--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

collections and the bibliographic data here given are as complete as possible. Where dates, publishers,

--- QUOTES [1 / 1 - 495 / 495] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

KEYS (10k)

   1 Owen Barfield

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   15 Anonymous

   11 Charles Dickens

   7 Nick Hornby

   7 Marie Kond

   6 Marcel Proust

   6 Charlotte Bront

   5 Washington Irving

   5 Thomas Jefferson

   5 Joan Didion

   5 Jane Austen

   4 Terry Pratchett

   4 Charles Darwin

   4 Brian Greene

   4 Alexandre Dumas

   3 Steven Erikson

   3 Stephen Hawking

   3 Sonia Rykiel

   3 Mira Bartok

   3 Jodi Picoult

   3 Dean Koontz

   3 Cheryl Strayed

   3 Alexander McQueen

   2 Zora Neale Hurston

   2 William McCants

   2 Vladimir Nabokov

   2 Tom Peters

   2 Ta Nehisi Coates

   2 Tamara Mellon

   2 Sigmund Freud

   2 Roy Kesey

   2 Richard Fortey

   2 Rebecca Solnit

   2 Ralph Waldo Emerson

   2 Raf Simons

   2 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   2 Neil Gaiman

   2 Mikhail Tal

   2 Michelle Obama

   2 Michael Ignatieff

   2 Michael Cunningham

   2 Michael Chabon

   2 Logan Pearsall Smith
   2 Leo Tolstoy

   2 Lauren Slater

   2 Kay Redfield Jamison

   2 Karl Lagerfeld

   2 Jos Saramago

   2 Joshua Foer

   2 John Piper

   2 John Mellencamp

   2 John Locke

   2 Hermann Hesse

   2 George Eliot

   2 George Carlin

   2 Frederick Lenz

   2 Emilie Barnes

   2 Elizabeth Speller

   2 Edith Nesbit

   2 Daniel Alarc n

   2 Colleen Hoover

   2 Charles Lamb

   2 Carl Sagan

   2 Azzedine Alaia

   2 Ashley Purdy

   2 Anthony Doerr

   2 Adrienne Rich

1:"She" How shall I welcome not this light Or, wakened by it, greet with doubt This beam as palpable to sight As visible to touch? How not, Old as I am and (some say) wise, Revive beneath her summer eyes? How not have all my nights and days, My spirit ranging far and wide, By recollections of her grace Enlightened and preoccupied? Preoccupied: the Morning Star How near the Sun and yet how far! Enlightened: true, but more than true, Or why must I discover there The meaning in this taintless dew, The dancing wave, this blessed air Enchanting in its morning dress And calm as everlastingness? The flame that in the heart resides Is parcel of that central Fire Whose energy is winds and tides- Is rooted deep in the Desire That smilingly unseals its power Each summer in each springing flower. Oh Lady Nature-Proserpine, Mistress of Gender, star-crowned Queen! Ah Rose of Sharon-Mistress mine, My teacher ere I turned fourteen, When first I hallowed from afar Your Beautyship in avatar! I sense the hidden thing you say, Your subtle whisper how the Word From Alpha on to Omega Made all things-you confide my Lord Himself-all, all this potent Frame, All save the riddle of your name. Wisdom! I heard a voice that said: "What riddle? What is that to you? How! By my follower betrayed! Look up-for shame! Now tell me true: Where meet you light, with love and grace? Still unacquainted with my face?" Dear God, the erring heart must live- Through strength and weakness, calm and glow- That answer Wisdom scorns to give. Much have I learned. One problem, though, I never shall unlock: Who then, Who made Sophia feminine? ~ Owen Barfield, 1978 ,

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:customize where your collections ~ Anonymous

2:The key to my collections is sensuality. ~ Sonia Rykiel

3:I don't believe in doing collections anymore. ~ Tamara Mellon

4:Cloud Collections: As your library grows, use Cloud ~ Anonymous

5:The monotony stirs many bitter recollections ~ Murasaki Shikibu

6:On my birthday, I was in Milan for the collections. ~ Eva Herzigova

7:Wishes are recollections coming from the future. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

8:I love collections of things, but always in moderation. ~ Sandy Gallin

9:Always my collections are made of different influences. ~ Jean Paul Gaultier

10:The people made their recollections fit in with their sufferings ~ Thucydides

11:Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue. ~ Karl Lagerfeld

12:I'm not a builder of buildings, I'm a builder of collections. ~ Leonard Lauder

13:Isn't it fortunate how selective our recollections usually are. ~ Malcolm Forbes

14:People with large book collections are almost always diligent learners. ~ Marie Kond

15:It is to live twice when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life. ~ Martial

16:Your true assets are the collections of your quality moments on the earth. ~ Amit Ray

17:We are just collections of DNA optimized for particular places and times. ~ Project Itoh

18:Her abstinence from her recollections had been a matter of survival. ~ Robert James Waller

19:Larger school library collections and longer hours increase circulation. ~ Stephen D Krashen

20:Films are collections of dead pictures which are given artificial insemination. ~ Jim Morrison

21:Time and experience have a funny way of altering one’s recollections of the past. ~ Wendy Webb

22:I am a completely different person when I am working on different collections. ~ Karl Lagerfeld

23:From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. ~ Washington Irving

24:He lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul. ~ Dean Koontz

25:I go over many games collections and pick up something from the style of each player. ~ Mikhail Tal

26:Organizations are communities of human beings, not collections of human resources ~ Henry Mintzberg

27:When someone close to you dies, the memories and recollections of them are painful. ~ Colleen Hoover

28:I have collections of quirky things from places I've been to, like a set of Russian dolls. ~ Emma Watson

29:Raindrops pried out of metal claw settings, their collections unfitted and released into light. ~ JSA Lowe

30:I suppose we all have our recollections of our earlier holidays, all bristling with horror. ~ Flann O Brien

31:Recollections are in the eye of the beholder. No two held side by side can ever quite match. ~ Jodi Picoult

32:Recollections are in the eye of the beholder; no two held up side by side will ever quite match. ~ Jodi Picoult

33:Collections of books and other documents, either printed or electronic, are a form of congregation. ~ Tom Peters

34:I've got quite a varied iTunes, and I like to raid people's CD collections and take on their music. ~ Oliver Sim

35:We have also begun taking up collections for the tip jar when picketing a coffee shop or restaurant. ~ Anonymous

36:I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy ... fruits, vegetables, politics, or peacocks! ~ Lilly Pulitzer

37:Omri and Patrick had spent many hours together playing with their joint collections of plastic toys. ~ Lynne Reid Banks

38:Memory is a great deceiver, grief and longing cloud the past, and recollections, even vivid ones, fade. ~ Daniel Alarc n

39:Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us. ~ John Deacon

40:Collections do not leave the collector unaffected. The art of collecting results in a certain turn of mind. ~ Douglas Wilson

41:My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. ~ Charles Darwin

42:How dispensable are most people in our lives, collections of matter filling empty space until they’re recycled. ~ Teddy Wayne

43:C’est le malheur des êtres de n’être pour nous que des planches de collections fort usables dans notre pensée. ~ Marcel Proust

44:Some writers keep a tighter rein on that than others. For short story collections I'm definitely in the loose-rein camp. ~ Roy Kesey

45:The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons. ~ David Sedaris

46:There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who alphabetize their record collections, and the kind who don't. ~ Sarah Vowell

47:It is the tragedy of other people that they are merely showcases for the very perishable collections of one's own mind. ~ Marcel Proust

48:General (books you read for pleasure) Practical (references, cookbooks, etc.) Visual (photograph collections, etc.) Magazines ~ Marie Kond

49:It is the tragedy of other people that they are to us merely showcases for the very perishable collections of our own mind. ~ Marcel Proust

50:Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. ~ Alexander McQueen

51:Everybody had within himself a secret room, it seemed to him, where memories and recollections were all jumbled up together. ~ Henning Mankell

52:It's important for young women and men coming out of the fashion schools to think seriously before starting their own collections. ~ Anna Wintour

53:I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. ~ Charles Lamb

54:Sometimes I’d go to his house. If I had some cool cards in my pack of Iceberg Updates, we’d compare collections, maybe swap a few. ~ China Mi ville

55:In fact, research has shown that the memories associated with smell are the most powerful, vivid, and emotional of all our recollections ~ Anonymous

56:My collections are a reflection of my personal style and interests. All the textiles, fabrics and patterns are of my personal choice. ~ Ashley Purdy

57:I am proud that my collections have received such praise, and I am even more proud to share the stage with so many talented designers. ~ Nicole Richie

58:You don't need money to look fabulous. There are so many awesome new designers, so many designers doing collections for mass retailers. ~ Stacy London

59:I was thinking of writing a little foreword saying that history is, after all, based on people's recollections, which change with time. ~ Frederik Pohl

60:For pleasure you can read the games collections of Andersson and Chigorin, but for benefit you should study Tarrasch, Keres and Bronstein. ~ Mikhail Tal

61:In other words, that works of history are mere collections of facts. It is fiction alone that can show us the true nature of human beings ~ Daisaku Ikeda

62:A man is all the people he has been. Some recollections never die. They lie in one's subconscious, squirreled away, biding their time. ~ William Manchester

63:I am not interested in recollections of the past," said Vikram, holding my gaze. "I have a future now. There's nothing sweeter than that. ~ Roshani Chokshi

64:I'm working 24 hours a day. I have had a house in Tunisia for 20 years, and I never have time to go because there are collections, fittings. ~ Azzedine Alaia

65:We humans are different - our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling. ~ Mira Bartok

66:I don't want the collections to look like a potpourri. It has to have a cohesive idea, and it has to be glamorous and beautiful and fit well. ~ Carolina Herrera

67:Libraries and museums owe their richest collections to people who cannot bear to think that their names might perish from the memory of the race. ~ Dale Carnegie

68:We humans are different--our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them. Our recollections change in their retelling. ~ Mira Bartok

69:Among all my recollections, among all the numberless sensations of my life, the memory of the lone murder I had committed weighed heaviest on my mind. ~ Gaito Gazdanov

70:I think the erotic is very spiritual, and I never see that spiritual dimension when you look at collections of erotica. That's always missing for me. ~ Sandra Cisneros

71:[Riccardo Tisci ] has an interesting approach to weaving the contemporary with the couture, and blending tribes and collections. It always seems to work. ~ Erykah Badu

72:Improved memory made possible the long-term recollection of dreams and visions and the construction of those recollections into a spirit world. ~ James David Lewis Williams

73:Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

74:What I do is look at ancient African tribes, and the way they dress. The rituals of how they dress. . . . There's a lot of tribalism in the collections. ~ Alexander McQueen

75:The present fashion system is too hard - there are too many collections. The designers have no time to think! Money is too important. Schedules are too crazy. ~ Azzedine Alaia

76:While I enjoy and have enjoyed great success building my own personal apparel and accessories collections, my greatest passion has and will always be real estate. ~ Ivanka Trump

77:Many merry Christmases, many happy New Years. Unbroken friendships, great accumulations of cheerful recollections and affections on earth, and heaven for us all. ~ Charles Dickens

78:My main intention was to not only create collections that defined myself and style, but to also create things that my fans identify with me and feel a belonging to. ~ Ashley Purdy

79:But I’d worked in IT long enough to know: Hope is a terrible survival trait. My methods were data collection, comparisons of probabilities, and collections of “what if. ~ Anonymous

80:One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one's recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts. ~ Edgar Degas

81:Just as a chariot is verbalized, in dependence on collections of parts, so conventionally a sentient being, is set up depending on the mental and physical aggregates ~ Gautama Buddha

82:IN trying to recall my impressions during my short war duty as an officer in the Austrian Army, I find that my recollections of this period are very uneven and confused ~ Fritz Kreisler

83:It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul. ~ Sofia Kovalevskaya, "Sónya Kovalévsky: Her Recollections of Childhood", translated by Isabel F. Hapgood (1895), 316.

84:Most teams aren't teams at all but merely collections of individual relationships with the boss. Each individual vying with the others for power, prestige and position. ~ Douglas McGregor

85:I'm really into rocks. I have a really serious rock collection. Rocks and feathers and shells and strange found things in nature. I have a lot of those kinds of collections. ~ Brit Marling

86:I have a lot of different collections of cards at home. It's hard to say my favorite deck, but there is a deck called the medicine cards, and it's Native American animal cards. ~ Valerie June

87:The Metropolitan Museum has all of our collections online, all our scholarly publications and catalogues since 1965. We have online features like the timeline of art history. ~ Thomas P Campbell

88:as the most stupendous objects in nature are but vast collections of minute particles, so the slightest and least considered trifles make up the sum of human happiness or misery. ~ Charles Dickens

89:Recollections of early childhood bear comparison to fairy tales, and ... youth remains an unknown country to whose bourn no traveler returns except as the agent of a foreign power. ~ Lewis H Lapham

90:I ask my clients to divide them into four broad categories: General (books you read for pleasure) Practical (references, cookbooks, etc.) Visual (photograph collections, etc.) Magazines ~ Marie Kond

91:My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom. ~ George Washington

92:Museums do not share their collections with other museums unless they get something in exchange. The Metropolitan will deal with the Louvre, but will they send their stuff to Memphis? No. ~ Eli Broad

93:If we give up on having library collections (digital or otherwise) and outsource access to and preservation of knowledge to corporations, we will have neither access nor preservation. ~ Barbara Fister

94:People who have car collections - I never understood that. I always thought that was unnecessary. It's not beautiful, it's not creative. It's just showing how much money you've got. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

95:There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities. ~ Agnes Repplier

96:(Most of these seemingly collected by Keith’s mother: “Some of the pleasantest recollections of my boyhood are of fried jackrabbit, baked jackrabbit, jackrabbit stew, and jackrabbit pie.”) ~ Mary Roach

97:We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean’s bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. ~ Joan Didion

98:Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force. ~ Bayard Taylor

99:Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners ~ Isaac D Israeli

100:It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party. ~ Nick Hornby

101:This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. ~ Thomas B Macaulay

102:It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favourite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party. ~ Nick Hornby

103:We have not been created out of nothing, but from primeval "ur-matter," atoms formed billions of years ago that have for a brief while been gathered into collections that think they are us. ~ Frank Close

104:What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the ~ Emma Goldman

105:I wanted to work in the arts. My dream come true would be to be an architectural historian and work with the royal palaces and all the fabulous art collections. But I'm not committed enough. ~ Jaye Davidson

106:named his recollections of Ántonia “My Ántonia” not to show romantic possession, but because he understood that his Ántonia was only one version of her and, at least partially, his creation. ~ Kelly Corrigan

107:After all these years of creating my collections, I still doubt my decision even until the last minute before the fashion show, I keep questioning myself and wondering if I did the right thing. ~ Sonia Rykiel

108:One of those small but sharp recollections that return, lacerating your self-respect like tiny penknives, and forcing from your lips, as you sit alone, sudden, insane-sounding interjections. ~ Charlotte Bront

109:During those years the past life recollections began. Psychic powers developed, my meditation increased and I found myself changing, over and over again, becoming someone new almost every day. ~ Frederick Lenz

110:The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority. ~ Tom Stoppard

111:Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through. ~ Sylvia Plath

112:I realized the importance of archiving. So I save key pieces from my collections, as well as any red-carpet things that become iconic. I always ask for that stuff back. I'm like, "It's going in my archives." ~ Jason Wu

113:We are collections of things that we find and experience and value and keep inside ourselves, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, and that collection of things is what we finally become. ~ Gregory David Roberts

114:It goes on and on, and finally there are only others’ recollections of your behavior—your bizarre, frenetic, aimless behaviors—for mania has at least some grace in partially obliterating memories. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

115:The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased. ~ John Mellencamp

116:The painter... will find [photography] a rapid way of making collections of studies he could otherwise obtain only with much time and trouble and, whatever his talents might be, in a far less perfect manner. ~ Paul Delaroche

117:The war drops its question mark. Memos are distributed. The collections must be protected. A small cadre of couriers has begun moving things to country estates. Locks and keys are in greater demand than ever. ~ Anthony Doerr

118:I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections. ~ William Wordsworth

119:Why don't I like crowds? I suppose the worst possible thing I could say is that I don't like people, and that crowds are just collections of people. That seems like a very nihilistic way to look at the world. ~ Chuck Klosterman

120:We recognized the face he was wearing as a mask from our own collections. The happy mask we carry in our back pockets, and like bank robbers whip out when we want to steal some privacy or make an emotional getaway. ~ Paul Beatty

121:[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book. ~ Louise Erdrich

122:Just the idea that we, these little collections of atoms and molecules, are part of the world, but a part that can look at the rest of the world and figure it out in a self-referential way, is kind of breathtaking. ~ Sean M Carroll

123:I may not write new wisdoms nor new ideas. I write things which are about to happen in the future, things which might be lost from memories of mankind, things which stored forever in recollections of all beings. ~ Toba Beta

124:rooms full of sheepskin rugs and life-size cement sheep that I recognized as the work of Medusa. There were collections of sheep T-shirts; large tubs of lanolin cream; and wooly coats, socks, and hats with ram’s horns. ~ Rick Riordan

125:It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood. . . . ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

126:It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

127:When I was younger, I had no interest. But after I went to Paris to see the collections for the first time a few years ago, they made a huge impression on me. I realized that fashion is an art form, like acting or painting. ~ Camilla Belle

128:I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

129:There are endless planes of attention, endless realities and endless mind states. They're like collections of atoms and protons and neutrons, nuclei. They just go on forever. They're plasma, they're fluid ... they're alive. ~ Frederick Lenz

130:My recollections of Armenia open new visions for me. My art is therefore a growth art where forms, pines, shapes, memories of Armenia germinate, breathe, expand and contract, multiply and thereby create new paths for exploration. ~ Arshile Gorky

131:Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain ~ Charles Dickens

132:Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain. ~ Charles Dickens

133:the truth was that these things matter, and it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party. ~ Nick Hornby

134:When social forces press for the rejection of age-old Truth, then those who reject it will seek meaning in their own truth. These truths will rarely be Truth at all; they will be only collections of personal preferences and prejudices. ~ Dean Koontz

135:I don't really have a domestic inclination. Even my apartment has a semblance of a storage facility. It's just stacks, there are no bookshelves, just books and piles of stamp collections and weird little sewing and knitting projects. ~ Sufjan Stevens

136:Lots of things are not possible for municipalities, suburbs, or collections of them now. They are not possible and they would become possible, because they would have more authority. They would have the same authority as a province now. ~ Jane Jacobs

137:Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections. ~ Jane Austen

138:I don't know if that's new, but it has become very official over the past 25 or 30 years - and today it's probably at its most extreme point, where sometimes collections look more like a stylist's work than a designer's signature. ~ Nicolas Ghesquiere

139:I was kind of sweet kid, according my mother, and my recollections. Thoughtful and good, but kind of alone - although I didn't interpret it that way, as such. Children never interpret these things. They think they understand logically. ~ George Carlin

140:He likes to know things. He checks out book and record collections when he visits people, looks in medicine cabinets, takes inventory in refrigerators. He eaves drops on conversations at public phone booths. He reads murder victims' mail. ~ John Sayles

141:Depending on the season, between 20 and 30 percent of my collections contain some sort of eco or sustainable element, whether it's a beautiful organic fabric or a natural dye. And obviously I don't use animal skins or fur of any kind. ~ Stella McCartney

142:Freedom. It isn't once, to walk out under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers of light, the fields of dark--freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine remembering. Putting together inch by inch the starry worlds. From all the lost collections. ~ Adrienne Rich

143:Most of us have collections of sayings we live by. . . . Whenever words fly up at me from the printed page as I read, I intercept them instantly, knowing they are for me. I turn them over carefully in my mind and cling to them hard. ~ Ray Stannard Baker

144:My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you're really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces - trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work. ~ George Saunders

145:My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. ~ Charles Darwin

146:It was odd how often this happened, Ginger and Mimi retaining different slivers of family memory. It was almost as if the recollections had been split down the middle and doled out: you get this, I get that, so no one would be privy to it all. ~ Nancy Star

147:Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego’s display, part of the grandiose quality of ego. We display them to the world and, in so doing, reassure ourselves that we exist, safe and secure, as “spiritual” people. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa

148:His mother was a good and fearful Lutheran, who gave away both time and money, visiting hospitals for the poor, organising bazaars and clothing collections. But she ate from Meissen porcelain with silver spoons. There were hideous inconsistencies. ~ A S Byatt

149:Where a love of natural beauty has been cultivated, all nature becomes a stupendous gallery, as much superior in form and in coloring to the choicest collections of human art, as the heavens are broader and loftier than the Louvre or the Vatican. ~ Horace Mann

150:Angels? These words registered when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher. ~ Eben Alexander

151:Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues. But the example of other collections should be a warning to us to diversify, to have not one woman only but several. ~ Marcel Proust

152:I had a great time investigating the pigments of different mutant fruit flies by following experimental protocols published in Scientific American, and I also remember making my own beetle collection when it was still acceptable to make such collections. ~ Paul Nurse

153:Our culture takes us out of the body and sells our loyalty into political systems, into religions, into inanimate objects and machines, collections, so forth and so on. The felt experience of the body is what the psychedelics are handing back to us. ~ Terence McKenna

154:On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago. ~ Norman Mailer

155:Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place. ~ Alexandre Dumas

156:The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand. If someone wants to place the word 'God' on those collections of words, it's OK with me. ~ Brian Greene

157:Prints can absolutely be investment pieces. I've seen prints from my collections from five years ago on the street now. It's totally possible. If the colors don't age and if the fabric is beautiful, then of course people should wear it year after year. ~ Thakoon Panichgul

158:Children see in their parents the past, their parents see in them the future; and if we find more love in the parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad but natural. Who does not entertain his hopes more than his recollections. ~ John Ruskin

159:Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life. ~ Michael Ignatieff

160:Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life. ~ Michael Ignatieff

161:From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don’t look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity. ~ Flannery O Connor

162:I think that with piracy and tighter funds being around, people are realising that the game to play is to try and win people's respect with bold film making and then win a special place in people's collections, rather than just having the biggest opening weekends. ~ Riz Ahmed

163:I read individual stories a lot in magazines and other places, too, but I really think there's something to be said for reading story collections as collections. That's not true of all story collections, to be honest, but for good ones I think it often is true. ~ Brian Evenson

164:A lot of my friends have been collectors, and I owe a lot to them. I'm always interested in sharing collections and learning that way. I used to trade tapes a lot. I still have a few friends who I trade music with, but it's hard to find the time. I miss that. ~ Michael Dumontier

165:I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. ~ Charlotte Bront

166:Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

167:No Memory happens in the past. To say this in so many words is, no doubt, to state the obvious - our memories happen now, in the madeleine- and tisane-tinctured present - but it strikes me as peculiar, still, that my recollections have so little to do with historical time. ~ John Burnside

168:Because you have very limited time and you have to be very judicious and wise about how you spend it. But otherwise, I've always been - ever since I was a kid, I've always been coming up with ideas. So I'm able to come up with crazy ideas twice for two collections! It's fun. ~ Prabal Gurung

169:So, ask the travelled inhabitant of any nation, in what country on earth would you rather live? — Certainly, in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? France. ~ Thomas Jefferson

170:The possibility of attaining harmony in communication applies to large collections of people, such as nations, governments, and even to political parties, as well as to individuals, once they realize the price of treating the other as the enemy, and therefore less than human. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn

171:Better far off to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often again; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections. ~ Augustus Hare

172:I've been writing an ongoing letter to my children since they were born, full of recollections of their childhoods. I've filled two journals. It's a great thing to do as a mother - you forget a lot as you go along, but reading over what you've written brings all the memories back. ~ Tory Burch

