front porch”, of Goblin town and were taken hostage and herded to the Great Goblin.

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Images from The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey, Text from The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien-The goblins song

Breathing a lie Through Silver

“Dis graced he may be, yet is not de-throne, and keep the rags of lordship once he owned. Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly confined in living shapes that move from mind to mind.”

Myths are "lies breathed through silver."

On Fairy Stories, J. R. R. Tolkien