I’ll tell thee now (dear Love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us, How I shall stay, though she esloygne me thus And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sybil’s glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.
Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past twixt thee and me, Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love’s subliming fire invades, Rule and example found;
When you get in on a try you never learn it back umpteen times the tenth part of a featured world in black and in back it’s roses and fostered nail bite rhyme sling slang, a song that teaches without travail of the tale, the one you longing live and singing burn
It’s insane to remain a trope, of a rinsing out or a ringing whatever, it’s those bells that . . .
It was a very little while and they had gone in front of it. It was that they had liked it would it bear. It was a very much adjoined a follower. Flower of an adding where a follower. Have I come in. Will in suggestion. They may like hours in catching. It is always a pleasure to remember. Have a habit. Any name will very well wear better. All who live round about there. Have a manner. The hotel François Ier. Just winter so. It is indubitably often that she is as denied to soften help to when it is in all in midst of which in vehemence to taken given in a bestowal show than left help in double. Having noticed often that it is newly noticed which makes older often. The world has become smaller and more beautiful. The world is grown smaller and more beautiful. That is it. Yes that is it.
Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth. Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies. They carry it, they eat it, they shit it. They go through it, it goes through them. It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active. The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.
(There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.)
One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving. The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself. In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and revealed its vulnerable shape. The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.
During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness. No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals. But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly. You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.
Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds. Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.
They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants. They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves. They are hell on salads.
What are these beings from the depths of the ditches? Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving. They are in their element but they are also wanderers. And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.
It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.
Dim vales—and shadowy floods— And cloudy-looking woods, Whose forms we can’t discover For the tears that drip all over: Huge moons there wax and wane— Again—again—again— Every moment of the night— Forever changing places— And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces. About twelve by the moon-dial, One more filmy than the rest (A kind which, upon trial, They have found to be the best) Comes down—still down—and down
When you are not surprised, not surprised, nor leap in imagination from sunlight into shadow or from shadow into sunlight suiting the color of fright or delight to the bewildering circumstance when you are no longer surprised by the quiet or fury of daybreak the stormy uprush of the sun’s rage
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills! In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same; The village street its haunted mansion lacks, And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name, And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks— Are ye too changed, ye hills? See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
At supper time an ondine’s narrow feet made dark tracks on the hearth. Like the heart of a yellow fruit was the fire’s heat, but they rubbed together quite blue with the cold. The sandy hem of her skirt dripped on the floor. She sat there with a silvered cedar knot for a low stool; and I sat opposite, my lips and eyelids hot
217 Ambition was my idol, which was broken Before the shrines of Sorrow and of Pleasure; And the two last have left me many a token O'er which reflection may be made at leisure: Now, like Friar Bacon's brazen head, I've spoken, 'Time is, Time was, Time's past', a chymic treasure Is glittering youth, which I have spent betimes— My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.
Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned, Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring; And laughing Joy, with wild flowers prank'd, and crown'd, A wild and giddy thing, And Health robust, from every care unbound, Come on the zephyr's wing, And cheer the toiling clown.
My voice, not being proud Like a strong woman’s, that cries Imperiously aloud That death disarm her, lull her— Screams for no mourning color Laid menacingly, like fire, Over my long desire. It will end, and leave no print.
And an orator said, Speak to us of Free- dom. And he answered: At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays
What are you going to do With what is left of yourself Now among the rustling Of your maybe best years? This is not an auto-elegy With me pouring my heart Out into where you Differently stand or sit
Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest; Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain, And virtue sank the deeper in his breast; Such profit he by envy could obtain.
A head where wisdom mysteries did frame, Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain As on a stithy where that some work of fame
(from A Midsummer Night's Dream, spoken by Bottom)
When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is “Most fair Pyramus.” Heigh-ho! Peter Quince?
Flute the bellows-mender? Snout the tinker? Starveling? God’s my life, stol'n hence, and left me asleep?
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what.
Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom. And I will sing it in the latter end of a play before the duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.
I He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah.
I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise.
Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one’s fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea.
We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth.
A man of humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel, but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah.II The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship comes when one is alone.
I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other are foes.
It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby, “Feed me!” What is the use of saying that men are stones when I know I am going to try to turn them into bread.
I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep my miserable wallet. If he says he has any goodness in him, I avoid him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock or betray us in any moment of self-esteem.
I have no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me, for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity.
Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not knowing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned upon me, for I shall never know who I am if I am not loved.
V Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver, for it is the spirit that dies soonest.
Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto’s soldiers could not ford.
Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it.
There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory; go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard for the preservation of your soul.
People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes anywhere. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying.
There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.
God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is friendship, I mistrust every mortal.
Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin which is my daily bread.
Colin, why this mistake? Why plead thy foolish love? My heart shall sooner break Than I a minion prove; Nor care I half a rush, No snare I spread for thee: Go home, my friend, and blush For love and liberty.
My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those
I need more time, a simple day in Paris hotels and window shopping. The croissants will not bake themselves and the Tower of London would Like to spend a night in the tropics with gray sassy paint. It has many Wounds and historic serial dreams under contract to Hollywood. Who will play the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, and who will braid her
Hair? Was it she who left her lips on the block for the executioner, Whose hands would never find ablution, who would never touch a woman Again or eat the flesh of a red animal? Blood pudding would repulse him Until joining Anne. That is the way of history written for Marlow and Shakespear. They are with us now that we are sober and wiser,
Not taking the horrors of poetry too seriously. Why am I telling you this Nonsense, when I have never seen you sip your coffee or tea, In the morning? Not to mention,
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