173:Suddenly she wants to fall to her knees and pray for the poets. She imagines them with immaculate ravaged faces, with necklaces of ransacked moons, with teeth which are black stubs. Poets are collections of unused crescents and bandages, confused images and terrible departing. ~ Kate Braverman

174:The association of Mount Ararat and Noah, the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections over fifty years for alleviating their miseries-all cumulate to impress the name Armenia on the front of the American mind. ~ Herbert Hoover

175:Don't try to impress God with your works" or "Don't attempt to please God with your merits" or "Don't try to keep the rules and regulations in order to earn your salvation." He looked around at nearly slumbering collections of utterly casual Christians and wondered, "Who's trying? ~ Martin E Marty

176:It is possible that, in fact, Trump's call for "America First" (despite evoking unpleasant recollections that such a phrase was the invention of those in the 1930s harboring fascist sympathies) and a positive relationship with Russia, might lead [to] a more relaxed global setting. ~ Richard A Falk

177:Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there's no room for fault. But I don't expect to turn things around all by myself. I'm not a saint. ~ Alexander McQueen

178:What about the university library?” “Um, yeah,” Annabelle said, “and we probably shouldn’t show our faces there anytime soon. Arriane destroyed several very valuable parchment scrolls in their Special Collections-“ “Hey,” Arriane snapped, indignant. “I glued them back together! ~ Lauren Kate

179:Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room. ~ Mary McCarthy

180:I also know that parents have discretionary recall, blocking out everything that contradicts our carefully edited recollections - an understandable attempt to dodge blame. Conversely, children often fixate on the indelibly painful memories, because they have made a stronger impression ~ David Sheff

181:Going to the Huntington gardens and libraries was radically important for me. They have one of the best collections of 18th- and 19th-century British portraiture that you can imagine in Southern California. One doesn't think about Southern California as being the capital of great art. ~ Kehinde Wiley

182:I always appreciate when people save, and more importantly, share. As we speak, there are people in this world - mostly men - who have giant collections of recordings that no one will ever hear. And the value of that collection is almost defined by the fact that nobody else can hear it. ~ Ian MacKaye

183:All Librarians are members of the Catalogue. That's what you call a coven when it's made up of Librarians instead of witches. Librarians have sorted and alphabetized all the magic that ever thought to put a rabbit and a hat together. Who do you think invented Special Collections? ~ Catherynne M Valente

184:I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it. ~ Julianna Baggott

185:Every now and then he used to give us counsels of this sort, which might have been relevant to his childhood, but were not to ours, and I think, from my recollections of his bearing at such moments, that he then felt pride because for once he was properly discharging his duties as a father. ~ Rebecca West

186:Jeffrey Makala, the friendly and astute rare-books and special collections librarian who will be my guide, confirms my opinion that librarians, along with independent-bookstore owners and dedicated middle- and high-school teachers, are the most selfless guardians of literature on earth. ~ Maureen Corrigan

187:Fearless faith results from holding on to Christ as our treasure. Gospel courage comes from gospel preciousness. If we truly believed that our reward in heaven far surpasses all the comfort and convenience and collections of the world, we, too, would be willing to consider them all as loss. ~ Matt Chandler

188:He began again with poetry—Os poemas possíveis (Possible Poems) and Provavelmente alegria (Joy Probably)—then wrote O ano de 1993 (The Year of 1993), which is already on its way to becoming a narrative, followed by two collections of his newspaper articles, which are also fictions in embryo. ~ Jos Saramago

189:Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. ~ Daniel O Connell

190:I remember the first time I saw a CD, a technology guy brought one to my house and said we will be able to sell millions and millions of players, and people will have to restock their record collections. It was all about money. It was all about how much money we would make, "we" being "him." ~ John Mellencamp

191:I work in my study, taking the collections of words that people send me and making small adjustments to them, changing something here and there, checking everything is in order and putting a part of myself into the text by introducing just a little bit of difference. ("Substitutions") ~ Michael Marshall Smith

192:The customer moved on long before the industry reacted to what she wanted. She doesn't want to buy things four months in advance, she wants to buy something today and wear it tomorrow. She cares less about seasons and collections and really what she's looking for is price, quality, and convenience. ~ Tamara Mellon

193:There was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party. ~ Nick Hornby

194:Allow me to give you some advice from the heart: don’t give up art, and even give yourself over to it even more than so far. […] Living in solitude and embittering your soul with recollections, you can make your life very gloomy. There is a single refuge, a single medicine: art and creative work. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

195:...with a mind so occupied, she might have forgotten where she was. Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections. ~ Jane Austen

196:The dream shows how recollections of one’s everyday life can be worked into a structure where one person can be substituted for another, where unacknowledged feelings like envy and guilt can find expression, where ideas can be linked by verbal similarities, and where the laws of logic can be suspended. ~ Sigmund Freud

197:'Twas not an Age ago since most of our Books were nothing but Collections of Latin Quotations; there was not above a line or two of French in a Page. ~ Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter XV. Of the Pulpit; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 653-54.

198:Can we account for instinct?' said Monte Cristo. 'Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place. ~ Alexandre Dumas

199:But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party. ~ Nick Hornby

200:It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world." -Zora Neale Hurston ~ Zora Neale Hurston

201:Muhammad sets the model for being a good statesman. He also sets the model for being a good warrior, for chivalry, of nobility, of all the things which the Quran and Hadith [The recorded collections of the sayings and traditions of the Prophet] says of treating your enemy with dignity and kindness. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

202:The goal is to reverse the first law of entrepreneurial gravity and develop a viable business model in which the faster you grow, the more cash you generate — through larger deposits, faster collections, shorter sales and delivery cycles, etc. Then you’ve built a company that can self-fund its own growth. ~ Verne Harnish

203:Thomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France. ~ Thomas Jefferson

204:Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men. ~ Thomas Jefferson

205:What thousands and millions of recollections there must be in us! And every now and then one of them becomes known to us; and it shows us what spiritual depths are growing in us, what mines of memory. ~ William Mountford, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, p. 407.

206:The bookshelves were lined with Joan Didion and Flannery O'Connor, a small, unexpected collection of musicalia, essay collections on Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. There was a framed poster of an exhibit of romantic landscape paintings in Dresden. Intellectuals had their own thing going, that was for sure. ~ Gary Shteyngart

207:What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space - and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time. ~ Samuel Lover

208:This is why she doesn’t put much stock in so-called secrets, or the meaningfulness of untold recollections that become, in their airtight echo chambers, the supposed stuff of secrets. They are only a way to become retrospectively enraged at someone else so that your own adult weaknesses can be tidily excused. ~ Heidi Julavits

209:I have lost my friends," D'Artagnan said ruefully, burying his head in his hands. "I have nothing left but the bitterest of recollections..." Two large tears rolled down his cheeks. "You are young," Athos answered. "Your bitter recollections have the time requisite to change into the happiest of memories. ~ Alexandre Dumas

210:The most recent of the iamides, heavily advertised - authentium. Creates synthetic recollections of things that never happened. A few grams of dantine, for instance, and a man goes around with a deep conviction that he has written The Divine Comedy. Why anyone would want that is another matter and quite beyond me. ~ Stanis aw Lem

211:There was the honour and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within - and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums. ~ Lydia Millet

212:For me accessories create and define a woman's personal style. The bag she carries, the watch on her wrist, her jewelry, her sunglasses, her shoes all define a look that is her signature. For Spring 2014, my accessory collections are about a clean, graphic boldness creating a new dimension redefining modern classics. ~ Ralph Lauren

213:The wisdom in publishing is that short-story collections don’t sell. All too often short-story collections are viewed as vanity projects or are published by small presses, are not seen as real in the way that novels are real. Still, for me, the short stories are the places where I get to fly, to experiment, to play. I ~ Neil Gaiman

214:Memories are like a still life painted by ten different student artists: some will be blue-based; others red; some will be as stark as Picasso and others as rich as Rembrandt; some will be foreshortened and others distant. Recollections are in the eye of the beholder; no two held up side by side will ever quite match. ~ Jodi Picoult

215:(Grof did extensive research trying to correlate his patients’ recollections of their birth experience on LSD with contemporaneous reports from medical personnel and parents. He concluded that with the help of LSD many people can indeed recall the circumstances of their birth, especially when it was a difficult one.) ~ Michael Pollan

216:When someone close to you dies, the memories and recollections of them are painful. It isn't until the fifth stage of grief that the memories of them stop hurting as much; when the recollections become positive. When you stop thinking about the person's death, and remember all of the wonderful things about their life. ~ Colleen Hoover

217:He would roam about the world carrying his recollections with him, and perhaps some day he would come to forget them, for one can live only by forgetting; but when his grief should dissolve with the years he would be left an empty man, like a smiling automaton, incapable of any affections other than meterial ones. ~ Vicente Blasco Ib ez

218:I only do what I do. For me, it is a craft. It's got to be my own thing - otherwise, I would never be successful. I could easily go to the archives and pull 1987 or 1991 collection by Calvin Klein. But when you look in there, you realize that it was never about one piece. It was about the collections as bodies of work. ~ Francisco Costa

219:I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for that past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its place remains, but it all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections are still left, and gratitude; but... ~ Leo Tolstoy

220:...she ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularise, mentioned such works by our best moralists, such collections of fine letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind. ~ Jane Austen

221:Thus does the beginner, who has acquired a new language, keep on translating it back into his own mother tongue; only then has he grasped the spirit of the new language and is able freely to express himself therewith when he moves in it without recollections of the old, and has forgotten in its use his own hereditary tongue. ~ Karl Marx

222:And at the end of all this, the fact that we humans, who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature, have been able to come to an understanding of the laws governing us, and our universe, is a great triumph. I want to share my excitement about these big questions and my enthusiasm about this quest. ~ Stephen Hawking

223:I was tired of doing collections, tired of doing runway shows... there was just so much wasted time and energy doing all the runway product and all the filler product. We also decided not to do wholesale, which gives me a lot of freedom; I can basically do what I want and I don't need to fit into any department in a store. ~ Johan Lindeberg

224:When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge which they may apply usefully for their country; but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret; their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects; and they learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return home. —Thomas Jefferson ~ Stacy Schiff

225:They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by. They were, I think, a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a duprass, which is a karass composed of only two persons. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

226:My own show with Sterling Ruby, for example, seems like such a huge disconnection from Dior couture, but then I think, yeah, in both collections there was a very strong focus on the human hand and the actual work of people making garments. So in that sense, they were completely related. But I didn't realize that during the process. ~ Raf Simons

227:Sail the Lost Sea America’s largest underground lake is tucked away beneath Tennessee, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. After you tour the caves 140 feet belowground, hop into a glass-bottom boat to float across the Lost Sea and spot large collections of wild-looking cave formations and 20,000-year-old jaguar tracks. ~ Anonymous

228:We know story collections end when they end, as well - the pages serving as a countdown - but nevertheless the standard story anthology hews closer to what makes being human so hard: it reminds you with each story how quickly everything we are, everything we call our lives can change, can be upended, can disappear. Never to return. ~ Junot Diaz

229:Way back in 1989, I got lucky with my first published story when it was selected for the Journey Prize anthology. Then I got lucky three more times. It is astounding to see how many writers published in the anthology have gone on to publish great story collections and novels. The anthology is a windfall for both writer and reader. ~ David Bergen

230:He would wake to see the towers and minarets printed on the exhausted, dust-powdered sky, and see as if en montage on them the giant footprints of the historical memory which lies behind the recollections of individual personality, its mentor and guide: indeed its inventor, since man is only an extension of the spirit of place. ~ Lawrence Durrell

231:It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure. ~ Charlotte Bront

232:The freedom I give myself for the business is in deciding to take part in the Paris collections, but also having other retail strategies that are unlike anybody else's. Not necessarily going into malls, doing the business my own way - having different brands to cover different concepts, to be able to have the cash flow to carry on. ~ Rei Kawakubo

233:Books were rare,expensive, time-consuming to create and copy, and difficult to transport. That is why collections ofprint-based books developed around centers of religious belief, learning, and wealth. It was cheaper andeasier for people to come to the collection than for the collection, or parts of the collection, to go to thepeople. ~ Tom Peters

234:I find it inordinately hard to speak about my other brother. He is a mere shadow in the background of my richest and most detailed recollections. It is one of those lives that hopelessly claim a belated something--compassion, understanding, no matter what--which the mere recognition of such a want can neither replace nor redeem. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

235:There is usually a moment in the life of a new president when he begins to see himself not as an aspirant desperate to win but as a statesman above the squalor and sweat of actual vote getting. Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of the stables; dignitaries dislike recollections of the dust through which they have come. ~ Jon Meacham

236:Time had not faded my memories (as I had prayed to God it might), nor had it healed my wounds as it is said always to do. I began each day with the hope that the next day would be better, my recollections a little less pointed, but I would awake to the same pain, as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness. ~ Orhan Pamuk

237:The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming. ~ Cheryl Strayed

238:As I write these recollections of women who survived, I hope my readers are taking careful note of why they did. They screamed. They fought. They slammed doors in a stranger's face. They ran. They doubted glib stories. They spotted flaws in those stories. They were lucky enough to have someone step up and protect them. ~ Ann Rule

239:The eighth and ninth floors housed the library. It had several million volumes in open stacks, all the major newspapers and periodicals either bound or on computer, and a map section. Expert librarians maneuvered a seemingly limitless budget to keep it well maintained and up-to-date. The reference collections were wonders of the world. ~ Mark Helprin

240:Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable. ~ Adrienne Rich

241:All libraries, everywhere, are connected by the bookworm holes in space created by the strong space-time distortions found around any large collections of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact. Because it amounts to time travel, and time travel causes big problems. ~ Terry Pratchett

242:My drawing came out of editorial-style cartoons. Music was one thing and art was another, and there weren't really any standards for my art. My work was just drawings. They weren't done with any aspirations of becoming a part of punk scene. They weren't about punk. They were just collections of drawings, some of which I xeroxed and sold. ~ Raymond Pettibon

243:Kelly Link is the author of three collections: Magic for Beginners, Stranger Things Happen, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have appeared in A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales; Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things; Firebirds Rising; The Starry Rift; The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales; and The Restless Dead. ~ Ellen Datlow

244:I don't find it difficult anymore, because these days, Raf is only men and Dior is only women. I found it much more complicated when I was doing Jil Sander for men and women. It wasn't that it was the same, but I'm specific about where I want to go, and when you suddenly have to do two men's collections in the same moment, that was more difficult. ~ Raf Simons

245:Museums have no political power, but they do have the possibility of influencing the political process. This is a complete change from their role in the early days of collecting and hoarding the world to one of using the collections as an archive for a changing world. This role is not merely scientifically important, but it is also a cultural necessity. ~ Richard Fortey

246:only the lack of synthesis is still more accentuated. Not only is the new sensation not reunited to certain determined recollections, but it is not reconnected with any of the sensations which, at this moment, constitute the personality of the subject. It is for this reason that the subject says, quite justly: " / do not see; / do not remember; /cannot move. ~ Anonymous

247:It is one of the many ironies of this period that, at a time when the intelligentsia were excoriating Mellon for tax-evasion, and contrasting the smooth-running Soviet planned economy with the breakdown in America, he was secretly exploiting the frantic necessities of the Soviet leaders to form the basis of one of America's most splendid public collections ~ Paul Johnson

248:Some Western readers commonly use the Japanese word manga to mean serious comic-book literature. According to one of my Japanese friends, this usage is wrong. The word manga means “idle picture” and is used in Japan to describe collections of trivial comic-book stories. The correct word for serious comic-book literature is gekiga, meaning “dramatic picture. ~ Freeman Dyson

249:Our approach is to think of companies not as businesses but as collections of people. We [Apple]want to qualitatively change the way people work. We don't just want to help them do word processing faster or add numbers faster. We want to change the way they can communicate with one another. We're seeing less paper flying around and more quality of communication. ~ Steve Jobs

250:Collections are certainly abundant online. It's complicated, because it's not like these people didn't want computers, although there was some nonchalance about it. I would sometimes ask the people I interviewed if they wished they had a computer, and in a lot of cases, it was like they couldn't process the question. You don't know what you don't have, I guess. ~ Miranda July

251:Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for the present; its anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary recollections of the past! ~ Charles Dickens

252:Today, everybody is always rushing. Designers have to make collections one after the other. Actresses have to make movies one after the other. They have to do all that in order to still be there - to still be out there. So to step away and be absent and to lose yourself completely and to really come back and find yourself again - that's something quite rare. ~ Haider Ackermann

253:From this distance, in the dimness, the model looked surreal, made up of parts filled with buildings, bordered by long stretches of empty space. It reminded me of the way cities and towns look when you are flying at night. You can't make out much. But the places where people have come together, and stayed, are collections of tiny lights, breaking up the darkness. ~ Sarah Dessen

254:The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners’ hands. Not I suppose good news in a culture and economy built on obsolescence. But for a book to be loved this way and turned to this way for consolation and intense renewable excitement seems to me a marvel. ~ Louise Gl ck

255:Oh the grave!--the grave!--It buries every error--covers every defect--extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him! ~ Washington Irving

256:They’re vermin, Bob. They’ve been driven inland by over-fishing and now they’re spreading disease, attacking waste collections, keeping people awake in the small hours, and carrying away stray cats and small dogs. Next thing you know they’ll be cloning credit cards and planning bank robberies.” “Yes, but…” I see no point in arguing; it’s not as if I like seagulls. ~ Charles Stross

257:In my opinion the religion that makes men rebel and fight against their government is not the genuine article, nor is the religion the right sort which reconciles them to the idea of eating their bread in the sweat of other men's faces. It is not the kind to get to heaven on. ~ Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 (1895), by Ward Hill Lamon, p. 90

258:Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now. ~ Charles Dickens

259:I have no fresh-from-the-oven mother-daughter recollections - only the daily creaking of cans being opened and the sucking sound of gelatinous vegetables splurting from their tin-encased vacuums. Her kitchen was filled with smoke and impatience. ... And so I grew up finding my own path, frying what could not be boiled, winging my way through life without recipes. ~ Patricia J Williams

260:He owned a whole world full of memories, of lovely moments relived and happy recollections. I'm not saying he was happy or that he didn't suffer. He suffered very much, but he did not despair; he still drew nourishment from what he had been given. But the sadness never left him. Happiness needs more than memories of the past to feed on; it also needs dreams of the future. ~ Jorge Amado

261:We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. . . . Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. ~ Joan Didion

262:The great proliferation of museums in the nineteenth century was a product of the marriage of the exhibition as a way of awakening intelligent interest in the visitor with the growth of collections that was associated with empire and middle-class affluence. Attendance at museums was as much associated with moral improvement as with explanation of the human or natural world. ~ Richard Fortey

263:Childhood memories were like airplane luggage; no matter how far you were traveling or how long you needed them to last, you were only ever allowed two bags. And while those bags might hold a few hazy recollections—a diner with a jukebox at the table, being pushed on a swing set, the way it felt to be picked up and spun around—it didn’t seem enough to last a whole lifetime. ~ Jennifer E Smith

264:Memory, instead of being a duplicate, always present before one's eyes, of the various events of one's life, is rather a void from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables ones to resuscitate dead recollections, but even then, there are innumerable little details which have not fallen into that potential reservoir of memory, and which will remain for ever unverifiable. ~ Marcel Proust

265:When you ask most people to reflect on their very first memory, the recollections usually fall within a range of familiar vignettes—that first game of catch with Mom or Dad, playing with a beloved stuffed animal or favorite toy, or watching Saturday morning cartoons. My first memory is shooting that McDonald’s commercial. I can’t remember anything before the start of my career. ~ Corey Feldman

266:Cranswell led them to the left, into the Egyptian exhibit hall, and Fastitocalon remembered why he didn’t spend much time in places like this: the intense, knotted, crisscrossing trails of time and metaphysical significance that hung around collections of antiquities were exhausting to experience, and the older the object the heavier its weight on reality. The things in here were old. ~ Vivian Shaw

267:Very often, or perhaps more often, and even in very good collections - even in some of the best collections ever written, I would argue - it's because our "voicier" writers hew so closely to one given set of dictional tics that we as readers can't read the books all the way through in a single sitting, because if we did, the stories and their narrators would all start to bleed together. ~ Roy Kesey

268:Whatever else it may be, the Qur’an is no work of history. Startlingly, were it not for all the commentaries elucidating its mysteries, all the biographies of the Prophet, and all the sprawling collections of hadiths—none of which, in the form we have them, pre-dates the beginning of the third century after the hijra—we would have only the barest reason to associate it with a man named ~ Tom Holland

269:What I’ve learned is this: All of them have had doubters. Some continue to have roaring, stadium-sized collections of critics and naysayers who will shout I told you so at every little misstep or mistake. The noise doesn’t go away, but the most successful people I know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who believe in them, and to push onward with their goals. ~ Michelle Obama

270:I began keeping diaries after they locked Rosemary up at Butler and I went to live with Aunt Elaine in Cranston until I was eighteen, but even the diaries can't be trusted. For instance, there's a series of entries describing a trip to New Brunswick that I'm pretty sure I never took. It used to scare me, those recollections of things that never took place, but I've gotten used to it. ~ Caitl n R Kiernan

271:The thesis that the living creatures have always been composed different species was established in a time where no sufficient observations had been made and when science hardly existed. This thesis is denied every day by those who have made accurate observations, who have long time observed nature and who have had the benefit from studying our musei's large and rich collections. ~ Jean Baptiste Lamarck

272:And how long an activity lasts seems to have little influence on our recollections at all—two weeks of vacation, Kahneman noted in a 2010 TED lecture, won’t be recalled with much more fondness or intensity than one week, because that extra week probably won’t add much new material to the original memory. (Never mind that the experiencing self might really enjoy that extra week of vacation.) ~ Jennifer Senior

273:Her anger at the young woman's stubbornness quickly prompted recollections of all the times she'd found herself on one side or another of these meaningless, bigoted demarcations; all the times she'd been made to feel alien to some stranger's expectation of what constituted the right and normal world---the color of her skin, the ethnicity of the man she'd chosen to marry, even her tomboy daughter. ~ Omar El Akkad

274:And one woman wrote, in 1850, in the book Greenwood Leaves: “True feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependent; a perpetual childhood.” Another book, Recollections of a Southern Matron: “If any habit of his annoyed me, I spoke of it once or twice, calmly, then bore it quietly.” Giving women “Rules for Conjugal and Domestic Happiness,” one book ended with: “Do not expect too much. ~ Howard Zinn

275:As one broods over these queer collections, it seems easier to understand - with an understanding which is not, I hope, distorted in the other direction - this strange spirit, who was tempted by the Devil to believe at the time when within these walls he. was solving so much, that he could reach all the secrets of God and Nature by the pure power of mind Copernicus and Faustus in one. ~ John Maynard Keynes

276:I ask my clients to divide them into four broad categories: General (books you read for pleasure) Practical (references, cookbooks, etc.) Visual (photograph collections, etc.) Magazines Once you have piled your books, take them in your hand one by one and decide whether you want to keep or discard each one. The criterion is, of course, whether or not it gives you a thrill of pleasure when you touch it. ~ Marie Kond

277:Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure--chemically pure, I mean,... not morally. ~ Aldous Huxley

278:We frequently fall into error and folly, Dr. Johnson tells us, “not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered.” To compress, therefore, the great and obvious rules of life into brief sentences which are not easily forgotten is, as he said, to confer a real benefit upon us. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith, “English Aphorists,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), p. 108

279:Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, [the death of a parent] dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and may cut free memories and feelings that we thought had gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. ~ Joan Didion

280:If she possessed any memory whatsoever of the days when she'd been whole, her shattered recollections were scattered across the darkscape of her mind in fragments so minuscule that she could no more easily piece them together than she could gather from the beach all the tiny chips of broken seashells, worn to polished flakes by ages of relentless tides, and reassemble them into their original architectures. ~ Dean Koontz

281:The friendship was never repaired, of course, but, then, how could it be? The two men had met in the nineteen-seventies and had seen each other only twice in the intervening years. The mutual affection they felt was an almost entirely theoretical construct, based on memories of long ago shared experiences- not unlike what I felt toward my brother by then, I suppose. Part fading recollections, part faith. ~ Daniel Alarc n

282:Genuine recollections almost invariably explain oneself to oneself. Suppose, for example, that you feel an instinctive aversion to some particular kind of wine. Try as you will, you can find no reason for it. Suppose when you explore a previous incarnation, you remember you died by a poisoned administered in a wine of that kind, your aversion is explained by the proverb: 'A burnt child dreads the fire.' ~ Aleister Crowley

283:STARING INTO THE ABYSS by Richard Thomas is an outstanding book, a grim tapestry of broken lives and shattered dreams, of dark fantasies and dark reflections. It's one of the better single-author collections I've had the pleasure to read in recent years, and as such, gets my highest recommendation. It's also a fine testament to a talent I suspect we are going to be hearing a lot more from, and soon. ~ Kealan Patrick Burke

284:untrue. The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The ~ Terry Pratchett

285:America has no now. We're reluctant to acknowledge the present. It's too embarrassing. Instead, we reach into the past. Our culture is composed of sequels, reruns, remakes, revivals, reissues, re-releases, recreations, reenactments, adaptations, anniversaries, memorabilia, oldies radio, and nostalgia record collections. World War II has been refought so many times, the Germans and Japanese are now drawing residuals. ~ George Carlin

286:A shelf farther back contains general humanities—collections of Japanese literature, world literature, and individual writers, classics, philosophy, drama, art history, sociology, history, biography, geography. . . . When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages—a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. ~ Haruki Murakami

287:Unlike prose writing, the strange process of writing with pictures encourages associations and recollections to accumulate literally in front of your eyes; people, places, and events appear out of nowhere. Doors open into rooms remembered from childhood, faces form into dead relatives, and distant loves appear, almost magically, on the page- all deceptively manageable, visceral, the combinations sometimes even revelatory. ~ Chris Ware

288:Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain. ~ Charles Dickens

289:The death of a parent, he wrote, 'Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. ~ Joan Didion

290:The death of a parent, he wrote, “despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean’s bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. ~ Joan Didion

291:Experience is always seeking for special literary forms in which its various aspects can find their most adequate expression; and there are many of these aspects which are best rendered in a fragmentary fashion, because they are themselves fragments of experience, gleams and flashes of light, rather than the steady glow of a larger illumination. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith, “English Aphorists,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), pp. 102-103

292:There's the excitement of adding color, which I didn't know anything about until 1997 or so, when I did my first picture book. So, the kid's book in particular have been exciting for me because it forced me to go back to the work I loved as a young boy reading Sunday's supplements and comics in the Sunday papers when I was six, seven, eight, nine. And number of which have been in wonderful collections, beautifully reproduced. ~ Jules Feiffer

293:I think our customers don't need anything. They just want something special. This is why we do collections - not just the Spring fashion show, but the pre - Fall and cruise lines too. The customers love to find something in the shop they don't see in a magazine. This is the trick about the cruise and pre-Fall collections. Nobody knows about them. When you go to the shop, you really find something you don't see anywhere else. ~ Stefano Gabbana

294:We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. ~ Carl Sagan

295:While I worked, I thought about Earl's wife, tried to bring forth an image of the once-passionate woman: her tired, withdrawn, unsuspecting face. Would she react to the wild bouquet of mums and periwinkle, truth and tender recollections? I felt sure she would, and imagined the relief and gratitude on Earl's face as he boiled water for tea, provoking the opinionated woman he had missed into a discussion of politics or poetry. ~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh

296:Parental Recollections A child's a plaything for an hour; Its pretty tricks we try For that or for a longer space; Then tire, and lay it by. But I knew one that to itself All seasons could control; That would have mocked the sense of pain Out of a grievëd soul. Thou straggler into loving arms, Young climber up of knees, When I forget thy thousand ways, Then life and all shall cease. ~ Charles Lamb

297:It was by coincidence that I ended up opening my first shop in 1968, and I haven't stopped since. I now find myself trying to do everything. I couldn't live without creating my collections, without writing, drawing and reading. But I couldn't either live without being close to my children on a daily basis and also to my grandchildren, and to all the people I love. I guess I am like every woman today, one who juggles her work and family life. ~ Sonia Rykiel

298:The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die. ~ Siri Hustvedt

299:There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short. ~ Terry Pratchett

300:Before, I thought we could write about life only when we had recovered from our wounds; when we were able to touch old sores with a pen and not revive the pain; when we could look back free from nostalgia, madness, and a sense of grievance. But is this really possible? We are never completely cut off from our memory. Recollections provides the inspiration for writing, the stimulus for painting, and for some, the motivation even for death. ~ Ahlam Mosteghanemi

301:Life is subjective as far as memories are concerned. I mean, what pieces of your own life do you really remember? Some good times, some bad times definitely, but mostly you remember those times that really stand out, those times that define who you are as an individual. Now's the time my life flashes before me—flickering recollections, vacations, holidays, friendships, the moments that made a difference. Mostly I remember that weekend with Kaylee. ~ Megan Bostic

302:She was a large, boneless woman who draped herself like an old blanket over the chairs of the apartment, staring for hours with her gray eyes at ghosts, figments, recollections, and dust caught in oblique sunbeams, her arms streaked and pocked like relief maps of vast planets, her massive calves stuffed like forcemeat into lung-colored support hose. She was quixotically vain about her appearance and spent an hour each morning making up her face. ~ Michael Chabon

303:When my time comes, I will seek hope in the knowledge that insofar as possible I will not be allowed to suffer or be subjected to needless attempts to maintain life; I will seek it in the certainty that I will not be abandoned to die alone; I am seeking it now, in the way I try to live my life, so that those who value what I am will have profited by my time on earth and be left with comforting recollections of what we have meant to one another. ~ Sherwin B Nuland

304:This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing are thought to understand every thing too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. ~ John Locke

305:To the sound of this voice, to the music of the chessboard's evil lure, Luzhin recalled, with the exquisite, moist melancholy peculiar to recollections of love, a thousand games that he had played in the past... There were combinations, pure and harmonious, where thought ascended marble stairs to victory; there were tender stirrings in one corner of the board, and a passionate explosion, and the fanfare of the Queen going to its sacrificial doom. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

306:It is natural to want to forget, Anna, when everyday is a brimful of sadness. But those souls also forgot those that they had loved. You do not want that, surely? I have heard some preach that God wants us to forget the dead, but I cannot believe so. I think He gives us precious recollections so that we may not be parted entirely from those He has given us to love. You must cherish your memories of your babes, Anna, until you see them again in Heaven. ~ Geraldine Brooks

307:This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind , and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections:;; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. ~ John Locke

308:when Melanchthon recalled it, although, as we have said, he was not yet in Wittenberg when it happened, and was really only recounting the recollections of others who had been there. So when he did, he was speaking in the way so many of us do when remembering things: we aren’t telling an untruth but conflating things in a way that is not perfectly and literally accurate, specifically to make a larger point, and, as good fiction does, to tell a greater truth. ~ Eric Metaxas

309:Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feahers; or by the fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other's strengths; the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world, She grew with them--the trunk of the vine--alone, but holding all the wonders together. ~ Delia Owens

310:Isabel is looking at several collections of research journals. 'She would understand the issues if she chose to open one of the volumes, but she knew that there were conversations within which she would never have the time to participate in. And that, of course, was the problem with any large collection of books, whether in a library or a bookshop: one might feel intimidated by the fact that there was simply too many to read and not know where to start. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

311:Whoever you be, O my reader- friend, foe- I wish with you to part at present as a pal. Farewell. Whatever you in my wake sought in these careless strophes- tumultuous recollections, relief from labors, live pictures or bons mots, or faults of grammar- God grant that you, in this book, for recreation, for the daydream, for the heart, for jousts in journals, may find at least a crumb. Upon which, let us part, farewell! ~ Alexander Pushkin

312:We lose track of everything, and of everyone, even ourselves. The facts of my father's life are less known to me than those of the life of Hadrian. My own existence, if I had to write of it, would be reconstructed by me from externals, laboriously, as if it were the life of someone else: I should have to turn to letters, and to the recollections of others, in order to clarify such uncertain memories. What is ever left but crumbled walls, or masses of shade? ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

313:These funds had been built up over many years, mainly from North American sources sympathetic to the cause of a united Ireland, and it seemed that the money never entered the Republic of Ireland or the Province, but would be invested mainly in Europe. There was also income from protection rackets, bank robberies, post office raids, black taxis, DSS scams, video and CD pirating, fruit machines, republican clubs and pubs and local collections among sympathisers.  ~ Martin McGartland

314:The United States rests on a dedication to equality, which is chiefly a moral idea, rooted in Christianity, but it rests, too, on a dedication to inquiry, fearless and unflinching. Its founders agreed with the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, who wrote, in 1748, that “Records of Wars, Intrigues, Factions, and Revolutions are so many Collections of Experiments.”9 They believed that truth is to be found in ideas about morality but also in the study of history. ~ Jill Lepore

315:He knows that after him everything will continue on much as before, except that there will be a minuscule absence, a barely detective gap in the so-called grand scheme, one unit fewer now. Or not even that, not even an empty space where he once was, for all will rush immediately to fill that vacuum. Pft. Gone. Recollections of him will remain in the minds of others for a while, but presently those others too will die and his few relics with them. And then all will be dark. ~ John Banville

316:Various sources force us to assume that the so-called earliest childhood recollections are not true memory traces but later elaborations of the same, elaborations which might have been subjected to the influences of many later psychic forces. Thus, the "childhood reminiscences" of individuals altogether advance to the signification of "concealing memories," and thereby form a noteworthy analogy to the childhood reminiscences as laid down in the legends and myths of nations. ~ Sigmund Freud

317:Why is it that in our normal state former ideas, called up by some means or other, do not develop completely ? It is because we are conscious of them; because we connect them from their beginning with the enormous mass of other recollections, of other images, which constitute our personality. They have their place; they play their part in the great system, but they are not isolated and independent, and their development is restrained by the development of all the other thoughts. ~ Anonymous

318:If there are too many books to arrange on the floor all at one time, I ask my clients to divide them into four broad categories: General (books you read for pleasure) Practical (references, cookbooks, etc.) Visual (photograph collections, etc.) Magazines Once you have piled your books, take them in your hand one by one and decide whether you want to keep or discard each one. The criterion is, of course, whether or not it gives you a thrill of pleasure when you touch it. Remember, ~ Marie Kond

319:I would go into my three different sisters' rooms in the early-mid '70s and they had very specific different tastes in music. I specifically remember lying on my different sisters' bedroom floors and listening to their record collections. And "Starship Trooper" was one of my sister Nancy's favorite songs and favorite album. Music is so defining for me. In the late '70s and early '80s, I worked in radio. When I was in high school, I worked at two different radio stations. ~ Thomas Haden Church

320:It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

321:We need a means for measuring the sizes of different infinite collections of universes. It is this information that we need in order to work out how likely it is that we reside in one type of universe rather than another. Until we find a fundamental dictum for how we should compare infinite collections of universes, we won't be able to foretell mathematically what typical multiverse dwellers-us-should see in experiments and observations. Solving the measure problem is imperative. ~ Brian Greene

322:Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans had been trying to do in only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred. ... Like the Nazis, antebellum whites had known quite a bit about torture - quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn. ~ Octavia E Butler

323:When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. If we always had smiled on the one who is gone, there would be no despair in our grief; and some sweetness would cling to our tears, reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For our recollections of veritable love—which indeed is the act of virtue containing all others—call from our eyes the same sweet, tender tears as those most beautiful hours wherein memory was born. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

324:Much sand has run out since then, many recollections of the past have faded from my memory or become blurred in indistinct visions, and poor Grisha himself has long since reached the end of his pilgrimage; but the impression which he produced upon me, and the feelings which he aroused in my breast, will never leave my mind. O truly Christian Grisha, your faith was so strong that you could feel the actual presence of God; your love so great that the words fell of themselves from your lips. ~ Leo Tolstoy

325:All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. The palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

326:Islam was, at least during its first centuries, the religion of reasoning, responsible individuals capable of telling what was true from what was false as long as they were well equipped to do so, as long as they possessed the tools of knowledge - specifically, the collections of Hadith. The fact that, over the course of centuries, we have seen believers who criticize and judge replaced by muzzled, censored, obedient, and grateful Muslims in no way detracts from this fundamental dimension of Islam. ~ Fatema Mernissi

327:My friends: Music is the language of spirits. Its melody is like the frolicsome breeze that makes the strings quiver with love. When the gentle fingers of Music knock at the door of our feelings, they awaken memories that have long lain hidden in the depths of the Past. The sad strains of Music bring us mournful recollections; and her quiet strains bring us joyful memories. The sound of strings makes us weep at the departure of a dear one, or makes us smile at the peace God has bestowed upon us. ~ Khalil Gibran

328:We are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanism, a group of competing factions. The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystem inside brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems doing what they do best while we overlay stories about choices. ~ David Eagleman

329:smell is often referred to as the invisible sense: we regularly experience it without consciously registering it. A smell enters our nose, travels to our olfactory bulb, and makes its way directly to our hippocampus, our amygdala (an emotionprocessing center), and our olfactory cortex (which not only deals with smells but is involved in complex memory, learning, and decision-making tasks), triggering a host of thoughts, feelings, and recollections—yet more likely than not, we note neither smell nor memory. ~ Anonymous

330:ANTHONY DOERR is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes both in the United States and overseas, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Raised in Cleveland, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons. ~ Anthony Doerr

331:Memories Memories are real life experiences distilled over time into a palatable elixir that one can selectively choose to indulge. Heartbreak and misfortune are most often entombed in cerebral mausoleums. Due to their caustic essence they are prohibitive to access and are accompanied by a lingering bitter aftertaste. Pleasant recollections may be retrieved at will as if tethered to the end of a string on a reel. They are often seasoned to taste and bursting with flavor and pungent aromas. ~ Rob Wood

332:Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

333:efore the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation series of books began to appear in 1979, the scientific autobiography was a largely unfamiliar genre. One recalls Cajal's extraordinary Recollections of My Life, translated into English in 1937, and the little gem of autobiography written by Charles Darwin for his grandchildren in 1876. One supposes that this form of scientific writing is scarce because busy scientists would rather continue to work on scientific problems than to indulge in a retrospective exercise using a writing style ~ Anonymous

334:A number of collections and adaptations of his lectures have been published, including The Feynman Lectures on Physics, QED (Penguin, 1990), The Character of Physical Law (Penguin, 1992), Six Easy Pieces (Penguin, 1998), The Meaning of It All (Penguin, 1999), Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (Penguin, 1999), The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (Penguin, 1999), The Feynman Lectures on Computation (Penguin, 1999) and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Penguin, 2001). His memoirs, Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman, were published in 1985. ~ Anonymous

335:The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more stairways than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. ~ Terry Pratchett

336:Mary in Christianity, Isis in ancient Egypt, Demeter in Greece, Venus in Rome and Guan Yin in China have all functioned as conduits to recollections of early tenderness. Their statues often stand in darkened, womb-like spaces, their faces are compassionate and supportive, they enable us to sit, talk and cry with them. The similarities between them are too great to be coincidental. We are dealing here with figures that have evolved not out of shared cultural origins but in response to the universal needs of the human psyche. ~ Alain de Botton

337:It is good to have many personae, to make collections, sew up several, collect them as we go along in life. As we become older, with such a collection at our behest, we find we can portray any aspect of self most anytime we wish. However, at some point, most particularly as one grows into past mid-life and on into old age, one's personas shift and meld in mysterious ways. Eventually, there is a kind of 'meltdown', a loss of personae complete, thereby revealing what would, in its greatest light, be called 'the true self. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s

338:How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality,--a place, a country, a local habitation! how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us! Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places,--rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others,--where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore. ~ Washington Irving

339:In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those in a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to a contentless unit, and the years grow hollow and collapse. ~ William James

340:My research work was based in pictures. I needed to visualise things and projective geometry was often most useful e.g. in figuring out how a particular quantity transforms under Lorentz transf[ormation]. When I came to publish the results I suppressed the projective geometry as the results could be expressed more concisely in analytic form. ~ Paul Dirac, "Recollections of an Exciting Era," three lectures given at Varenna, 5 August 1972, quoted in Peter Galison, "The Suppressed Drawing: Paul Dirac's Hidden Geometry", Representations, No. 72 (Autumn, 2000)

341:William Duncan Strong was a scholar, a man ahead of his time: quiet, careful and meticulous in his work, averse to spectacle and publicity. He was among the first to establish that Mosquitia had been inhabited by an ancient, unknown people who were not Maya. Strong spent five months traversing Honduras in 1933, going by dugout canoe up the Río Patuca and several of its tributaries. He kept an illustrated journal, which is preserved in the Smithsonian’s collections—packed with detail and many fine drawings of birds, artifacts, and landscapes. ~ Douglas Preston

342:Inspiration is the most valuable commodity for an artist; it is for me anyway. I can't move forward in any way if I don't feel a strong spark of excitement or creativity. Sometimes it is very difficult to get things flowing. It's important to be in a peaceful state of mind, and then I invite the spirits to come into the studio. I don't stare into a blank canvas or paper. I look through my various collections of books, toys, statues, photographs and other things, and something will trigger an idea. My studio is packed full of things that inspire me. ~ Mark Ryden

343:Sure. I'll make small talk. Chit chat. Discuss the ins and outs of a "typical" day. Pass the time lightly. Say tiny things. I'm happy to tread surfaces with a smile, and will. Sometimes. Yet- when I look at you, I know there are layers. Dimensions. Collections of ancient wisdom. Roads. Stories on stories on stories. Core needs. There is humanness. This is where I light up. This is where I thrive. You can't be caged in a pool for long. Not when you're someone who wants oceans. ~ Victoria Erickson

344:Dear Kindle User, Your Kindle Paperwhite has been updated. In addition to performance improvements for your Kindle Paperwhite, new features include: PDF Improvements: Pan and zoom within PDF documents more quickly and easily, and customize the margins for an optimized reading experience. Cloud Collections Enhancements: See all of your collections in a Collections view, and customize where your collections show on your device. To learn more about these features, download the updated version of the Kindle Paperwhite User’s Guide 2nd Edition from the Cloud. ~ Anonymous

345:I believe my strength has something to do with memory, with that concept of fluid time. For while I recall with clarity the terror of abuse, I also recall the green and lovely dream of childhood, the moist membrane of a leaf against my nose, the toads that peeled a golden pool in the palm of my hand. Pleasures, pleasures, the recollections of which have injected me with a firm and unshakable faith. I believe Dostoevski when he wrote, “If one had only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may be the means of saving us.” I have gone by memory. ~ Lauren Slater

346:His son Peter Bucky happily spent time driving Einstein around, and he later wrote down some of his recollections in extensive notebooks. They provide a delightful picture of the mildly eccentric but deeply un-affected Einstein in his later years. Peter tells, for example, of driving in his convertible with Einstein when it suddenly started to rain. Einstein pulled off his hat and put it under his coat. When Peter looked quizzical, Einstein explained: “You see, my hair has withstood water many times before, but I don’t know how many times my hat can. ~ Walter Isaacson

347:Flashbulb memories are as flawed as regular recollections. They are the product of reconstruction. Ulrich Neisser, one of the pioneers in the field of cognitive science, investigated them. In 1986, the day after the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, he asked students to write essays detailing their reactions. Three years later, he interviewed them again. Less than seven per cent of the new data correlated with the initial submissions. In fact, 50% of the recollections were incorrect in two-thirds of the points, and 25% failed to match even a single detail. ~ Rolf Dobelli

348:Memory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair,' the theologian Walter Brueggeman noted. It's an extraordinary statement, one that reminds us that though hope is about the future, ground for hope lie in the records and recollections of the past. We can tell of a past that was nothing but defeats and cruelties and injustices, or of a past that was some lovely golden age now irretrievably lost, or we can tell a more complicated and accurate story, one that has room for the best and worst, for atrocities and liberations, for grief and jubiliation. ~ Rebecca Solnit

349:When he started to build at Tivoli Hadrian may have been motivated by the idea of extending the much simpler villa which was already owned by Sabina’s family in a manner he considered appropriate to his new status. No doubt the design evolved over time and was very different in its final state from what had been intended at its inception. Certainly its collections were enriched by the emperor’s travels; by the time the villa’s 900 rooms were completed, it was one of the most extraordinary contributions to art and architecture that the Roman world had ever seen. ~ Elizabeth Speller

350:A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. ~ George Eliot

351:What am I?—the law. Has the law any eyes to witness your grief? Has the law ears to be melted by your sweet voice? Has the law a memory for all those soft recollections you endeavor to recall? No, madame; the law has commanded, and when it commands it strikes. You will tell me that I am a living being, and not a code—a man, and not a volume. Look at me, madame—look around me. Has mankind treated me as a brother? Have men loved me? Have they spared me? Has anyone shown the mercy towards me that you now ask at my hands? No, madame, they struck me, always struck me!     "Woman, ~ Alexandre Dumas

352:Beth had been a middle school science teacher and Joni was a librarian and they both had collections of weird stuff they had found. Bizarre, misspelled letters written by lovelorn eighth graders. Obscene Polaroids left in between the pages of library books. They used to call each other on the phone to share their latest discovery, and Critter had always remained a little off to the side, never feeling quite as sharp or ironic as they were. Critter was an electrician, primarily home repair, and so he didn't usually come across anything except bad wiring and faulty lighting fixtures. ~ Dan Chaon

353:My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain that alone on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine would not, I suppose, have thus suffered, and if I had to live my life over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. ~ Charles Darwin

354:Yet if Diana’s later recollections were an authentic gauge of her mood in 1980 and early 1981, she felt intense resentment, anger, fear, depression, and jealousy behind her expressions of affection. Diana needed to be consoled and cared for, and had she felt secure, her disquieting undercurrents might have subsided. But life with the royal family behind palace walls only offered the illusion of protection. Diana was an emotionally bruised adolescent without a clear identity, and royal life, with its rigid protocol and fishbowl confines, would become a source of anxiety rather than a safe haven. ~ Sally Bedell Smith

355:Like most people who write collections of humorous personal essays, I was a bookish child. Other boys my age focused most of their time on yelling, trying to fart on each other, and generally not obeying rules. The vast majority of male eight-year-olds love to break rules. It is their greatest passion. Mashing their food together in the cafeteria and pretending it’s barf. Yelling “boobs” during a nice assembly where we learn about Irish step dancing. Maiming beauty. They love it. Their fierce defiance of what moms and teachers want out of them is what fuels their spirits. I have never understood these creatures. ~ Guy Branum

356:My memories, with images by Botticelli and harmonies by Mozart, of returning from a far away place, of the time when my tears were acts of worshiping the sun… All these melancholies awaken my angelic places of the past, solitary and silent scenery, the scenery of grand recollections and grand forgetfulness; all my melancholies bring my distances closer to one another; they ravish deeply all the springs of my childhood and bring to light the uncertainty of some distant memory or a regret about a world whose tears are like mirrors of the soul. Melancholic confessions: they are the only proof of the lost paradise. ~ Emil M Cioran

357:In the water’s reflection she saw only loving scenes from her childhood, countless memories, her mother kissing her good night, unwrapping a new toy, plopping whipped cream onto pancakes, putting Annie on her first bicycle, stitching a ripped dress, sharing a tube of lipstick, pushing a button to Annie’s favorite radio station. It was as if someone unlocked a vault and all these fond recollections could be examined at once. Why didn't I feel this before? she whispered. Because we embrace are scars more than our healing, Lorraine said. We can recall the exact day we got hurt, but who remembers the day the wound was gone? ~ Mitch Albom

358:[there are] two kinds of things the nature of which it would be quite wonderful to grasp by means of a systematic art... the first consists in seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give... [the second], in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do... phaedrus, i myself am a lover of these divisions and collections, so that i may be able to think and to speak. ~ Plato

359:A random event, by definition, does not lend itself to explanation, but collections of random events do behave in a highly regular fashion. Imagine a large urn filled with marbles. Half the marbles are red, half are white. Next, imagine a very patient person (or a robot) who blindly draws 4 marbles from the urn, records the number of red balls in the sample, throws the balls back into the urn, and then does it all again, many times. If you summarize the results, you will find that the outcome “2 red, 2 white” occurs (almost exactly) 6 times as often as the outcome “4 red” or “4 white.” This relationship is a mathematical fact. ~ Daniel Kahneman

360:William James wrote (in Principles of Psychology in 1890): "In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units..." Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. ~ Joshua Foer

361:Where are you going?” Quentin asks. “To do my job. You need to start thinking about whether you’ve got what it takes to do yours.” “Hey, don’t—” I slam the door and hurry down the hall. The Brightside Manor Apartments stand like a visual reprimand to every liberal fantasy of government-subsidized housing. The dilapidated buildings look like sets built for a Blaxploitation flick from the seventies, like you could walk up and push them down with your foot. Thirteen big saltboxes grouped on the edge of St. Catherine’s Creek, all centered around a massive square of asphalt crowded with one of the strangest collections of motor transportation in the nation. ~ Greg Iles

362:It is important to state here -- though evidence will be considered in detail later on -- that all three women have either had "dreams" or normal recollections of having been shown, at later times, tiny offspring whose appearance suggests they are something other than completely human . . . that they are in fact hybrids, partly human and partly what we must call, for want of a better term, alien. It is unthinkable and unbelievable -- yet the evidence points in that direction. An ongoing and systematic breeding experiment must be considered one of the central purposes of UFO abductions. ~ Budd Hopkins, in Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods , p. 130

363:When you staring death in the face, it makes you think about life. Not just your own life, but the lives of those around you. Lives you touched or hurt. The lives you value most. And lives you almost forgot until death looked you straight in the eyes and said, “Remember.” Death is not kind or patient with its memories. They come flooding. Suffocating and drowning you until it is difficult to breathe. Filling you up with recollections as you gasp for a few more moments. More time. That’s what looking at death feels like. Death is watching the phases of your life tick away. Whether fast or slow, easy or difficult. Don’t matter. Anyone about to die wants more time. ~ C P Patrick

364:...for if our life is vagabond our memory is sedentary and though we ourselves rush ceaselessly forward our recollections, indissolubly bound to the sites which we have left behind use, continue to lead a placid and sequestered existence among them, like those friends whom a traveller makes for a brief while in some town where he is staying and whom, leaving the town, he is obliged to leave behind him, because it is there that they, who stand on the steps of their house to bid him good-bye, will end their day and their life, regardless of whether he is still with them or not, there beside the church, looking out over the harbour, beneath the trees of the promenade. ~ Marcel Proust

365:To speak truth, sir, I don't understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection--one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure. ~ Charlotte Bront

366:This world is not, in origin, Tolkien’s invention: though it is perhaps his major achievement to have opened it up for the contemporary imagination. In 1937 (though not now) the world and its personnel were best known from a relatively small body of stories taken from an again relatively small corpus of classic European fairy-tale collections, those of the Grimm brothers in Germany, of Asbjornsen and Moe in Norway, Perrault in France, or Joseph Jacobs in England, together with literary imitations like those of H.C. Andersen in Denmark, and literary collections like the ‘colour’ Fairy Books of Andrew Lang; and from the many Victorian ‘myth and legend’ handbooks which drew on them. ~ Tom Shippey

367:Your Kindle Paperwhite has been updated. In addition to performance improvements for your Kindle Paperwhite, new features include: PDF Improvements: Pan and zoom more easily and quickly in PDF documents, and customise the margins for an optimised reading experience. Enhancements to Cloud Collections: See all of your collections in Collections View, and customise where your collections are displayed on your device. To learn more about these features, download the updated version of the Kindle Paperwhite User’s Guide 2nd Edition from the Cloud. Please keep your Kindle connected to a Wi-Fi network to make sure you receive all future software updates. We hope you enjoy the improvements we've made.  ~ Anonymous

368:Some lessons you learn gradually and some you learn in a sudden moment, like a flash going off in a dark room. I sift and rake and dig around in my vivid recollections of young Sean on the floor in summer, and I try to see what makes him tick, but I know a secret about young Sean, I guess, that he kind of ends up telling the world: nothing makes him tick. It just happens all by itself, tick tick tick tick tick, without any proximal cause, with nothing underneath it. He is like a jellyfish adrift in the sea, throbbing quietly in the warm waves of the surf just off the highway where the dusty white vans with smoked windows and indistinct decals near their wheel hubs roll innocently past. ~ John Darnielle

369:In these manuscripts chemistry is called the "sacred Art," and the exceedingly obscure and figurative language in which they are written makes it well nigh impossible to separate fact from fancy; Hoefer has indeed attempted to discover modern chemical conceptions in the allusions to Egyptian myths and the chaotic collections of spagyric arcana. ...[E]ach author seems to have aimed to write treatises intelligible only to himself, and we greatly doubt his success in even this respect. ~ Henry Carrington Bolton, "An Address Delivered before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Montreal," (August 23, 1882) The Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science, p. 115, Vol. 46, No. 1190 (Sept. 15, 1882).

370:They sent a knight to save you once And found you curled up with the dragon Crown askew, skirts singed They tried marrying you, Couldn’t hack it, went home, You liked the acoustics much better In empty castles. (the dragon was teaching you to roar.) Six wars they waged against you— Disgruntled princes with their Silent knights. Blood in the fields, in the water, In the snow, on their crowns, When you added them To your collections. Rarely smiled, laughed only with the dragon, Looked so often over your shoulder You almost forgot to watch ahead. Here’s the secret you took to your grave; You were holding whole kingdoms But your palms were made of sand. - Elisabeth Hewer, “Obituary for the princess who forgot to be a fairytale ~ Kyoko M

371:Who are you? She asked silently, as she laid away the collector's quotations, his drawings, his scraps of famous poetry: "Come live with me and be my love..." interleaved with menus: 'oysters, fish stew, tortoise in its shell, bread from the oven, honey from the honeycomb.' The books were unsplattered but much fingered, their pages soft with turning and re-turning, like collections of old fairy tales. Often Jess thought of Rapunzel and golden apples and enchanted gardens. She thought of Ovid, and Dante, and Cervantes, and the Pre-Raphaelites, for sometimes McClintock pictured his beloved eating, and sometimes sleeping in fields of poppies, and once throned like Persephone, with strawberry vines entwined in her long hair. ~ Allegra Goodman

372:Utter objectivity...is not only impossible when judging literature, it’s not exactly desirable. Fiction involves trace elements of magic; it works for reasons we can explain and also for reasons we can’t. If novels or short-story collections could be weighed strictly in terms of their components (fully developed characters, check; original voice, check; solidly crafted structure, check; serious theme, check) they might satisfy, but they would fail to enchant. A great work of fiction involves a certain frisson that occurs when its various components cohere and then ignite. (Source: "Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year" in The New Yorker.) ~ Michael Cunningham

373:Like a helpless maiden from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Antinous, pursued by a proto-god – Hadrian – slipped into a river and was transformed. His life became incidental; his death in the waters of the Nile and his resurrection as a god, as a star, as (possibly) saviour of Hadrian, as the inspiration of a city, was his whole story. He gazed out implacably over the empire; still gazes, passively, in art collections throughout the Western world, a Galatea turned to stone. The mystery of Antinous will always be more powerful in his absence than it could ever have been in his presence. But if one attempts to examine the story more closely, to move behind the placid beauty, behind the unforgettable image, Antinous starts to slip away. ~ Elizabeth Speller

374:And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken! ~ Charles Dickens

375:In setting down these recollections of my early years so far removed from their unfolding, I am fooled, as all are, by time itself. My parents, long gone from my world, live again. Memory, which so confounds our waking life with anticipation and regret, may well be our one true earthly consolation when time slips out of joint." Chapter 6, The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue "Assembled in a small circle, our faces glowed in the flickering light of the campfire, signs of anxious weariness in our tired eyes, but the meal would prove revitalizing. As the fire burnt down and our bellies filled, a calm complacency settled upon us, like a blanket drawn around our shoulders by absent mothers." Chapter 20, The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue ~ Keith Donohue

376:Once the Funk Island birds had been salted, plucked, and deep-fried into oblivion, there was only one sizable colony of great auks left in the world, on an island called the Geirfuglasker, or great auk skerry, which lay about fifty kilometres off southwestern Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula. Much to the auk’s misfortune, a volcanic eruption destroyed the Geirfuglasker in 1830. This left the birds one solitary refuge, a speck of an island known as Eldey. By this point, the great auk was facing a new threat: its own rarity. Skins and eggs were avidly sought by gentlemen, like Count Raben, who wanted to fill out their collections. It was in the service of such enthusiasts that the very last known pair of auks was killed on Eldey in 1844. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

377:Landsman and Bina were married to each other for twelve years and together for five before that. Each was the other's first lover, first betrayer, first refuge, first roommate, first audience, first person to turn to when something -- even the marriage itself -- went wrong. For half their lives they tangled their histories, bodies, phobias, theories, recipes, libraries, record collections. They mounted spectacular arguments, nose-to-nose, hands flying, spittle flying, throwing things, kicking things, breaking things, rolling around on the ground grabbing up fistfuls of each other's hair. The next day he would bear the red moons of Bina's nails in his cheeks and on the meat of his chest, and she wore his purple fingerprints like an armlet. ~ Michael Chabon

378:The elaboration of culture depends upon long-term memory, and in this capacity humans rank far above all animals. The vast quantity stored in our immensely enlarged forebrains makes us consummate storytellers. We summon dreams and recollections of experience from across a lifetime and use them to create scenarios, past and future. We live in our conscious mind with the consequence of our actions, whether real or imagined. Placed out in alternative versions, our inner stories allow us to override immediate desires in favor of delayed pleasure. By long-range planning we defeat, for a while at least, the urging of our emotions. This inner life is why each person is unique and precious. When one dies, an entire library of both experience and imaginings is extinguished. ~ Edward O Wilson

379:When we talk about books…we are talking about our approximate recollections of books… What we preserve of the books we read—whether we take notes or not, and even if we sincerely believe we remember them faithfully—is in truth no more than a few fragments afloat, like so many islands, on an ocean of oblivion…We do not retain in memory complete books identical to the books remembered by everyone else, but rather fragments surviving from partial readings, frequently fused together and further recast by our private fantasies. … What we take to be the books we have read is in fact an anomalous accumulation of fragments of texts, reworked by our imagination and unrelated to the books of others, even if these books are materially identical to ones we have held in our hands. ~ Pierre Bayard

380:Faith communities and schools are not exempt from shame. In our original research on shame, 85 percent of the people we interviewed could recall a school incident from their childhood that was so shaming, it changed how they thought of themselves as learners. What makes this worse is that approximately half of those recollections were what I refer to as creativity scars. The research participants could point to a specific incident in which they were told or shown that they weren’t good writers, artists, musicians, dancers, or something else creative. The shame tool used in these situations was almost always comparison. This helps explain why the gremlins are so powerful when it comes to creativity and innovation, and why using comparison as a management tool stifles both. ~ Bren Brown

381:Your memory of any sunny day in your childhood is merely a version of the last time you thought about it. Among the stunning implications is that intervening in the reconsolidation process can alter a memory and change how it feels. Some of the most intriguing research on this idea has been led by Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist who has been working since the 1970s to investigate how processes in the brain generate emotions. In recent years, he and colleagues have investigated whether giving people an antianxiety drug as they recall a traumatic experience can reduce the dread they feel upon further recollections. If it works, it could be one of many opportunities for reshaping memory, as LeDoux told MIT Technology Review ’s deputy editor, Brian Bergstein, in his NYU office. ~ Anonymous

382:The chronological sorting of memories is an interesting business. Prior to this first weekend in the country, my recollections of that fall are distant and blurry: from here on out, they come into a sharp, delightful focus. It is here that the stilted mannequins of my initial acquaintance begin to yawn and stretch and come to life. It was months before the gloss and mystery of newness, which kept me from seeing them with much objectivity, would wear entirely off - though their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be - but it is here, in my memory, that they cease being totally foreign and being to appear, for the first time, in shapes very like their bright old selves. I too appear as something of a stranger in these early memories. ~ Donna Tartt

383:Kurma Purana is that in which Janardhana, in the form of a tortoise, in the regions under the earth, explained the objects of life – duty, wealth, pleasure, and liberation - in communication with Indradyumna and the Rishis in the proximity of Sakra, which refers to the Lakshmi Kalpa, and contains seventeen thousand stanzas. The first chapter of the Purana gives an account of itself. Suta the narrator says: “This most excellent Kurma Purana is the fifteenth. Samhitas are fourfold, from the variety of the collections. The Brahmi, Bhagavathi, Sauri, and Vaishnavi (Matrika goddess, are well known to the four Sanhitas [religious character] which confer virtue, wealth, pleasure, and liberation…]]. ~ H.H.Wilson, in "Oriental Translation Fund, Volume 52 (Google eBook), Volume 52 (1840)}, p. xlix.

384:He smells funny,” the kid said. “He’s been rinsed through pretty good.” “With that whisky?” the kid asked. “Yes, sir. Some men take to it. I never did.” “Why not? Does it do bad things?” The old man looked at him over his shoulder. “Keeps varmints away,” he said. “How so?” “Savvy what a varmint is?” “Yeah,” the kid said. “Pests. Things you don’t want around.” “Well, whisky keeps things away that some people don’t want around neither. Like dreams, recollections, wishes, other people sometimes.” The old man turned on the stool and set the milk pail down on the floor between his feet. “Things get busted sometimes. When they happen in the world you can fix ’em most times. But when they happen inside a person they’re harder to mend. Eldon got broke up pretty bad inside,” he said. ~ Richard Wagamese

385:I ask my clients to divide them into four broad categories: General (books you read for pleasure) Practical (references, cookbooks, etc.) Visual (photograph collections, etc.) Magazines Once you have piled your books, take them in your hand one by one and decide whether you want to keep or discard each one. The criterion is, of course, whether or not it gives you a thrill of pleasure when you touch it. Remember, I said when you touch it. Make sure you don’t start reading it. Reading clouds your judgment. Instead of asking yourself what you feel, you’ll start asking whether you need that book or not. Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn’t that image spellbinding? For someone who loves books, what greater happiness could there be? ~ Marie Kond

386:Why is it that in our normal state former ideas, called up by some means or other, do not develop completely ? It is because we are conscious of them; because we connect them from their beginning with the enormous mass of other recollections, of other images, which constitute our personality. They have their place; they play their part in the great system, but they are not isolated and independent, and their development is restrained by the development of all the other thoughts. " To arrest one thought," said M. Ch. Richet, " there must be another to impede it; to hinder a sentiment another sentiment must arrest its advance." ' Certainly; but in order that these phenomena may be in opposition to each other, it is not enough that they be simultaneous, they must also be united in the same consciousness. ~ Anonymous

387:A while back, when Dick & Barry & I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you *are* like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for potential partners, a 2 or 3 page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/TV/book bases. It was intended: a) to dispense with awkward conversation, and b) to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might, at a later date, turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made. It amused us at the time... But there was an important & essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party. ~ Nick Hornby

388:. . . for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savor the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish; unless, strained, simulated, again overstrained, and, at last, destroyed our faculties for enjoyment; then, truly, we may find ourselves without support, robbed of hope. Our agony is great, and how can it end? We have broken the spring of our powers; life must be all suffering‐‐ too feeble to conceive faith‐‐death must be darkness‐‐God, spirits, religion can have no place in our collapsed minds, where linger only hideous and polluting recollections of vice; and time brings us on to the brink of the grave, and dissolution flings us in‐‐a rag eaten through and through with disease, wrung together with pain, stamped into the churchyard sod by the inexorable heel of despair. ~ Charlotte Bront

389:... a tiny room, furnished in early MFI, of which every surface was covered in china ornaments and plaster knick-knacks whose only virtue was that they were small, and therefore of limited individual horribleness. Cumulatively, they were like an infestation. Little vases, ashtrays, animals, shepherdesses, tramps, boots, tobys, ruined castles, civic shields of seaside towns, thimbles, bambis, pink goggle-eyed puppies sitting up and begging, scooped-out swans plainly meant to double as soap dishes, donkeys with empry panniers which ought to have held pin-cushions or perhaps bunches of violets -- all jostled together in a sad visual cacophony of bad taste and birthday presents and fading holiday memories, too many to be loved, justifying themselves by their sheer weight of numbers as 'collections' do. ~ Cynthia Harrod Eagles

390:The space center's proximity to my backyard came to signify an intersection between heaven and hell. Florida was somewhere between the two; it was America's phantom limb, a place where spaceships were catapulted out into the cosmos. Alligators emerged from brackish water. Vultures and hawks circled above. Mosquitoes patrolled the atmosphere at eye level. We shared an ocean with sharks and dolphins. There were no seasons, only variations of humidity. Time slithered, festering in a damp wake of recollections. I believed in the Bermuda Triangle. I thought it would move in over Florida one night. By dusk an unknown force would vaporize us through a tear in the atmosphere. We'd be stuck, wandering in a parallel version of the same place, unaware that we were dead but dreaming. People came here to vanish. ~ Paul Kwiatkowski

391:The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming. One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you. ~ Cheryl Strayed

392:Thank you to Steve Iwanski and Turnrow Books for this fantastic review of THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY!! Cherise Wolas' debut novel is a narrative tour-de-force. Never mind the admirable boldness of kicking it off with excerpts from (fictional) Joan Ashby's Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning story collections -- Wolas proceeds to delicately peel back the onion layers on Ashby's decades of retreat from the public eye. Like Lauren Groff in FATES AND FURIES, Wolas triumphs in depicting the mounting humiliations of domestic life like a psychological thriller. You know we're headed for the inevitable rug pull - and yet when it comes it still leaves you reeling. Forget about Joan Ashby; it's Cherise Wolas who will leave us waiting breathlessly for the next masterpiece. —Steve Iwanski from Turnrow Books, Greenwood, MS ~ Cherise Wolas

393:A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth there is no name in man's vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiaters tell us that a solider, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody - and believed it himself - that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something resembling this semi-death.. ~ Anton Chekhov

394:In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity. To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation. It was indeed this attitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not any lack of interesting material which has caused me of late years to lay very few of my records before the public. My participation in some of his adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion and reticence upon me. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

395:You see, King, we have a legend - I used to believe that it was all fairy-tale rubbish and empty smoke. It is a legend about how such things as war and death and despair were common in our country at one time. These terrible words, which we have long since stopped using in our language, can be read in collections of our old tales, and they sound awful to us and even a little ridiculous. Today I've learned that these tales are all true... But now tell me, don't you have in your soul a sort of intimation that you're not doing the right thing? Don't you have a yearning for bright, serene gods, for sensible and cheerful leaders and mentors? Don't you ever dream in your sleep about another, more beautiful life where nobody is envious of others, where reason and order prevails, where people treat other people only with cheerfulness and considerations? ~ Hermann Hesse

396:Islamic scripture is vast, encompassing not only the Qur’an but also the ahadith, the words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by his followers. Collections of ahadith run into the hundreds of volumes, and that’s just the Sunni variety. The Shi’a have their own collections, adding more volumes to the pile. Want to find passages justifying peace and concord? They’re in there. Want to find passages justifying violence? They’re in there too. Medieval Muslim scholars spent their whole careers trying to reconcile the contradictions between them. It’s extremely difficult to do, which is why early Muslims called the effort ijtihad, or “hard work.” People chuckled at the news of two men buying a copy of Islam for Dummies on their way to join the Islamic State.14 But having spent two decades studying the intricacies of Islamic scripture, I empathized with their bewilderment. ~ William McCants

397:I remember being amazed that death could so easily rise up from the nothing of a boyish afternoon, billow up like fog. I knew that West Baltimore, where I lived; that the north side of Philadelphia, where my cousins lived; that the South Side of Chicago, where friends of my father lived, comprised a world apart. Somewhere out there beyond the firmament, past the asteroid belt, there were other worlds where children did not regularly fear for their bodies. I knew this because there was a large television resting in my living room. In the evenings I would sit before this television bearing witness to the dispatches from this other world. There were little white boys with complete collections of football cards, and their only want was a popular girlfriend and their only worry was poison oak. That other world was suburban and endless, organized around pot roasts, blueberry pies, ~ Ta Nehisi Coates

398:If you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. ~ George Eliot

399:Looking out the window, I wondered how many of those kids had parents who were losing it, or parents who were gone, taken off without a forwarding address, or parents who had buried themselves alive, who could argue and chop wood and make asses of themselves without being fully conscious. How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they'd go to and what they'd major in and how much they'd earn and what car they'd buy. They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collections of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

400:An extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars…We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work…and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins…star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth…Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring. We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light. ~ Carl Sagan

401:I’ve been lucky enough now in my life to meet all sorts of extraordinary and accomplished people—world leaders, inventors, musicians, astronauts, athletes, professors, entrepreneurs, artists and writers, pioneering doctors and researchers. Some (though not enough) of them are women. Some (though not enough) are black or of color. Some were born poor or have lived lives that to many of us would appear to have been unfairly heaped with adversity, and yet still they seem to operate as if they’ve had every advantage in the world. What I’ve learned is this: All of them have had doubters. Some continue to have roaring, stadium-sized collections of critics and naysayers who will shout I told you so at every little misstep or mistake. The noise doesn’t go away, but the most successful people I know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who believe in them, and to push onward with their goals. ~ Michelle Obama

402:I guess its time you officially met the lost boys," I said to Daniel. "Lost boys? You mean like that old Kiefer Sutherland movie? "What? No, I mean like Peter Pan and the lost boys." "Is she calling us fairies?" Asked Slade. "No," Brent said. "She means the lost boys that never wanted to grow up, and got into mischief with Peter Pan." "Still sounds like fairies to me." Slade crossed his tattooed arms in front of his chest. "Still sounds like that Kiefer Sutherland movie to me." Daniel smirked. "We were in the play together, like, seven years ago. You were mad because my mom made you wear tights, but you wanted to be a pirate." Daniel held his hand up. "Partial amnesia here, remember? I must have blocked out any and all recollections associations with said tights." Brent, Zach, and Ryan laughed. Slade almost cracked a smile. ~ Bree Despain Grace, Daniel, and The Lost Boys ~ Bree Despain

403:Phelps and Hirst surveyed several hundred people about their September 11 recollections over a period of ten years, observing the subjects’ memories deteriorate even as the subjects exhibited no clue that their deeply felt stories were morphing. All the participants whom Phelps and Hirst surveyed had formed a flashbulb memory of the 9/11 attacks. It turned out that most of the forgetting, which was manifested in errors of either omission or commission, occurred in the first year after the event. The deviations ranged from simple tweaks to wholesale revisions, and even in the case of extreme changes, the subjects were unaware that they were deconstructing and reconstructing what seemed, to them, a very stable story. Researchers believe that the act of repeating a narrative somehow contaminates it, meaning that nowhere in our brains do any permanent, unmarred memories reside, no matter how much it may feel that way. ~ Lauren Slater

404:Art has no immediate future because all art is collective and there is no more collective life(there are only dead collections of people), and also because of this breaking of the true pact between the body and the soul. Greek art coincided with the beginning of geometry and with athleticism, the art of the Middle Ages with the craftsmen's guilds, the art of the Renaissance with the beginning of mechanics, etc....Since 1914 there has been a complete cut. Even comedy is almost impossible. There is only room for satire (when was it easier to understand Juvenal?). Art will never be reborn except from amidst a general anarchy - it will be epic no doubt, because affliction will have simplified a great many things...It is therefore quite useless for you to envy Leonardo or Bach. Greatness in our times must take a different course. Moreover it can only be solitary, obscure and without an echo...(but without an echo, no art). ~ Simone Weil

405:In the museums we used to visit on family vacations when I was a kid, I used to love those rooms which displayed collections of minerals in a kind of closet or chamber which would, at the push of a button, darken. Then ultraviolet lights would begin to glow and the minerals would seem to come alive, new colors, new possibilities, and architectures revealed. Plain stones became fantastic, “futuristic…” Of course there wasn’t any black light in the center of the earth, in the caves where they were quarried; how strange that these stones should have to be brought here, bathed with this unnatural light in order for their transcendent characters to emerge. Irradiation revealed a secret aspect of the world. Imagine illness as this light; demanding, torturous, punitive, it nonetheless reveals more of what things are. A certain glow of being appears. I think this is what is meant when we speculate that death is what makes love possible. ~ Mark Doty

406:No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine. This scattering of sticks in the dust, that any adult might kick through without a moment’s thought, is in truth the bones of a vast world, clothed, fleshed, a fortress, a forest, a great wall against which terrible hordes surge and are thrown back by a handful of grim heroes. A nest for dragons, and these shiny smooth pebbles are their eggs, each one home to a furious, glorious future. No creation was ever raised as fulfilled, as brimming, as joyously triumphant, and all the machinations and manipulations of adults are the ghostly recollections of childhood and its wonders, the awkward mating to cogent function, reasonable purpose; and each façade has a tale to recount, a legend to behold in stylized propriety. Statues in alcoves fix sombre expressions, indifferent to every passer-by. Regimentation rules these creaking, stiff minds so settled in habit and fear. ~ Steven Erikson

407:purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine. This scattering of sticks in the dust, that any adult might kick through without a moment’s thought, is in truth the bones of a vast world, clothed, fleshed, a fortress, a forest, a great wall against which terrible hordes surge and are thrown back by a handful of grim heroes. A nest for dragons, and these shiny smooth pebbles are their eggs, each one home to a furious, glorious future. No creation was ever raised as fulfilled, as brimming, as joyously triumphant, and all the machinations and manipulations of adults are the ghostly recollections of childhood and its wonders, the awkward mating to cogent function, reasonable purpose; and each façade has a tale to recount, a legend to behold in stylized propriety. Statues in alcoves fix sombre expressions, indifferent to every passer-by. Regimentation rules these creaking, stiff minds so settled in habit and fear. To ~ Steven Erikson

408:Have not the last three years been an utterly unprecedented, overwhelming and transforming experience for mankind? Will not the new world after the war be a new world indeed, on the one hand filled, nay, gorged, with recollections of doing and undergoing, of endurance and adventure, of daring and suffering and horror, of hellishness and heroism, beside which all the dreams of bygone romance must forever seem tame and vapid; and on the other hand straining with a hungry forecast towards a future of peace and justice such as mankind has not known before, which it will be its tremendous task to try and establish? Will not this world of so prodigiously intensified experiences and enlarged hopes and besetting anxieties require and produce new poets and a new poetry of its own that shall deal with the realities it has gone through and those it is striving for, and put away and cease to care for the old dreams and thrills and glamours of romance? ~ John Keats

409:No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine. This scattering of sticks in the dust, that any adult might kick through without a moment’s thought, is in truth the bones of a vast world, clothed, fleshed, a fortress, a forest, a great wall against which terrible hordes surge and are thrown back by a handful of grim heroes. A nest for dragons, and these shiny smooth pebbles are their eggs, each one home to a furious, glorious future. No creation was ever raised as fulfilled, as brimming, as joyously triumphant, and all the machinations and manipulations of adults are the ghostly recollections of childhood and its wonders, the awkward mating to cogent function, reasonable purpose; and each façade has a tale to recount, a legend to behold in stylized propriety. Statues in alcoves fix sombre expressions, indifferent to every passer-by. Regimentation rules these creaking, stiff minds so settled in habit and fear. To ~ Steven Erikson

410:At the bottom of the box were two big fairy-tale collections our father had sent us sometime after our parents divorced in 1963. I was four and my sister was five. We never saw him again. One book was a beautifully illustrated collection of Russian fairy tales inscribed, "To Rachel, from Daddy." The other, a book of Japanese fables, was inscribed to me. It had been years since I had opened them. I stared at the handwriting. Something seemed a bit off. Then it dawned on me - both inscriptions bore my own adolescent scrawl. I had always remembered the books and our father's dedications as proof of his love for us. Yet, how malleable our memories are, even if our brains are intact. Neuroscientists now suggest that while the core meaning of a long-term memory remains, the memory transforms each time we attempt to retrieve it. In fact, anatomical changes occur in the brain every single time we remember. As Proust said, "The only paradise is paradise lost. ~ Mira Bartok

411:Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds … gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare.… Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music.… I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.13 ~ John Piper

412:On the human imagination events produce the effects of time. Thus he who has travelled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has lived long; and the history that most abounds in important incidents soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity. In no other way can we account for the venerable air that is already gathering around American annals. When the mind reverts to the earliest days of colonial history, the period seems remote and obscure, the thousand changes that thicken along the links of recollections, throwing back the origin of the nation to a day so distant as seemingly to reach the mists of time; and yet four lives of ordinary duration would suffice to transmit, from mouth to mouth, in the form of tradition, all that civilized man has achieved within the limits of the republic.....Thus, what seems venerable by an accumulation of changes is reduced to familiarity when we come seriously to consider it solely in connection with time. ~ James Fenimore Cooper

413:To be sure, many of the Islamic State’s foot soldiers are ignorant of their own scriptures. Islamic scripture is vast, encompassing not only the Qur’an but also the ahadith, the words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by his followers. Collections of ahadith run into the hundreds of volumes, and that’s just the Sunni variety. The Shi’a have their own collections, adding more volumes to the pile. Want to find passages justifying peace and concord? They’re in there. Want to find passages justifying violence? They’re in there too. Medieval Muslim scholars spent their whole careers trying to reconcile the contradictions between them. It’s extremely difficult to do, which is why early Muslims called the effort ijtihad, or “hard work.” People chuckled at the news of two men buying a copy of Islam for Dummies on their way to join the Islamic State.14 But having spent two decades studying the intricacies of Islamic scripture, I empathized with their bewilderment. ~ William McCants

414:A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners, a two-or three-page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/TV/book bases. It was intended a) to dispense with awkward conversation, and b) to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might, at a later date, turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made. It amused us at the time, although Barry, being Barry, went one stage further: he compiled the questionnaire and presented it to some poor woman he was interested in, and she hit him with it. But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party. ~ Nick Hornby

415:At least one version of quantum theory, propounded by the Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann in the 1930's "claims that the world is built no out of bits of matter but out of bits of knowledge-subjective, conscious knowings," Stapp says. These ideas, however, have fallen far short of toppling the materialist worldview, which has emerged so triumphant that to suggest humbly that there might be more to mental life than action potentials zipping along axons is to risk being branded a scientific naif. Even worse, it is to be branded nonscientific. When, in 1997, I made just this suggestion over dinner to a former president of the Society for Neuroscience, he exlaimed, "Well, then you are not a scientist." Questioning whether consciousness, emotions, thoughts, the subjective feeling of pain, and the spark of creativity arise from nothing but the electrochemical activity of large collections of neuronal circuits is a good way to get dismissed as a hopeless dualist. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz

416:I didn’t know you involved yourself in political issues.” She glanced at him wryly. “Of course you didn’t. You don’t know a lot about me.” He scowled as he turned his attention to the circle and watched his mother dance, resplendent in her beautiful buckskins. No, he didn’t know a lot about Cecily, but he did know how devastated she’d been to discover he’d paid her way through college, absorbed all her expenses out of pity for her situation. He was sorry for how much that had hurt her. But over the past two years, he’d deliberately distanced himself from her. He wondered why… “I had dinner with Senator Holden last week,” she said conversationally, deliberately trying to irritate him. “He wanted to point me toward some special collections for the museum.” He stared at his mother in the circle, but he was frowning, deep in thought. “I don’t like Holden,” he said curtly. “Yes, I know. You’ll be delighted to hear that he returned your sentiment,” she said with a chuckle at his scowl. ~ Diana Palmer

417:It was a very instructive experience for me as a writer because it was the only time in which I have tried to be totally truthful in writing a novel, in which I have tried not to invent but to remember and report my recollections objectively. I discovered it was impossible, that you cannot do this if you are writing a novel, that fiction is incompatible with objective reporting of living experience, that there is an essential incompatibility between these two things-fiction and a living document, an objective report of real life. I was constantly misguided by my own memory. My own memory was being deformed by my imagination, by my fantasy. I felt there was an invincible pressure from my fantasy to introduce changes in my memory in order to have a better document, in order to improve the text I was writing. On the other hand what I was trying to remember and put in the novel was not put in a vacuum but in a novel in which there was an imaginary context, a fantasy world, the world of Pedro Camacho. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

418:After Bailey came Samuel Johnson, His Cantankerousness. Son of a London bookseller, a university dropout, afflicted with depression and what modern doctors think was likely Tourette’s—“a man of bizarre appearance, uncouth habits, and minimal qualifications”—Johnson was bewilderingly chosen by a group of English booksellers and authors to write the authoritative dictionary of English. Because of the seriousness of the charge, and because Johnson was scholarly but not a proper scholar, he began work on his dictionary the way that all of us now do: he read. He focused on the great works of English literature—Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Locke, Pope—but also took in more mundane, less elevated works. Among the books that crossed his desk were research on fossils, medical texts, treatises on education, poetry, legal writing, sermons, periodicals, collections of personal letters, scientific explorations of color, books debunking common myths and superstitions of the day, abridged histories of the world, and other dictionaries. ~ Kory Stamper

419:In the end, what is most satisfying about the picture of space given by loop quantum gravity is that it is completely relational. The spin networks do not live in space; their structure generates space. And they are nothing but a structure of relations, governed by how the edges are tied together at the nodes. Also coded in are rules about how the edges may knot and link with one another. It is also very satisfying that there is a complete correspondence between the classical and quantum pictures of geometry. In classical geometry the volumes of regions and the areas of the surfaces depend on the values of gravitational fields. They are coded in certain complicated collections of mathematical functions, known collectively as the metric tensor. On the other hand, in the quantum picture the geometry is coded in the choice of a spin network. These spin networks correspond to the classical description in that, given any classical geometry, one can find a spin network which describes, to some level of approximation, the same geometry (Figure 27). ~ Lee Smolin

420:...the name of the baby girl, the names of her parents and godparents, the date and hour of her birth, the street and the number of the apartment where she first saw the light of day and first felt pain, the same beginning as everyone else, the differences, great and small, come later, some of those who are born become entries in encyclopedias, in history books, in biographies, in catalogues, in manuals, in collections of newspaper clippings, the others, roughly speaking, are like a cloud that passes without leaving behind it any trace of its passing, and if rain fell from that cloud it did not even wet the earth. Like me, thought Senhor Jose. He had a cupboard full of men and women about whom the newspapers wrote almost every day, on the table was a birth certificate of an unknown person, and it was as if he had placed them both in the pans of a scale, a hundred on this side, one the other, and was surprised to discover that all of them together weighted no more than this one, that one hundred equaled one, that one was worth as much as a hundred. ~ Jos Saramago

421:Some literary recommendations: James Salter’s erotic masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime; Anais Nin’s collections of short stories Delta of Venus and Little Birds; the erotic novels Emanuelle by Emanuelle Arsan and Story of O by Pauline Réage; Harold Brodkey’s sexual saga “Innocence”—perhaps the greatest depiction of a session of cunnilingus ever penned; novels by Jerzy Kosinski such as Passion Play and Cockpit; Henry Miller’s Under the Roofs of Paris and Quiet Days in Clichy; My Secret Life by Anonymous and The Pure and the Impure by Colette; Nancy Friday’s anthology of fantasies, Secret Garden (filled with the correspondence of real people’s fantasies); stories from The Mammoth Book of Erotica or one of the many erotic anthologies edited by Susie Bright. For those with a taste for poetry, try Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire or Flesh Unlimited by Guillaume Apollinaire. And for those who like comic books (kinky ones, that is), try the extra-hot works of writer/illustrator Eric Stanton, who specializes in female-domination fantasies. ~ Ian Kerner

422:I have led an extraordinary life on this planet, while at the same time travelling across the universe by using my mind and the laws of physics. I have been to the furthest reaches of our galaxy, travelled into a black hole and gone back to the beginning of time. On Earth, I have experienced highs and lows, turbulence and peace, success and suffering. I have been rich and poor, I have been able-bodied and disabled. I have been praised and criticised, but never ignored. I have been enormously privileged, through my work, in being able to contribute to our understanding of the universe. But it would be an empty universe indeed if it were not for the people I love, and who love me. Without them, the wonder of it all would be lost on me. And at the end of all this, the fact that we humans, who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature, have been able to come to an understanding of the laws governing us, and our universe, is a great triumph. I want to share my excitement about these big questions and my enthusiasm about this quest. ~ Stephen Hawking

423:received his M.A. in English Literature from Delhi University, Delhi and taught for short while at Calicut University before working as journalist in Mumbai for many English newspaper including the Times of India , Times Sunday Review , Bombay Times besides others. He was resident editor of the Times of India in Pune for three years. He is now senior editor with the Times of India in Delhi. A selection of his poems was included in Gemini II in 1994 . He published an independent collection of poems Posthumous Poems in 2000. His first novel An Iron Harvest, about the Naxalite uprising, was published by Indiaink. He has also published three collections of poetry. He currently lives in delhi. A Friend In Need He sits in a chair Whose fourth leg’s his. He loves this chair. They used to make love in it. That was when the chair Had four plus two plus two, Eight legs. Days with legs. Since then there’s been a lot of walking out. Now the chair’s short of a leg And he’s lending his. ~ C. P. Surendran

424:Mahomet has been extolled by Moslem writers for the chastity of his early life ; and it is remarkable that, with all the plurality of wives indulged in by the Arabs, and which he permitted himself in subsequent years, and with all that constitutional fondness which he evinced for the sex, he remained single in his devotion to Cadijah to her dying day, never giving her a rival in his house, nor in his heart. Even the fresh and budding charms of Ayesha, which soon assumed such empire over him, could not obliterate the deep and mingled feeling of tenderness and gratitude for his early benefactress. Ayesha was piqued one day at hearing him indulge in these fond recollections : " O, apostle of God, " demanded the youth-ful beauty, "was not Cadijah stricken in years? Has not Allah given thee a better wife in her stead?" " Never ! " exclaimed Mahomet, with an honest burst of feeling — " never did God give me a better ! When I was poor, she enriched me ; when I was pronounced a liar, she believed in me ; when I was opposed by all the world, she remained true tome! ~ Washington Irving

425:String theory is potentially the next and final step in this progression. In a single framework, it handles the domains claimed by relativity and the quantum. Moreover, and this is worth sitting up straight to hear, string theory does so in a manner that fully embraces all the discoveries that preceded it. A theory based on vibrating filaments might not seem to have much in common with general relativity's curved spacetime picture of gravity. Nevertheless, apply string theory's mathematics to a situation where gravity matters but quantum mechanics doesn't (to a massive object, like the sun, whose size is large) and out pop Einstein's equations. Vibrating filaments and point particles are also quite different. But apply string theory's mathematics to a situation where quantum mechanics matters but gravity doesn't (to small collections of strings that are not vibrating quickly, moving fast, or stretched long; they have low energy-equivalently, low mass- so gravity plays virtually no role) and the math of string theory morphs into the math of quantum field theory. ~ Brian Greene

426:VI. FINAL WARNING There are monsters in these pages, but as Ogden Nash pointed out in my first short-story collection, Smoke and Mirrors, where there’s a monster, there’s also a miracle. There are some long stories and some short ones. There are a handful of poems, which perhaps might need their own warning for the people who are frightened, disturbed, or terminally puzzled by poetry. (In my second short-story collection, Fragile Things, I tried to explain that the poems come free. They are bonuses for the kind of people who do not need to worry about sneaky and occasional poems lurking inside their short-story collections.) There. Consider yourself warned. There are so many little triggers out there, being squeezed in the darkness even as I write this. This book is correctly labeled. Now all we have to worry about is all the other books, and, of course, life, which is huge and complicated and will not warn you before it hurts you. Thank you for coming. Enjoy the things that never happened. Secure your own mask again after you read these stories, but do not forget to help others. ~ Neil Gaiman

427:Even big collections of ordinary books distort space and time, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves that end in little doors that are surely too small for a full sized human to enter.  The relevant equation is Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else.  All libraries are connected in L-space by the bookwormholes created by the strong space-time distortions found in any large collection of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact — because it amounts to time travel.  The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: (1) Silence; (2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown, and (3) the nature of causality must not be interfered with. ~ Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs in The Discworld Companion (1997).

428:May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. [Letter to Roger C. Weightman on the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, 24 June 1826. This was Jefferson's last letter] ~ Thomas Jefferson

429:Till Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield, and looked in vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. The certainty of meeting him had not been checked by any of those recollections that might not unreasonably have alarmed her. She had dressed with more than usual care, and prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all that remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than might be won in the course of the evening. But in an instant arose the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Darcy's pleasure in the Bingleys' invitation to the officers; and though this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence was pronounced by his friend Denny, to whom Lydia eagerly applied, and who told them that Wickham had been obliged to go to town on business the day before, and was not yet returned; adding, with a significant smile, "I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now, if he had not wanted to avoid a certain gentleman here. ~ Jane Austen

430:(showing 1-2 of 2) sort by ↑ top up up 1 position down down ↓ bottom Remove this quote from your collectionSalvador Dalí “I don't do drugs. I am drugs.” ― Salvador Dalí tags: drugs 918 likes ↑ top up up 2 position down down ↓ bottom Remove this quote from your collection “But it's funny how even after all these years you find yourself wondering just how well you know anyone. Hell, we've all been tight since we we're kids - been through a lot together - but we still have secrets, don't we? All of us. None of us are ever exactly, precisely what we claim to be, are we? We're one way with some people, another way with other people, maybe another way still when we're all alone. That's what it boils down to fellas. At night, when you're lying there in bed looking at the ceiling, remembering the day, thinking back through things you did and what lies ahead, when it's just you and whatever god you pray to in the dark ...that's when all the masks are peeled away and it's just you. Just you..., and whoever...or whatever you are. ~ Greg F Gifune

431:But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had at school, long time ago, with ‘Master Pinch, Grove House Academy’, inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes, neatly ranged within – what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open: tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like hand-posts on the outskirts of great cities to the rich stock of incident beyond; and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honoured name, whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any form, upon the narrow shelf beside his bed … What a heart-breaking shop it was! ~ Charles Dickens

432:Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while walking the streets, traveling to see a friend; and life does not stop while he remembers. Analysis in movement. No static vivisection. Henry's daily and continuous flow of life, his sexual activity, his talks with everyone, his cafe life, his conversations with people in the street, which I once considered an interruption to writing, I now believe to be a quality which distinguishes him from other writers. He never writes in cold blood: he is always writing in white heat. It is what I do with the journal, carrying it everywhere, writing on cafe tables while waiting for a friend, on the train, on the bus, in waiting rooms at the station, while my hair is washed, at the Sorbonne when the lectures get tedious, on journeys, trips, almost while people are talking. It is while cooking, gardening, walking, or love-making that I remember my childhood, and not while reading Freud's 'Preface to a Little Girl's Journal. ~ Ana s Nin

433:Now,’ he continued, again addressing me, ‘I have received the pilgrim – a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.’ ‘To speak truth, sir, I don’t understand you at all; I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection; one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.’ ‘Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am paving hell11 with energy.’ ‘Sir?’ ‘I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been. ~ Charlotte Bront

434:My house is full of books. I suppose that I have read all of them, bar reference books and poetry collections in which I will not have read every poem. I have forgotten many, indeed most. At some point, I have emptied each of these into that insatiable vessel, the mind, and they are now lost somewhere within. If I reopen a book, there is recognition--oh yes, I've been here--but to have the contents again, familiar, new-minted, I would have to read right through. What happens to all this information, this inferno of language? Where does it go? Much, apparently, becomes irretrievable sediment; a fair amount, the significant amount, becomes that essential part of us--what we know and understand and think about above and beyond our own immediate concerns. It has become the life of the mind. What we have read makes us what we are--quite as much as what we have experienced and where we have been and who we have known. To read is to experience. I can measure out my life in books. They stand along the way like signposts: the moments of absorption and empathy and direction and enlightenment and sheer pleasure. ~ Penelope Lively

435:Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of the King's Bench, was born in 1478, in Milk Street, in the city of London. After his earlier education at St. Anthony's School, in Threadneedle Street, he was placed, as a boy, in the household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to be so established together in a relation of patron and client. The youth wore his patron's livery, and added to his state. The patron used, afterwards, his wealth or influence in helping his young client forward in the world. Cardinal Morton had been in earlier days that Bishop of Ely whom Richard III. sent to the Tower; was busy afterwards in hostility to Richard; and was a chief adviser of Henry VII., who in 1486 made him Archbishop of Canterbury, and nine months afterwards Lord Chancellor. Cardinal Morton—of talk at whose table there are recollections in "Utopia"—delighted in the quick wit of young Thomas More. He once said, "Whoever shall live to try it, shall see this child here waiting at table prove a notable and rare man. ~ Thomas More

436:…This… ’stuff’? I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? …And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff. ~ Lauren Weisberger

437:We were nobodies, two young lit. students chatting away in a rickety old house in a small town at the edge of the world, a place where nothing of any significance had ever happened and presumably never would, we had barely started out on our lives and knew nothing about anything, but what we read was not nothing, it concerned matters of the utmost significance and was written by the greatest thinkers and writers in Western culture, and that was basically a miracle, all you had to do was fill in a library lending slip and you had access to what Plato, Sappho or Aristophanes had written in the incomprehensibly distant mists of time, or Homer, Sophocles, Ovid, Lucullus, Lucretius or Dante, Vasari, da Vinci, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes or Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lukács, Arendt or those who wrote in the modern day, Foucault, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Deleuze, Serres. Not to mention the millions of novels, plays and collections of poetry which were available. All one lending slip and a few days away. We didn’t read any of these to be able to summarise the contents, as we did with the literature on the syllabus, but because they could give us something. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd

438:Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell. ~ Osamu Dazai

439:David had been photographing endangered species in the Hawaiian rainforest and elsewhere for years, and his collections of photographs and Suzie's tarot cards seemed somehow related. Because species disappear when their habitat does, he photographed them against the nowhere of a black backdrop (which sometimes meant propping up a black velvet cloth in the most unlikely places and discouraging climates), and so each creature, each plant, stood as though for a formal portrait alone against the darkness. The photographs looked like cards too, card from the deck of the world in which each creature describes a history, a way of being in the world, a set of possibilities, a deck from which cards are being thrown away, one after another. Plants and animals are a language, even in our reduced, domesticated English, where children grow like weeds or come out smelling like roses, the market is made up of bulls and bears, politics of hawks and doves. Like cards, flora and fauna could be read again and again, not only alone but in combination, in the endlessly shifting combinations of a nature that tells its own stories and colors ours, a nature we are losing without even knowing the extent of that loss. ~ Rebecca Solnit

440:Though all the Protestant denominations have historically condemned the veneration of holy objects (relics) and their use in healing, the Catholic church - until recently - preferred to depend entirely upon the magical qualities attributed to the possessions or actual physical parts of various saints and biblical characters for healing. The Vatican not only permitted but encouraged this practice, which entered history in the third century. Catholic churches and private collections still overflow with hundreds of thousands of items. Included are pieces of the True Cross (enough to build a few log cabins), bones of the children slain by King Herod, the toenails and bones of St. Peter, the bones of the Three Wise Kings and of St. Stephen (as well as his complete corpse, including another complete skeleton!), jars of the Virgin Mary’s milk, the bones and several entire heads and pieces thereof that were allegedly once atop John the Baptist, 16 foreskins of Christ, Mary Magdalene’s entire skeleton (with two right feet), scraps of bread and fish left over from feeding the 5,000, a crust of bread from the Last Supper, and a hair from Christ’s beard - not to mention a few shrouds, including the one at Turin. ~ James Randi

441:The Baal Shem's call was a call to subjectivity, to passionate involvement; the tales he told and those told about him appeal to the imagination rather than to reason. They try to prove that man is more than he appears to be and that he is capable of giving more than he appears to possess. To dissect them, therefore, is to diminish them. To judge them is to detach oneself and taint their candor - in so doing, one loses more than one could gain. ...[I]t is precisely on the imagination that the Baal-Shem plays - even after his death. Each of his disciples saw him differently; to each he represented something else. Their attitudes toward him, as they emerge from their recollections, throw more light on themselves than on him. This explains the countless contradictory tales relating to him. The historians may have been troubled, but not the Hasidim. Hasidism does not fear contradictions; Hasidism teaches humility and pride, the fear of God and the love of God, the at once sacred and puerile dimension of life, the Master's role of intermediary between man and God, a role that can and must be disregarded in their I-and-Thou relationship. What does it prove? Only that contradictions are an intrinsic part of man. ~ Elie Wiesel

442:Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes—of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the glass and send round the song—and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it’s no worse. ~ Charles Dickens

443:Hollyhocks Old-fashioned flowers! I love them all: The morning-glories on the wall, The pansies in their patch of shade, The violets, stolen from a glade, The bleeding hearts and columbine, Have long been garden friends of mine; But memory every summer flocks About a clump of hollyhocks. The mother loved them years ago; Beside the fence they used to grow, And though the garden changed each year And certain blooms would disappear To give their places in the ground To something new that mother found, Some pretty bloom or rosebush rare— The hollyhocks were always there. It seems but yesterday to me She led me down the yard to see The first tall spires, with bloom aflame, And taught me to pronounce their name. And year by year I watched them grow, The first flowers I had come to know. And with the mother dear I'd yearn To see the hollyhocks return. The garden of my boyhood days With hollyhocks was kept ablaze; In all my recollections they In friendly columns nod and sway; And when to-day their blooms I see, Always the mother smiles at me; The mind's bright chambers, life unlocks Each summer with the hollyhocks. ~ Edgar Albert Guest

444:Despite the empire’s problems, however, its former emperor had succeeded in making Byzantium a shining beacon of civilization. The architectural triumph of the Hagia Sophia had only been possible by sophisticated advances in mathematics, and it soon spawned a flourishing school dedicated to improving the field. In Byzantium, primary education was available for both genders, and thanks to the stability of Justinian’s rule, virtually every level of society was literate. Universities throughout the empire continued the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions that were by now over a millennium old, and the works of the great scientists of antiquity were compiled in both public and private libraries. The old western provinces under barbarian rule, by contrast, were quickly sinking into the brutish chaos of the Dark Ages, with recollections of advanced urban life a fading memory. Literacy declined precipitously as the struggle to scratch out an existence made education an unaffordable luxury, and it would have disappeared completely without the church. There, writing was still valued, and remote monasteries managed to keep learning dimly alive. But throughout the West, trade slowed to a crawl, cities shrank, and the grand public buildings fell into disrepair. ~ Lars Brownworth

445:It is because of this sea between us. The earth has never, up to now, separated us. But, ever since yesterday, there has been something in this nonetheless real, perfectly Atlantic, salty, slightly rough sea that has cast a spell on me. And every time I think about Promethea, I see her crossing this great expanse by boat and soon, alas, a storm comes up, my memory clouds over, in a flash there are shipwrecks, I cannot even cry out, my mouth is full of saltwater sobs. I am flooded with vague, deceptive recollections, I am drowning in my imagination in tears borrowed from the most familiar tragedies, I wish I had never read certain books whose poison is working in me. Has this Friday, perhaps, thrown a spell on me? But spells only work if you catch them. I have caught the Tragic illness. If only Promethea would make me some tea I know I would find some relief. But that is exactly what is impossible. And so, today, I am sinning. I am sinking beneath reality. I am weighted down with literature. That is my fate. Yet I had the presence of mind to start this parenthesis, the only healthy moment in these damp, feverish hours. All this to try to come back to the surface of our book... Phone me quickly, Promethea, get me out of this parenthesis fast!) ~ H l ne Cixous

446:Most people try to find meaning in life by building something that's not just here today and gone tomorrow. We strive to overcomeour sense of finiteness by producingsomething. Some people build equity and get a great sense of power and success by looking at their house and thinkingthrough their portfolio. Somebuild professional reputations throughskilland hard work and get a sense of power and success from their heavy responsibilities and the numbersof people that look to them for leadership. Some people build artistic expressions and exalt in what they have created. Some,moresimply, build hobbies and collections (of coins or beetles or buttons) and gain a senseof superiority from the size of their collection or the richness of their garden or the shine of their car or the wonders of their new Apple computer. The falseteachers in 2 Peter lined their pockets with money (2:14–16); elevated themselves aboveauthority (2:10), built a reputation as astute interpreters of Paul's hard letters (3:16;2:18),and gave themselves to sexual licentiousness. Peter's response to us and themisthis: it'sgoing to be burned up. The implication of verse 11is this: the only things that are going to survive the fires of judgment on this earth are the expressionsof holiness and godliness. I ~ John Piper

447:Even asleep, the little greyhound trailed after her madame, through a weave of green stars and gas lamps, along the boulevards of Paris. It was a conjured city that no native would recognize—Emma Bovary’s head on the pillow, its architect. Her Paris was assembled from a guidebook with an out-of-date map, and from the novels of Balzac and Sand, and from her vividly disordered recollections of the viscount’s ball at La Vaubyessard, with its odor of dying flowers, burning flambeaux, and truffles. (Many neighborhoods within the city’s quivering boundaries, curiously enough, smelled identical to the viscount’s dining room.) A rose and gold glow obscured the storefront windows, and cathedral bells tolled continuously as they strolled past the same four landmarks: a tremulous bridge over the roaring Seine, a vanilla-white dress shop, the vague façade of the opera house—overlaid in more gold light—and the crude stencil of a theater. All night they walked like that, companions in Emma’s phantasmal labyrinth, suspended by her hopeful mists, and each dawn the dog would wake to the second Madame Bovary, the lightly snoring woman on the mattress, her eyes still hidden beneath a peacock sleep mask. Lumped in the coverlet, Charles’s blocky legs tangled around her in an apprehensive pretzel, a doomed attempt to hold her in their marriage bed. ~ Jennifer Egan

448:Why are the fundamental laws as we have described them? The ultimate theory must be consistent and must predict finite results for quantities that we can measure. We’ve seen that there must be a law like gravity, and we saw in Chapter 5 that for a theory of gravity to predict finite quantities, the theory must have what is called supersymmetry between the forces of nature and the matter on which they act. M-theory is the most general supersymmetric theory of gravity. For these reasons M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe. If it is finite—and this has yet to be proved—it will be a model of a universe that creates itself. We must be part of this universe, because there is no other consistent model. M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. The fact that we human beings—who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature—have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph. But perhaps the true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes a vast universe full of the amazing variety that we see. If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design. ~ Stephen Hawking

449:I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. Your retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of innocence. But with me, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude which cannot, which ought not, to be repelled. I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased. ~ Jane Austen

450:Ordinarily, when he thought back upon those days, let alone upon his student years and the Bamboo Grove, it had always been as if he were gazing from a cool, dull room out into broad, brightly sunlit landscapes, into the irrevocable past, the paradise of memory. Such recollections had always been, even when they were free of sadness, a vision of things remote and different, separated from the prosaic present by a mysterious festiveness. But now, on this bright and cheerful September afternoon, with the strong greens and browns all around him and the ethereal, gently misted tones of blues verging into violet in the distance, as he trudged along at an easy pace, with frequent pauses to look about him, that walking tour of so long ago did not seem a distant paradise cut off from a resigned present. rather his present journey was the same as that of the past, the present Joseph Knecht was close as a brother to the Knecht of those days. Everything was new again, mysterious, promising; all that had been could recur, and many new things as well. It was long, long since he had looked out upon the day and the world and seen them as so unburdened, so beautiful and innocent. The happiness of freedom, of commanding his own destiny, flooded through him like a strong drink. How long it was since he had last had this feeling, last entertained this lovely and rapturous illusion. ~ Hermann Hesse

451:Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives. William James first wrote about the curious warping and foreshortening of psychological time in his Principles of Psychology in 1890: “In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous and long-drawn-out,” he wrote. “But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.” Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. “If to remember is to be human, then remembering more means being more human,” said Ed. ~ Joshua Foer

452:While the Austrian crown was dissolving like jelly in your fingers, everyone wanted Swiss francs and American dollars, and large numbers of foreigners exploited the economic situation to feed on the twitching corpse of the old Austrian currency. Austria was ‘discovered’, and became disastrously popular with foreign visitors in a parody of the society season. All the hotels in Vienna were crammed full with these vultures; they would buy anything, from toothbrushes to country estates; they cleared out private collections of antiquities and the antique dealers’ shops before the owners realised how badly they had been robbed and cheated in their time of need. Hotel receptionists from Switzerland and Dutch shorthand typists stayed in the princely apartments of the Ringstrasse hotels. Incredible as it may seem, I can vouch for it that for a long time the famous, de luxe Hotel de l’Europe in Salzburg was entirely booked by unemployed members of the English proletariat, who could live here more cheaply than in their slums at home, thanks to the generous unemployment benefit they received. Anything that was not nailed down disappeared. Word gradually spread of the cheap living and low prices in Austria. Greedy visitors came from further and further afield, from Sweden, from France, and you heard more Italian, French, Turkish and Romanian than German spoken in the streets of the city centre of Vienna. ~ Stefan Zweig

453:Most of this material is accessible in the Dunayevskaya and Glaberman collections in the Wayne State University Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs in Detroit. When occasionally I look up something in the collections, I find it hard to believe that we wrote so much and took on so many literary critics and historians. The Johnson-Forest Tendency consisted of a small number of members—never more than sixty to seventy in an organization of several hundred. But the fervor with which we supported the independent black struggle and attacked the alienation of human beings in the process of capitalist production made us stand out in any gathering. Most members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency were part of the new generation who had joined the radical movement in the 1940s because we wanted to make a second American Revolution—which to us meant mainly encouraging the struggles of rank-and-file workers to take over control of production inside the plant and supporting the black struggle for full social, economic, and political equality. Black, white, Asian, and Chicano, workers and intellectuals, living on the East Coast, West Coast, and in the Midwest, we were a representative sample of the new human forces that were emerging in the United States during World War II. Because CLR could not be publicly active, we acted as his transmission belt to the larger American community. Our little organization was a collective way to know reality. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

454:The Bible says, "Be kind and compassionate to one another" (Ephesians 4:32). So be a blessing in someone's life today. ur hearts will be found in the vicinity of our treasures." That's so true, isn't it? Over the years, I've asked hundreds of women to tell me the stories of their treasures. I've been treated to some incredible stories, from a loving grandmother to an inherited Bible, from a mysterious, closed-up room to antique furniture. I've learned about collections and great recipes. The stories are all about the special objects or people in our lives that speak to us about love and hope and memories. Listen carefully to these words from Psalm 119:16: "[LORD,] I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word." Now thats a treasure. don't know what I'd do without friends. They cry with me, laugh with me-and, for sure-they're the ones who most often "speak truth" (whether I want to hear it or not). There's nothing that makes life better than friends. My advice? Do everything you can to nurture the special people in your life. It sometimes takes extra thought and definitely precious time, but what joy is yours when you do! Every Saturday morning at seven, my friend Sharon spends a very special hour on the phone with her sister. It's the highlight of the week for both of them. They love and support one another, laugh, and share even the most mundane happenings of the week. Enjoy and treasure your relationships! ~ Emilie Barnes

455:pring is a great time to introduce your children to the wonders of God's creation. Take them to a garden center and let them pick out a tree to be planted in your yard. Let them help dig the hole, add soil amendments, and place the tree. As they fill the hole around the tree, talk about how amazing God was when creating the world. Your children will love watching the tree grow through the years... as they grow with it. And remember when you used to press flowers in a scrapbook? Why not do it again? Use the pages of your phone book or apply heavy weight as you press and dry the flowers. When they're completely dry, use a tiny bit of glue to arrange them on colorful or white poster board. Add lace and ribbon, and you've got a perfect pressed flower arrangement. Or make it more masculine by adding graphics of sports, animals, cars, or trucks. ere's a tip that'll help in the dilemma of what to do with your various collections. Always arrange them in odd-numbered groupings. Three is a magic number. Cluster things that have differing shapes, but keep a theme going. ho is your best friend? Who is your second best friend? Now think about it. Is there really such a thing as a "bad" friend? Not all friendships are alike, to be sure. Some are casual and relaxing. Others are intense and stimulating. And some surprise us by seeming to come out of nowhere. Some friendships will fade ...a truth we have to accept. I have several "friends of the heart." These people aren't necessarily "best friends" because ~ Emilie Barnes

456:Peter is still amazed at the degree to which a certain widening gyre of accolades can change an artist's work, literally change it, not just the new stuff but the old as well, the pieces that have been around for a while, that have seemed "interesting" or "promising" but minor, until (not often, just once in a while) an artist is by some obscure consensus declared to have been neglected, misrepresented, ahead of his time. What's astonishing to Peter is the way the work itself seems to change, more or less in the way of a reasonably pretty girl who is suddenly treated as a beauty. Peculiar, clever Victoria Hwang is going to be in Artforum next month, and probably in the collections of the Whitney and the Guggenheim; Renee Zellweger - moonfaced, squinty-eyed, a character actress if ever there was one - was just on the cover of Vogue, looking ravishing in a silver gown. It is, of course, a trick of perception - the understanding that that funny little artist or that quirky-looking girl must be taken with new seriousness - but Peter suspects there's a deeper change at work. Being the focus of that much attention (and, yes, of that much money) seems to differently excite the molecules of the art or the actress or the politician. It's not just a phenomenon of altered expectations, it's a genuine transubstantiation, brought about by altered expectations. Renée Zellweger becomes a beauty, and would look like a beauty to someone who had never heard of her. Victoria Hwang's videos and sculptures are about, it seems, to become not just intriguing and amusing but significant. ~ Michael Cunningham

457:For The New Year FLUSHED with a crimson sunrise beauty, The fair new year its promise gave; Such dreams we had of love, of duty, Of heights to scale, of foes to brave! Oh, how hope's fire our future lighted-How much to do, how much to know, Yet on its brink we shrank affrighted A year ago. And now the year is done--its pleasure So brief, so bright--its hours of pain; Some moments' memories we treasure, Some recollections loathe in vain. Oh, for a brain where could not waken Remembrances of purpose crossed, Of trusts abandoned, aims forsaken, And chances lost! The changing seasons thrust upon us Another year, fair-faced and new; What evil have the old years done us That this in its turn will not do? This, too, will die, and leave us grieving For all the ills its arms enfold-For faiths betrayed, for friends deceiving, And love grown cold. We have been fooled. The hopes that fooled us-We know them now--have been a lie; The star that led, the light that ruled us-We scorn them, and we pass them by. Shut out hope's light; past is the season When rose-red glow seemed good to see. Look--by the cold white light of reason, These things shall be: 122 A long, dim vista, blank and dreary-The same hard failure, small success; The same tired heart, the brain still weary Of its intense self-consciousness; The old despair, the old repining, And, through the future's deepest night, Down life's untrodden ways still shining, The old hope's light! ~ Edith Nesbit

458:Bohr advanced a heavyhanded remedy: evolve probability waves according to Schrodinger's equation whenever you're not looking or performing any kind of measurement. But when you do look, Bohr continued, you should throw Schrodinger's equation aside and declare that your observation has caused the wave to collapse. Now, not only is this prescription ungainly, not only is it arbitrary, not only does it lack a mathematical underpinning, it's not even clear. For instance, it doesn't precisely define "looking" or "measuring." Must a human be involved? Or, as Einstein once asked, will a sidelong glance from a mouse suffice? How about a computer's probe, or even a nudge from a bacterium or virus? Do these "measurements" cause probability waves to collapse? Bohr announced that he was drawing a line in the sand separating small things, such as atoms and their constituents, to which Schrodinger's equation would apply, and big things, such as experimenters and their equipment, to which it wouldn't. But he never said where exactly that line would be. The reality is, he couldn't. With each passing year, experimenters confirm that Schrodinger's equation works, without modification, for increasingly large collections of particles, and there's every reason to believe that it works for collections as hefty as those making up you and me and everything else. Like floodwaters slowly rising from your basement, rushing into your living room, and threatening to engulf your attic, the mathematics of quantum mechanics has steadily spilled beyond the atomic domain and has succeeded on ever-larger scales. ~ Brian Greene

459:Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you. When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t ‘mean anything’ because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes. The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming. One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you. ~ Cheryl Strayed

460:And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken! We write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home! ~ Charles Dickens

461:Glory and loveliness have pass'd away; For if we wander out in early morn, No wreathed incense do we see upborne Into the east, to meet the smiling day: No crowd of nymphs soft voic'd and young, and gay, In woven baskets bringing ears of corn, Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn The shrine of Flora in her early May. But there are left delights as high as these, And I shall ever bless my destiny, That in a time, when under pleasant trees Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free, A leafy luxury, seeing I could please With these poor offerings, a man like thee. Dedication of his Poems, 1817. 'Keats's first volume, published early in 1817, is a foolscap octavo worked in half sheets. It was issued in drab boards, with a back label Keats's Poems, and consists of a blank leaf, fly-title Poems in heavy black letter, with imprint on verso, ''Printed by C. Richards, No. 18, Warwick Street, Golden Square, London,' title-page given opposite...' etc. 'Readers of Charles Cowden Clarke's Recollections of Keats,... will remember the statement, still appropriate here, that, ''on the evening when the last proof sheet [of the 1817 volume] was brought from the printer, it was accompanied by the information that if a 'dedication to the book was intended it must be sent forthwith.' Whereupon he withdrew to a side table, and in the buzz of a mixed conversation (for there were several friends in the room) he composed and brought to Charles Ollier, the publisher, the Dedication Sonnet to Leigh Hunt.'' The first of the three Sonnets to Keats in Hunt's Foliage forms a fitting reply to this.' ~ John Keats, Dedication To Leigh Hunt, Esq.

462:Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws. The ever-sleepless sea in its bed, crying out “how long?” to Time; million-formed and never motionless flame; the contemplation of these two aspects alone, affords me sufficient food for ten spans of my expected lifetime. It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me. Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

463:"She"       How shall I welcome not this light    Or, wakened by it, greet with doubt    This beam as palpable to sight    As visible to touch? How not,    Old as I am and (some say) wise,    Revive beneath her summer eyes?       How not have all my nights and days,    My spirit ranging far and wide,    By recollections of her grace    Enlightened and preoccupied?    Preoccupied: the Morning Star    How near the Sun and yet how far!       Enlightened: true, but more than true,    Or why must I discover there    The meaning in this taintless dew,    The dancing wave, this blessed air    Enchanting in its morning dress    And calm as everlastingness?       The flame that in the heart resides    Is parcel of that central Fire    Whose energy is winds and tides-    Is rooted deep in the Desire    That smilingly unseals its power    Each summer in each springing flower.       Oh Lady Nature-Proserpine,    Mistress of Gender, star-crowned Queen!    Ah Rose of Sharon-Mistress mine,    My teacher ere I turned fourteen,    When first I hallowed from afar    Your Beautyship in avatar!       I sense the hidden thing you say,    Your subtle whisper how the Word    From Alpha on to Omega    Made all things-you confide my Lord    Himself-all, all this potent Frame,    All save the riddle of your name.       Wisdom! I heard a voice that said:    "What riddle? What is that to you?    How! By my follower betrayed!    Look up-for shame! Now tell me true:    Where meet you light, with love and grace?    Still unacquainted with my face?"       Dear God, the erring heart must live-    Through strength and weakness, calm and glow-    That answer Wisdom scorns to give.    Much have I learned. One problem, though,    I never shall unlock: Who then,    Who made Sophia feminine?    ~ Owen Barfield, 1978,

464:~ Adrian Henri 's Last Will And Testament `No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a Fryingpan owns death.' William Burroughs To whom it may concern: As my imminent death is hourly expected these days/ carbrakes screaming on East Lancs tarmac/trapped in the blazing cinema/mutely screaming I TOLD YOU SO from melting eyeballs as the whitehot fireball dissolves the Cathedral/being the first human being to die of a hangover/ dying of over­emotion after seeing 20 schoolgirls waiting at a zebracrossing. I appoint Messrs Bakunin and Kropotkin my executors and make the following provisions: 1. I leave my priceless collections of Victorian Oil Lamps, photographs of Hayley Mills, brass fenders and Charlie Mingus records to all Liverpool poets under 2 3 who are also blues singers and failed sociology students. 2. I leave the entire East Lancs Road with all its landscapes to the British people. 3. I hereby appoint Wm. Burroughs my literary executor, instructing him to cut up my collected works and distribute them through the public lavatories of the world. 4. Proceeds from the sale of relics: locks of hair, pieces of floorboards I have stood on, fragments of bone flesh teeth bits of old underwear etc. to be given to my widow. 5. I leave my paintings to the Nation with the stipulation that they must be exhibited in Public Houses, Chip Shops, Coffee Bars and the Cellar Clubs throughout the country. 6. Proceeds from the sale of my other effects to be divided equally amongst the 20 most beautiful schoolgirls in England (these to be chosen after due deliberation and exhaustive tests by an informal committee of my friends). ~ Adrian Henri

465:There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against--you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew these caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality. It goes on and on, and finally there are only others' recollections of your behavior--your bizarre, frenetic, aimless behaviors--for mania has at least some grace in partially obliterating memories. What then, after the medications, psychiatrist, despair, depression, and overdose? All those incredible feelings to sort through. Who is being to polite to say what? Who knows what? What did I do? Why? And most hauntingly, when will it happen again? Then, too, are the bitter reminders--medicine to take, resent, forget, take, resent, and forget, but always take....And always, when will it happen again? Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

466:I remember being amazed that death could so easily rise up from the nothing of a boyish afternoon, billow up like fog. I knew that West Baltimore, where I lived; that the north side of Philadelphia, where my cousins lived; that the South Side of Chicago, where friends of my father lived, comprised a world apart. Somewhere out there beyond the firmament, past the asteroid belt, there were other worlds where children did not regularly fear for their bodies. I knew this because there was a large television resting in my living room. In the evenings I would sit before this television bearing witness to the dispatches from this other world. There were little white boys with complete collections of football cards, and their only want was a popular girlfriend and their only worry was poison oak. That other world was suburban and endless, organized around pot roasts, blueberry pies, fireworks, ice cream sundaes, immaculate bathrooms, and small toy trucks that were loosed in wooded backyards with streams and glens. Comparing these dispatches with the facts of my native world, I came to understand that my country was a galaxy, and this galaxy stretched from the pandemonium of West Baltimore to the happy hunting grounds of 'Mr. Belvedere.' I obsessed over the distance between that other sector of space and my own. I knew that my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by a tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not. I knew that some inscrutable energy preserved the breach. I felt, but did not yet understand, the relation between that other world and me. And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates

467:The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away in pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness - who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! The grave! It buries every error - covers every defect - extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. ~ Washington Irving

468:Right,” she said. “Come down off that chair. I think we are ready for the next step.” “What do you mean?” “I am going to see Mrs. Carter tomorrow. I shall tell her that you are not able to keep up with the twins in lessons.” “But--” Miss Minton held up her hand. “Don’t interrupt, please. I shall tell her that I will set you to work separately because you are holding the twins back. That means I am trusting you to work on your own. I shall, of course, help you whenever I can, but you must keep up the deception.” She gave one of her tight smiles. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t have an interesting time. I have a book about the history of Brazil, and one by Bates, the explorer who first described this part of the Amazon. And another by Humboldt--a very great scientist. The twins may live as though they are still in Littleford-on-Sea, but there is no need for us to do so.” Maia jumped from the chair. “Oh, Minty,” she said, and threw her arms around her governess. “Thank you. I’m sorry…I thought--” “Well don’t,” said Miss Minton briskly. And then: “Come along, it’s time we opened my trunk.” Miss Minton had been poor all her life. She had no trinkets, no personal possessions; her employers underpaid her when they paid her at all--but her trunk was an Aladdin’s cave. There were travel books and fairy tales, novels and dictionaries and collections of poetry… “How did you get them all?” Maia asked wonderingly. “How did you manage?” Miss Minton shrugged. “If you want something enough you usually get it. But you have to take what goes with it”--and she pointed to her shabby blouse and mended skirt. “Now, let’s see---what shall we start with? Ah yes, here is Bates. He must have sailed down this very river not sixty years ago. Look at that drawing of a sloth… ~ Eva Ibbotson

469:Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading—retellings of the old stories (Mallory, White, Briggs), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds—and then I stumbled upon the Tolkien books which took me back to Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake and the like. I was in heaven when Lin Carter began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like Thomas Burnett Swann, who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading Robert E. Howard (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and finally started reading science fiction after coming across Andre Norton's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to Clifford Simak, Roger Zelazny and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm as likely to read Basil Johnston as Stephen King, Jeanette Winterson as Harlan Ellison, Barbara Kingsolver as Patricia McKillip, Andrew Vachss as Parke Godwin—in short, my criteria is that the book must be good; what publisher's slot it fits into makes absolutely no difference to me. ~ Charles de Lint

470:Remove all the books from your bookcases. You cannot judge whether or not a book really grabs you when it’s still on the shelf. Like clothes or any other belongings, books that have been left untouched on the shelf for a long time are dormant. Or perhaps I should say they’re “invisible.” Although in plain sight, they remain unseen, just like a praying mantis still in the grass, merging with its surroundings. (Have you ever experienced that jolt of surprise when you suddenly notice it there?) If you ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?” when you are just looking at the things on your shelves or in your drawers, the question won’t mean much to you. To truly decide whether you want to keep something or to dispose of it, you must take your things out of hibernation. Even the piles of books already on the floor will be easier to assess if you move them to a different part of the floor or restack them. Just like the gentle shake we use to wake someone up, we can stimulate our belongings by physically moving them, exposing them to fresh air and making them “conscious.” While helping my clients tidy their homes or offices, I stand in front of the mound of books they have piled on the floor and clap my hands, or I gently stroke the book covers. Although my clients look at me strangely at first, they are inevitably surprised at how quickly and precisely they are able to choose after this. They can see exactly what they need and don’t need. It is much harder to choose books when they are still on the shelf, which means you will have to repeat the process later. If there are too many books to arrange on the floor all at one time, I ask my clients to divide them into four broad categories: General (books you read for pleasure) Practical (references, cookbooks, etc.) Visual (photograph collections, etc.) Magazines Once you have piled your books, take ~ Marie Kond

471:When I was a kid, summers were the most glorious time of life. Because my parents believed in hands-off, free-range parenting, I’d usually be out the door before ten and wouldn’t return until dinner. There were no cell phones to keep track of me and whenever my mom called a neighbor to ask where I was, the neighbor was often just as clueless as to her own child’s whereabouts. In fact, there was only one rule as far as I could tell: I had to be home at half past five, since my parents liked to eat dinner as a family. I can’t remember exactly how I used to spend those days. I have recollections in snapshot form: building forts or playing king of the hill on the high part of the jungle gym or chasing after a soccer ball while attempting to score. I remember playing in the woods, too. Back then, our home was surrounded by undeveloped land, and my friends and I would have dirt-clod wars or play capture the flag; when we got BB guns, we could spend hours shooting cans and occasionally shooting at each other. I spent hours exploring on my bicycle, and whole weeks would pass where I’d wake every morning with nothing scheduled at all. Of course, there were kids in the neighborhood who didn’t lead that sort of carefree existence. They would head off to camp or participate in summer leagues for various sports, but back then, kids like that were the minority. These days, kids are scheduled from morning to night because parents have demanded it, and London has been no exception. But how did it happen? And why? What changed the outlook of parents in my generation? Peer pressure? Living vicariously through a child’s success? Résumé building for college? Or was it simply fear that if their kids were allowed to discover the world on their own, nothing good would come of it? I don’t know. I am, however, of the opinion that something has been lost in the process: the simple joy of waking in the morning and having nothing whatsoever to do. ~ Nicholas Sparks

472:But this was not enough on its own to generate the kind of terror that Mao wanted. On 18 August, a mammoth rally was held in Tiananmen Square in the center of Peking, with over a million young participants. Lin Biao appeared in public as Mao's deputy and spokesman for the first time. He made a speech calling on the Red Guards to charge out of their schools and 'smash up the four olds' defined as 'old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits." Following this obscure call, Red Guards all over China took to the streets, giving full vent to their vandalism, ignorance, and fanaticism. They raided people's houses, smashed their antiques, tore up paintings and works of calligraphy. Bonfires were lit to consume books. Very soon nearly all treasures in private collections were destroyed. Many writers and artists committed suicide after being cruelly beaten and humiliated, and being forced to witness their work being burned to ashes. Museums were raided. Palaces, temples, ancient tombs, statues, pagodas, city walls anything 'old' was pillaged. The few things that survived, such as the Forbidden City, did so only because Premier Zhou Enlai sent the army to guard them, and issued specific orders that they should be protected. The Red Guards only pressed on when they were encouraged. Mao hailed the Red Guards' actions as "Very good indeed!" and ordered the nation to support them. He encouraged the Red Guards to pick on a wider range of victims in order to increase the terror. Prominent writers, artists, scholars, and most other top professionals, who had been privileged under the Communist regime, were now categorically condemned as 'reactionary bourgeois authorities." With the help of some of these people's colleagues who hated them for various reasons, ranging from fanaticism to envy, the Red Guards began to abuse them. Then there were the old 'class enemies': former landlords and capitalists, people with Kuomintang connections, those condemned in previous political campaigns like the 'rightists' and their children. ~ Jung Chang

473:In living things, nature springs an ontological surprise in which the world-accident of terrestrial conditions brings to light an entirely new possibility of being: systems of matter that are unities of a manifold, not in virtue of a synthesizing perception whose object they happen to be, nor by the mere concurrence of the forces that bind their parts together, but in virtue of themselves, for the sake of themselves, and continually sustained by themselves. Here wholeness is self-integrating in active performance, and form for once is the cause rather than the result of the material collections in which it successively subsists. Unity here is self-unifying, by means of changing multiplicity. Sameness, while it last, (and it does not last inertially, in the manner of static identity or of on-moving continuity), is perpetual self-renewal through process, borne on the shift of otherness. This active self-integration of life alone gives substance to the term “individual”: it alone yields the ontological concept of an individual as against a merely phenomenological one. The ontological individual, its very existence at any moment, its duration and its identity in duration is, then, essentially its own function, its own concern, its own continuous achievement. In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its own concern, its own continuous achievement. In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its material substance is of a double nature: the materials are essential to its specifically, accidental individually; it coincides with their actual collection at the instant, but is not bound to any one collection in the succession of instants, “riding” their change like the crest of a wave and bound only to their form of collection which endures as its own feat. Dependent on their availability as materials, its is independent of their sameness as these; its own, functional identity, passingly incorporating theirs, is of a different order. In a word, the organic form stands in a dialectical relation of needful freedom to matter. ~ Hans Jonas

474:To An Echo On The Banks Of The Hunter I hear thee, echo! And I start to hear thee With a strange shock, as from among the hills Thy voice, reverbering in swift murmurs near me, Dies down the stream, or with its gurgle low Blends whisperingly, until my bosom thrills With gentle tribulations that endear thee, But speak not of the present. Twas as though Some spirit of the past were then a-near thee, Bringing back days of life’s regretted spring, Waking wild recollections, to evince How strong the ties that bind me to each thing Loved, though long since. It seems but yesterday that last I stood Beside the Hawksbury, even as now I stand By the swift Hunter, challenging o’er the flood An echo thus; but with a glorious brood Of hopes then glowing round me, and a band Of schoolmates and young creatures of my blood, All quick with joyousness beyond command, And now, with that delightful time, O! Where Are those quick joys, glad mates, and hopes of good? Echo, declare! Thy voice comes o’er the waters in reply, To fail as soon! And all those young delights Decayed (as thy peculiar accents die) In the dusk valleys of past days and nights To be renewed not, like thy ghostly chide; And one to the other of those joyous creatures, Now burthened with their manhoods, in the wide World’s separations, have the names and features Thus wasted out of mind. And so, at last, Those glorious hopes are all become but lonely And dying echoes of the hollow past, All but one only. E’en that around my being only strays Like a recurring sound. In lonesome ways’ Like these it moves me still; not as of yore 261 In clear, strong tones, though yet its spirit plays Upon the same old promise: that, when o’er My country’s homes shine fair those riper days, Her better sons shall learn to prize My lonely voice upon the past, And so, there may at last From time’s dim void, an echo, thence arise, Responsive to the swell Of their full souls beneath these Austral skies. ~ Charles Harpur

475:This pleasant tale is like a little copse: The honied lines do freshly interlace, To keep the reader in so sweet a place, So that he here and there full hearted stops; And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops Come cool and suddenly against his face, And by the wandering melody may trace Which way the tender-legged linnet hops. Oh! What a power hath white simplicity! What mighty power has this gentle story! I, that for ever feel athirst for glory, Could at this moment be content to lie Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings Were heard of none beside the mournful robbins. 'This sonnet was published in The Examiner for the 16th of March 1817, having been written in February 1817 in the late Charles Cowden Clarke's "miniature 18mo. copy of Chaucer," as recorded in Clarke's Recollections of Keats in The Gentleman's Magazine. When Clarke died, he bequeathed the Chaucer to Alexander Ireland, author of the Leigh Hunt, Lamb, and Hazlitt Bibliography. The sonnet is said to have been "an extempore effusion, and without the alteration of a single word;" but as Clarke seems to have been asleep when it was written we are justified in construing the word 'extempore' with a certain latitude. It was certainly most unusual for Keats to write that much without a single erasure, and it is quite possible that he jotted the sonnet down in pencil in a note-book which he certainly carried at that time and certainly did draft sonnets in. In any case he probably had ample time and quiet, while Clarke was sleeping, to elaborate the two highly finished quatrains in his mind: the third quatrain and the couplet are of inferior merit, and might well be extemporary. This early performance seems to have quite won the heart of the genial critic Hunt, for in inserting it in his paper he characterized it as "exquisite," and added that the author might "already lay true claim to that title: -- 'The youngest he That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree."' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes ~ John Keats, Sonnet. Written On A Blank Space At The End Of Chaucers Tale Of The Floure And The Lefe

476:Grieve not for lost love, whether it is through death or the fickle fluctuations of human nature. Love itself is never lost, but just plays hide-and-seek with you in many hearts; that in pursuing it you might find its ever greater manifestations. It will keep hiding from you, and disappointing you, until you have quested long enough to find its abode in the One who resides in the deepest recesses of your own soul, and in the heart of everything. Then you will say: “O Lord, when I resided in the house of mortal consciousness, I thought I loved my parents and my friends; I fancied I loved birds, beasts, possessions. But now that I have moved into the mansion of Omnipresence, I know it is Thee alone I love, manifested as parents, friends, all creatures and all things. By loving Thee alone, my heart expanded to love the many. By being loyal in my love to Thee, I am loyal to all I love. And I love all beings forever.” I see life on earth as only a scenic backdrop behind which my loved ones hide at death. As I love them when they are before my eyes, so does my love follow them with my ever-watching mental gaze when they move elsewhere, behind death’s screen. Those whom I have loved I could never hate, even though they grow uninteresting through ugly behavior. In my museum of recollections, I can still behold those traits that caused me to love them. Beneath the temporary mental masks of those whose behavior I dislike, I see the perfect love of my great Beloved, even as I see it in those worthy souls that I love. To stop loving is to stem the purifying flow of love. I shall loyally love every being, every thing, until I find all races, all creatures, all animate and inanimate objects embraced by my love. I will love until every soul, every star, every forsaken creature, every atom, is lodged in my heart; for in the infinite love of God, my breast of eternity is large enough to hold everything in me. O Love, I see Thy glowing face in the gems. I behold Thy shy blush in the blossoms. I am enraptured, hearing Thee warble in the birds. And I dream in ecstasy when my heart embraces Thee in all hearts. O Love, I met Thee in all things—only a little and for a while—but in Omnipresence I clasp Thee entirely and forever, and I rejoice in Thy joy evermore. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

477:I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily–against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better. This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. ~ Charles Darwin

478:Servants entered with soup and bread, no doubt delicious, but neither Grayden nor I had much of an appetite. We didn’t speak, either. This, ironically, Steldor found interesting. His eyes flicked to me several times during the meal, and he made no effort to hide his mirth. Finally, my suitor managed to ask, “How have you been?” “Well.” The awful silence recommenced, and I started counting the seconds, hoping Steldor would interrupt and take me home. He didn’t; he was enjoying our plight. “How h-have you been?” I stuttered. “Oh, I’ve been well, as well.” I laughed. “’Well, as well.’ How very…articulate.” I paled, for he could consider my comment an insult. I needed to win him over in a hurry if I were to salvage our time together. Grayden chuckled, rescuing me from embarrassment. “I thought I heard your uncle say that you have been ill. Is that true?” And here I thought the situation could not get any more awkward. “My uncle is an honest man,” I said, trying to dodge the topic. “Of course! I certainly didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” “And I didn’t mean to imply that you meant to imply…anything.” We stared at each other, and I could see that Grayden was on the verge of laughing. I probably would have laughed myself, but the spatter of freckles across his nose forced me to look down at my napkin. My eyes welled at the powerful recollections sweeping through me, and at the images of handsome, strong, charismatic Saadi that rose unbidden in my mind. “Are you all right?” Grayden asked. I raised my gaze to his and forced my tone to brighten. “Yes, I’m sorry, just a speck of dust in my eye.” “I understand. Perhaps some fresh air would help.” He was unexpectedly astute, but at least was not asking any more questions. He glanced at Steldor, who motioned us from the room with but one piece of advice for me. “You’ll have to scream more loudly from out there.” Grayden escorted me into the corridor and through a back door that I anticipated would open upon a garden. But what I saw instead was my version of Eden--a row of paddocks beside a large stable, all filled with beautiful horses. “I’m afraid it’s not exactly fresh air,” Grayden jested, walking to lean against the nearest fence, leaving me to follow. “It’s fresh enough.” I gaped at the well-bred animals, not even aware of Grayden’s eyes on me. “Your uncle told me of your love for horses, Shaselle,” he said, startling me out of my trance. ~ Cayla Kluver

479:Red Is The Color Of Blood Red is the color of blood, and I will seek it: I have sought it in the grass. It is the color of steep sun seen through eyelids. It is hidden under the suave flesh of womenFlows there, quietly flows. It mounts from the heart to the temples, the singing mouthAs cold sap climbs to the rose. I am confused in webs and knots of scarlet Spun from the darkness; Or shuttled from the mouths of thirsty spiders. Madness for red! I devour the leaves of autumn. I tire of the green of the world. I am myself a mouth for blood… Here, in the golden haze of the late slant sun, Let us walk, with the light in our eyes, To a single bench from the outset predetermined. Look: there are seagulls in these city skies, Kindled against the blue. But I do not think of the seagulls, I think of you. Your eyes, with the late sun in them, Are like blue pools dazzled with yellow petals. This pale green suits them well. Here is your finger, with an emerald on it: The one I gave you. I say these things politelyBut what I think beneath them, who can tell? For I think of you, crumpled against a whiteness; Flayed and torn, with a dulled face. I think of you, writing, a thing of scarlet, And myself, rising red from that embrace. November sun is sunlight poured through honey: Old things, in such a light, grow subtle and fine. Bare oaks are like still fire. 109 Talk to me: now we drink the evening's wine. Look, how our shadows creep along the grave!And this way, how the gravel begins to shine! This is the time of day for recollections, For sentimental regrets, oblique allusions, Rose-leaves, shrivelled in a musty jar. Scatter them to the wind! There are tempests coming. It is dark, with a windy star. If human mouths were really roses, my dear,(Why must we link things so?-) I would tear yours petal by petal with slow murder. I would pluck the stamens, the pistils, The gold and the green,Spreading the subtle sweetness that was your breath On a cold wave of death…. Now let us walk back, slowly, as we came. We will light the room with candles; they may shine Like rows of yellow eyes. Your hair is like spun fire, by candle-flame. You smile at me-say nothing. You are wise. For I think of you, flung down brutal darkness; Crushed and red, with pale face. I think of you, with your hair disordered and dripping. And myself, rising red from that embrace. ~ Conrad Potter Aiken

480:I will give technology three definitions that we will use throughout the book. The first and most basic one is that a technology is a means to fulfill a human purpose. For some technologies-oil refining-the purpose is explicit. For others- the computer-the purpose may be hazy, multiple, and changing. As a means, a technology may be a method or process or device: a particular speech recognition algorithm, or a filtration process in chemical engineering, or a diesel engine. it may be simple: a roller bearing. Or it may be complicated: a wavelength division multiplexer. It may be material: an electrical generator. Or it may be nonmaterial: a digital compression algorithm. Whichever it is, it is always a means to carry out a human purpose. The second definition I will allow is a plural one: technology as an assemblage of practices and components. This covers technologies such as electronics or biotechnology that are collections or toolboxes of individual technologies and practices. Strictly speaking, we should call these bodies of technology. But this plural usage is widespread, so I will allow it here. I will also allow a third meaning. This is technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture. Here we are back to the Oxford's collection of mechanical arts, or as Webster's puts it, "The totality of the means employed by a people to provide itself with the objects of material culture." We use this collective meaning when we blame "technology" for speeding up our lives, or talk of "technology" as a hope for mankind. Sometimes this meaning shades off into technology as a collective activity, as in "technology is what Silicon Valley is all about." I will allow this too as a variant of technology's collective meaning. The technology thinker Kevin Kelly calls this totality the "technium," and I like this word. But in this book I prefer to simply use "technology" for this because that reflects common use. The reason we need three meanings is that each points to technology in a different sense, a different category, from the others. Each category comes into being differently and evolves differently. A technology-singular-the steam engine-originates as a new concept and develops by modifying its internal parts. A technology-plural-electronics-comes into being by building around certain phenomena and components and develops by changing its parts and practices. And technology-general, the whole collection of all technologies that have ever existed past and present, originates from the use of natural phenomena and builds up organically with new elements forming by combination from old ones. ~ W Brian Arthur

481:Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living? You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy… You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any. And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering… …Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more. So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself. And hoping. ~ Jim Thompson

482:A word of explanation about how the information in this book was obtained, evaluated and used. This book is designed to present, as best my reporting could determine, what really happened. The core of this book comes from the written record—National Security Council meeting notes, personal notes, memos, chronologies, letters, PowerPoint slides, e-mails, reports, government cables, calendars, transcripts, diaries and maps. Information in the book was supplied by more than 100 people involved in the Afghanistan War and national security during the first 18 months of President Barack Obama’s administration. Interviews were conducted on “background,” meaning the information could be used but the sources would not be identified by name. Many sources were interviewed five or more times. Most allowed me to record the interviews, which were then transcribed. For several sources, the combined interview transcripts run more than 300 pages. I have attempted to preserve the language of the main characters and sources as much as possible, using their words even when they are not directly quoted, reflecting the flavor of their speech and attitudes. Many key White House aides were interviewed in-depth. They shared meeting notes, important documents, recollections of what happened before, during and after meetings, and assisted extensively with their interpretations. Senior and well-placed military, intelligence and diplomatic officials also provided detailed recollections, read from notes or assisted with documents. Since the reporting was done over 18 months, many interviews were conducted within days or even hours after critical discussions. This often provided a fresher and less-calculated account. Dialogue comes mostly from the written record, but also from participants, usually more than one. Any attribution of thoughts, conclusions or feelings to a person was obtained directly from that person, from notes or from a colleague whom the person told. Occasionally, a source said mid-conversation that something was “off-the-record,” meaning it could not be used unless the information was obtained elsewhere. In many cases, I was able to get the information elsewhere so that it could be included in this book. Some people think they can lock up and prevent publication of information by declaring it “off-the-record” or that they don’t want to see it in the book. But inside any White House, nearly everyone’s business and attitudes become known to others. And in the course of multiple, extensive interviews with firsthand sources about key decision points in the war, the role of the players became clear. Given the diversity of sources, stakes and the lives involved, there is no way I could write a sterilized or laundered version of this story. I interviewed President Obama on-the-record in the Oval Office for one hour and 15 minutes on Saturday, July 10, 2 ~ Bob Woodward

483:The Baptistry One winter eve, at twilight, when the sound Of sorrowful winds scarce troubled Nature's rest, As she lay sleeping, with her hair unbound, Holding her grey robe to her shivering breast, I enter'd through a low-arch'd oaken door, Circled with curious sculpture; and I crept With slow, hush'd footsteps, o'er the shadow'd floor, Where organ notes in sudden silence slept; Far down the aisle, where darkness seem'd to brood With such wide-spreading wings, and where the sigh Of murmur'd prayer scarce came,—until I stood In the deep stillness of the Baptistry. There, in the dim side-chapel, no bright glow From jewelled windows on the wall was shed; No sunbeams rested on the font below, Or kiss'd those mighty arches overhead. Soft lines and curves went upward, and were lost In solemn shadow and in dreamy space; Only the level floor was faintly crost With glimmering brightness from the holy place. And, as I listen'd, I heard music sweet Trembling and swelling through the soundless air, Threading dark aisles, as if an angel's feet Were bidden bring God's message to me there. Ah! and the echo of those anthem notes Wanders and whispers in my heart for aye: In all my life the mystic language floats, Fitful and faint, as in my ears that day. One whom we knew had enter'd into rest— Calm on the pillow lay his hoary head; And through that music spoke, in accents blest, Our holy Mother's voice, hallowing the dead, 176 Telling of perfect peace, of labours done, Of long years' sorrow turned to joy at last— The quiet sleep, when battles all are won— The hush of evening when the day is past. I look'd upon the font, and mused of all Its wondrous meaning, till my thoughts grew dim And vast and shadowy as those columns tall;— Morning of life for me—death's night for him! How fancy tried to span that awful space Between the two—between the here and there! To bridge the nave—up to that blessed Place Where light and song stream'd on the chancel-stair! Dim recollections drifted through my brain— Echoing footfalls of past childish years, When the baptismal robe had less of stain, E'en though unwash'd by penitential tears. I saw the gloomy shadows o'er my head, And sigh'd to think how I had suffer'd loss; I saw the soft light, and was comforted,— I knew it shone straight from the chancel-cross. A few more steps, and then I stood below The towering minster coronet again; Down on my face that pure and gentle glow Fell, like a pitying kiss in time of pain. Down to my feet it stream'd; a passage dim, With hosts of phantom-shapes on either side, It drifted through;—as songs of seraphim Drift through our mourning hearts at Easter-tide. Looking up then, I seem'd to see my life,— A long, dim vista, where the rays descend— Where light and darkness wage continual strife; But only light—the full light—at the end. ~ Ada Cambridge

484:Then one evening he reached the last chapter, and then the last page, the last verse. And there it was! That unforgivable and unfathomable misprint that had caused the owner of the books to order them to be pulped. Now Bosse handed a copy to each of them sitting round the table, and they thumbed through to the very last verse, and one by one burst out laughing. Bosse was happy enough to find the misprint. He had no interest in finding out how it got there. He had satisfied his curiosity, and in the process had read his first book since his schooldays, and even got a bit religious while he was at it. Not that Bosse allowed God to have any opinion about Bellringer Farm’s business enterprise, nor did he allow the Lord to be present when he filed his tax return, but – in other respects – Bosse now placed his life in the hands of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And surely none of them would worry about the fact that he set up his stall at markets on Saturdays and sold bibles with a tiny misprint in them? (‘Only ninety-nine crowns each! Jesus! What a bargain!’) But if Bosse had cared, and if, against all odds, he had managed to get to the bottom of it, then after what he had told his friends, he would have continued: A typesetter in a Rotterdam suburb had been through a personal crisis. Several years earlier, he had been recruited by Jehovah’s Witnesses but they had thrown him out when he discovered, and questioned rather too loudly, the fact that the congregation had predicted the return of Jesus on no less than fourteen occasions between 1799 and 1980 – and sensationally managed to get it wrong all fourteen times. Upon which, the typesetter had joined the Pentecostal Church; he liked their teachings about the Last Judgment, he could embrace the idea of God’s final victory over evil, the return of Jesus (without their actually naming a date) and how most of the people from the typesetter’s childhood including his own father, would burn in hell. But this new congregation sent him packing too. A whole month’s collections had gone astray while in the care of the typesetter. He had sworn by all that was holy that the disappearance had nothing to do with him. Besides, shouldn’t Christians forgive? And what choice did he have when his car broke down and he needed a new one to keep his job? As bitter as bile, the typesetter started the layout for that day’s jobs, which ironically happened to consist of printing two thousand bibles! And besides, it was an order from Sweden where as far as the typesetter knew, his father still lived after having abandoned his family when the typesetter was six years old. With tears in his eyes, the typesetter set the text of chapter upon chapter. When he came to the very last chapter – the Book of Revelation – he just lost it. How could Jesus ever want to come back to Earth? Here where Evil had once and for all conquered Good, so what was the point of anything? And the Bible… It was just a joke! So it came about that the typesetter with the shattered nerves made a little addition to the very last verse in the very last chapter in the Swedish bible that was just about to be printed. The typesetter didn’t remember much of his father’s tongue, but he could at least recall a nursery rhyme that was well suited in the context. Thus the bible’s last two verses plus the typesetter’s extra verse were printed as: 20. He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!21. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.22. And they all lived happily ever after. ~ Jonas Jonasson

485:Mary Smith Away down East where I was reared amongst my Yankee kith, There used to live a pretty girl whose name was Mary Smith; And though it's many years since last I saw that pretty girl, And though I feel I'm sadly worn by Western strife and whirl; Still, oftentimes, I think about the old familiar place, Which, someway, seemed the brighter for Miss Mary's pretty face, And in my heart I feel once more revivified the glow I used to feel in those old times when I was Mary's beau. I saw her home from singing school--she warbled like a bird. A sweeter voice than hers for song or speech I never heard. She was soprano in the choir, and I a solemn bass, And when we unisoned our voices filled that holy place; The tenor and the alto never had the slightest chance, For Mary's upper register made every heart-string dance; And, as for me, I shall not brag, and yet I'd have you know I sung a very likely bass when I was Mary's beau. On Friday nights I'd drop around to make my weekly call, And though I came to visit her, I'd have to see 'em all. With Mary's mother sitting here and Mary's father there, The conversation never flagged so far as I'm aware; Sometimes I'd hold her worsted, sometimes we'd play at games, Sometimes dissect the apples which we'd named each other's names. Oh how I loathed the shrill-toned clock that told me when to go-'Twas ten o'clock at half-past eight when I was Mary's beau. Now there was Luther Baker--because he'd come of age And thought himself some pumpkins because he drove the stage-He fancied he could cut me out; but Mary was my friend-Elsewise I'm sure the issue had had a tragic end. For Luther Baker was a man I never could abide, And, when it came to Mary, either he or I had died. I merely cite this instance incidentally to show That I was quite in earnest when I was Mary's beau. How often now those sights, those pleasant sights, recur again: The little township that was all the world I knew of then-The meeting-house upon the hill, the tavern just beyond, 222 Old deacon Packard's general store, the sawmill by the pond, The village elms I vainly sought to conquer in my quest Of that surpassing trophy, the golden oriole's nest. And, last of all those visions that come back from long ago, The pretty face that thrilled my soul when I was Mary's beau. Hush, gentle wife, there is no need a pang should vex your heart-'T is many years since fate ordained that she and I should part; To each a true, maturer love came in good time, and yet It brought not with its nobler grace the power to forget. And would you fain begrudge me now the sentimental joy That comes of recollections of my sparkings when a boy? I warrant me that, were your heart put to the rack,'t would show That it had predilections when I was Mary's beau. And, Mary, should these lines of mine seek out your biding place, God grant they bring the old sweet smile back to your pretty face-God grant they bring you thoughts of me, not as I am to-day, With faltering step and brimming eyes and aspect grimly gray; But thoughts that picture me as fair and full of life and glee As we were in the olden times--as you shall always be. Think of me ever, Mary, as the boy you used to know When time was fleet, and life was sweet, and I was Mary's beau. Dear hills of old New England, look down with tender eyes Upon one little lonely grave that in your bosom lies; For in that cradle sleeps a child who was so fair to see God yearned to have unto Himself the joy she brought to me; And bid your winds sing soft and low the song of other days, When, hand in hand and heart to heart, we went our pleasant ways-Ah me! but could I sing again that song of long ago, Instead of this poor idle song of being Mary's beau. ~ Eugene Field

486:author class:Sri Aurobindo collections class:cwsa media class:short poem media Short Poems The Birth of Sin LUCIFER What mighty and ineffable desire Impels thee, Sirioth? Thy accustomed calm Is potently subverted and the eyes That were a god's in sweet tranquillity, Confess a human warmth, a troubled glow. SIRIOTH Lucifer, son of Morning, Angel! thou Art mightiest of the architects of fate. To thee is given with thy magic gaze Compelling mortals as thou leanst sublime From heaven's lucent walls, to sway the world. Is thy felicity of lesser date, Prince of the patient and untiring gods, The gods who work? Dost thou not ever feel Angelic weariness usurp the place Where the great flame and the august desire Were wont to urge thee on? To me it seems That our eternity is far too long For service and there is a word, a thought, More godlike. LUCIFER Sirioth, I will speak the word. Is it not Power? SIRIOTH No, Lucifer, 'tis Love. LUCIFER Love? It was love that for a trillion years Gave me the instinct and immense demand For service, for activity. It fades. Another and more giant passion comes Striding upon me. I behold the world Immeasurably vast, I see the heavens Full of an azure joy and majesty, I see the teeming millions of the stars. Sirioth, how came the Master of the world To be the master? Did He seize control Pushing some ancient weaker sovereign down From sway immemorable? Did He come By peaceful ways, permission or inheritance, To what He is today? Or if indeed He is for ever and for ever rules, Are there no bounds to His immense domain, No obscure corner of unbounded space Forgotten by His fate, that I may seize And make myself an empire as august, Enjoy a like eternity of rule? SIRIOTH Angel, these thoughts are mighty as thyself. But wilt thou then rebel? If He be great To conquer and to punish, what of thee? Eternity of dreadful poignant pain May be thy fate and not eternal rule. LUCIFER Better than still to serve desirelessly, Pursued by a compulsion dull and fierce, Looking through all vast time for one brief hour Of rest, of respite, but instead to find Iron necessity and pant in vain For space, for room, for freedom. SIRIOTH Thou intendest? LUCIFER Sirioth, I do not yet intend; I feel. SIRIOTH For me the sense of active force within Set me to work, as the stars move, the sun Resistless flames through space, the stormwind runs. But I have felt a touch as sweet as spring, And I have heard a music of delight Maddening the heart with the sweet honied stabs Of delicate intolerable joy. Where, where is One to feel the answering bliss? Lucifer, thou from love beganst thy toil. What love? LUCIFER Desire august to help, to serve. SIRIOTH That is not mine. To embrace, to melt and mix Two beings into one, to roll the spirit Tumbling into a surge of common joy, - 'Tis this I seek. LUCIFER Will He permit? SIRIOTH A bar I feel, a prohibition. Someone used A word I could not grasp and called it sin. LUCIFER The word is new, even as these things are. SIRIOTH I know not who he was. He laughed and said, "Sin, sin is born into the world, revolt And change, in Sirioth and in Lucifer, The evening and the morning star. Rejoice, O world!" And I beheld as in a dream Leaping from out thy brain and into mine A woman beautiful, of grandiose mien, Yet terrible, alarming and instinct With nameless menace. And the world was full With clashing and with cries. It seemed to me Angels and Gods and men strove violently To touch her robe, to occupy the place Her beautiful and ominous feet had trod, Crying, "Daughter of Lucifer, be ours, O sweet, adorable and mighty Sin!" Therefore I came to thee. LUCIFER Sirioth, await Her birth, if she must be. For this I know, Necessity rules all the infinite world, And even He perhaps submits unknown To a compulsion. When the time is ripe, We will consult once more what we shall do. previous: 4.2.02_-_An_Image next: 4.2.04_-_Epiphany up: Collected_Poems ~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Birth of Sin

487:Brother Benedict Brother Benedict rose and left his cell With the last slow swing of the evening bell. In his hand he carried his only book, And he followed the path to the Abbey brook, And, crossing the stepping-stones, paused midway, For the journeying water seemed to say, Benedicite. But when he stood on the other bank, The flags rose tall, and the grass grew rank, And the sorrel red and the white meadow-sweet Shook their dust on his sandalled feet, And, lifting their heads where his girdle hung, Would surely have said had they found a tongue, Benedicite. Onward and upward he clomb and wound, Bruising the thyme on the nibbled ground Here and there, in the untrimmed brake, The dog-rose bloomed for its own sweet sake; The woodbine clambered up out of reach, But the scent of them all breathed as plain as speech, Benedicite. Shortly he came to a leafy nook, Where wind never entered nor branch ever shook. Itself was the only thing in sight, And the rest of the world was shut out quite. 'Twas as self-contained as the holy place Where the children quire with upturned face, Benedicite. A dell so curtained with trunks and boughs, That in hours when the ringdove coos to his spouse, The sun to its heart scarce a way could win. But the trees now had drawn all their shadows in; There was nothing but scent in the dewy air, And the silence seemed saying in mental prayer, Benedicite. 197 'Gainst the trunk of a beech, round, smooth, and gray, Brother Benedict leaned, with intent to pray, And opened his book: with vellum bound; Within, red letters on faded ground; Pater, and Ave, and saving Creed:But look where you would, you seemed to read, Benedicite. He scarce had a verse of his office said, Ere a bird in the branches overhead Began to warble so sweet a strain, That, strive as he would, still he strove in vain To close his ears; so he closed his book, While the unseen throat to the air outshook Benedicite. 'Twas a song that rippled, and revelled, and ran Ever back to the note whence it began; Rising, and falling, and never did stay, Like a fountain that feeds on itself all day, Wanting no answer, answering none, But beginning again as each verse was done, Benedicite. It brought an ecstasy into his face, It weaned his senses from time and space, It carried him off to worlds unseen, And showed him what is not and ne'er has been, Transporting his soul to those realms of calm, More blessëd and blessing than even the psalm, Benedicite. Then, carolling still, it drew him thence Slowly back to the spheres of sense, But held him awhile where self expires, And vague recollections and vague desires Banish the burden of things that are, And angels seem canticling, faint and far, Benedicite. Then across him there flitted the days that are dead, 198 And those that will follow when these are fled; Generations of sorrow, wave after wave, With their samesome journey from womb to grave; Men's love of the fleshly sweets that sting, And the comfort that comes when we kneel and sing, Benedicite. He suddenly started and gazed around, For silence can waken as well as sound, And the bird had ceased singing. The dewy air Still was immersed in mental prayer. Time seemed to have stopped. So he quickened pace, But forgot not to say ere he left the lone place, Benedicite. Downward he wended, and under his feet, As on mounting, the bruised thyme answered sweet; As before, in the brake the dog-rose bloomed, And the woodbine with fragrance the hedge perfumed; And the white meadow-sweet and the sorrel red, Had they found a tongue, would still surely have said, Benedicite. But where were the flags and the tall rank grass, And the stepping-stones smooth for his feet to pass? Were they swept away? Did he wake or dream? A bridge that he knew not spanned the stream; Though under its archway he still could hear The journeying water purling clear, Benedicite. Where had he wandered? This never could Be the spot where the Abbey orchard stood? Where the filberts once mellowed, lay tumbled blocks, And cherry stumps peered through tares and docks; A rough plot stretched where in times gone by The plump apples dropped to the joyous cry, Benedicite. The gateway had vanished, the portal flown, The walls of the Abbey were ivy-grown; The arches were shattered, the roof was gone, 199 The mullions were mouldering one by one; Wrecked was the oriel's tracery light That the sun streamed through when they met to recite Benedicite. Chancel and choir and nave and aisle Were but one ruinous vacant pile. So utter the havoc, you could not tell Which was corridor, cloister, cell. Cow-grass, and foxglove, and waving weed, Covered the scrolls where you used to read, Benedicite. High up where of old the belfry towered, An elder had rooted and whitely flowered: Surviving ruin and rain and wind, Below it a lichened gurgoyle grinned. Though birds were chirping and flitting about, They paused not to treble the anthem devout, Benedicite. Then he went where the Abbot was wont to lay His children to rest till the Judgment Day, And at length in the grass the name he found Of a friar he fancied alive and sound. The slab was hoary, the carving blurred, And he rather guessed than could read the word, Benedicite. He sate him down on a fretted stone, Where rains had beaten and winds had blown, And opened his office-book, and read The prayers that we read for our loved ones dead, While nightfall crept on the twilight air, And darkened the page of the final prayer, Benedicite. But to murkiest gloom when the gloaming did wane, In the air there still floated a shadowy strain. 'Twas distilled with the dew, it was showered from the star, It was murmuring near, it was tingling afar; In silence it sounded, in darkness it shone, 200 And in sleep that is deepest it wakeful dreamed on, Benedicite. Do you ask what had witched Brother Benedict's ears? The bird had been singing a thousand years: Sweetly confounding in its sweet lay To-day, to-morrow, and yesterday. Time? What is Time but a fiction vain, To him that o'erhears the Eternal strain, Benedicite? ~ Alfred Austin

488:Recollections Ye dear stars of the Bear, I did not think I should again be turning, as I used, To see you over father's garden shine, And from the windows talk with you again Of this old house, where as a child I dwelt, And where I saw the end of all my joys. What charming images, what fables, once, The sight of you created in my thought, And of the lights that bear you company! Silent upon the verdant clod I sat, My evening thus consuming, as I gazed Upon the heavens, and listened to the chant Of frogs that in the distant marshes croaked; While o'er the hedges, ditches, fire-flies roamed, And the green avenues and cypresses In yonder grove were murmuring to the wind; While in the house were heard, at intervals, The voices of the servants at their work. What thoughts immense in me the sight inspired Of that far sea, and of the mountains blue, That yonder I behold, and which I thought One day to cross, mysterious worlds and joys Mysterious in the future fancying! Of my hard fate unconscious, and how oft This sorrowful and barren life of mine I willingly would have for death exchanged! Nor did my heart e'er tell me, I should be Condemned the flower of my youth to spend In this wild native region, and amongst A wretched, clownish crew, to whom the names Of wisdom, learning, are but empty sounds, Or arguments of laughter and of scorn; Who hate, avoid me; not from envy, no; For they do not esteem me better than Themselves, but fancy that I, in my heart, That feeling cherish; though I strive, indeed, No token of such feeling to display. And here I pass my years, abandoned, lost, 72 Of love deprived, of life; and rendered fierce, 'Mid such a crowd of evil-minded ones, My pity and my courtesy I lose, And I become a scorner of my race, By such a herd surrounded; meanwhile, fly The precious hours of youth, more precious far Than fame, or laurel, or the light of day, Or breath of life: thus uselessly, without One joy, I lose thee, in this rough abode, Whose only guests are care and suffering, O thou, the only flower of barren life! The wind now from the tower of the town The deep sound of the bell is bringing. Oh, What comfort was that sound to me, a child, When in my dark and silent room I lay, Besieged by terrors, longing for the dawn! Whate'er I see or hear, recalls to mind Some vivid image, recollection sweet; Sweet in itself, but O how bitter made By painful sense of present suffering, By idle longing for the past, though sad, And by the still recurring thought, '_I was_'! Yon gallery that looks upon the west; Those frescoed walls, these painted herds, the sun Just rising o'er the solitary plain, My idle hours with thousand pleasures filled, While busy Fancy, at my side, still spread Her bright illusions, wheresoe'er I went. In these old halls, when gleamed the snow without, And round these ample windows howled the wind, My sports resounded, and my merry words, In those bright days, when all the mysteries And miseries of things an aspect wear, So full of sweetness; when the ardent youth Sees in his untried life a world of charms, And, like an unexperienced lover, dotes On heavenly beauty, creature of his dreams! O hopes, illusions of my early days!-Of you I still must speak, to you return; For neither flight of time, nor change of thoughts, 73 Or feelings, can efface you from my mind. Full well I know that honor and renown Are phantoms; pleasures but an idle dream; That life, a useless misery, has not One solid fruit to show; and though my days Are empty, wearisome, my mortal state Obscure and desolate, I clearly see That Fortune robs me but of little. Yet, Alas! as often as I dwell on you, Ye ancient hopes, and youthful fancy's dreams, And then look at the blank reality, A life of ennui and of wretchedness; And think, that of so vast a fund of hope, Death is, to-day, the only relic left, I feel oppressed at heart, I feel myself Of every comfort utterly bereft. And when the death, that I have long invoked, Shall be at hand, the end be reached of all My sufferings; when this vale of tears shall be To me a stranger, and the future fade, Fade from sight forever; even then, shall I Recall you; and your images will make Me sigh; the thought of having lived in vain, Will then intrude, with bitterness to taint The sweetness of that day of destiny. Nay, in the first tumultuous days of youth, With all its joys, desires, and sufferings, I often called on death, and long would sit By yonder fountain, longing, in its waves To put an end alike to hope and grief. And afterwards, by lingering sickness brought Unto the borders of the grave, I wept O'er my lost youth, the flower of my days, So prematurely fading; often, too, At late hours sitting on my conscious bed, Composing, by the dim light of the lamp, I with the silence and the night would moan O'er my departing soul, and to myself In languid tones would sing my funeral-song. Who can remember you without a sigh, 74 First entrance into manhood, O ye days Bewitching, inexpressible, when first On the enchanted mortal smiles the maid, And all things round in emulation smile; And envy holds its peace, not yet awake, Or else in a benignant mood; and when, --O marvel rare!--the world a helping hand To him extends, his faults excuses, greets His entrance into life, with bows and smiles Acknowledges his claims to its respect? O fleeting days! How like the lightning's flash, They vanish! And what mortal can escape Unhappiness, who has already passed That golden period, his own _good_ time, That comes, alas, so soon to disappear? And thou, Nerina, does not every spot Thy memory recall? And couldst thou e'er Be absent from my thought? Where art thou gone, That here I find the memory alone, Of thee, my sweet one? Thee thy native place Beholds no more; that window, whence thou oft Wouldst talk with me, which sadly now reflects The light of yonder stars, is desolate. Where art thou, that I can no longer hear Thy gentle voice, as in those days of old, When every faintest accent from thy lips Was wont to turn me pale? Those days have gone. They _have been_, my sweet love! And thou with them Hast passed. To others now it is assigned To journey to and fro upon the earth, And others dwell amid these fragrant hills. How quickly thou hast passed! Thy life was like A dream. While dancing there, joy on thy brow Resplendent shone, anticipations bright Shone in thy eyes, the light of youth, when Fate Extinguished them, and thou didst prostrate lie. Nerina, in my heart the old love reigns. If I at times still go unto some feast, Or social gathering, unto myself I say: 'Nerina, thou no more to feast Dost go, nor for the ball thyself adorn.' 75 If May returns, when lovers offerings Of flowers and of songs to maidens bring, I say: 'Nerina mine, to thee spring ne'er Returns, and love no more its tribute brings.' Each pleasant day, each flowery field that I Behold, each pleasure that I taste, the thought Suggest: 'Nerina pleasure knows no more, The face of heaven and earth no more beholds.' Ah, thou hast passed, for whom I ever sigh! Hast passed; and still the memory of thee Remains, and with each thought and fancy blends Each varying emotion of the heart; And _will_ remain, so bitter, yet so sweet! ~ Count Giacomo Leopardi

489:The Vision At Shiloh SHROUDED on Shiloh field in night and rain, This body rested from the first’s day’s fight; Fallen face down, both hands on rifle clutched, A Shape of sprawling members, blank of thought As was the April mud in which it lay. Comrade, you deem that I shall surely lie Torpid, forgetful, nevermore to march After the flush of morning pales in day; But I remember how I rose again From Shiloh field to march three mighty years, Until mine eyes beheld in Richmond streets Our Father Abraham, homely conqueror, So Son-of-Manlike, fashioned mild and meek, Averse from triumph, close to common men, Chief of a Nation mercifully strong. In boyhood many a time I’d seen his face, Knew well the accents of his voice serene, Loved the kind twinkle of his sad-eyed smile, Yet never once beheld him save with awe, For that mysterious sense of unity With the External Fortitude, which flowed As from his gaze into my yearning heart. The peace our Father’s four years’ Calvary wrought Has bustled through his huge two-oceaned land How busily since Shiloh’s blood-drenched field Gave up from death this body men called me.— Oh, paths of peace were, truly, pleasant ways! The kindliest Nation earth has ever known Gave to their veterans grateful preference In every labor, mart, and council hall, 91 Which nobleness shall a thousand fold be paid By soldier hearts in every future Age. Myself was one whom Fortune favored much, Children and children’s children, troops of friends Have cheered this firelit chamber silken hung Where now I rest me easy at the last, In confidence that Shiloh’s miracle Of Vision and of Song did true forecast Repose in bliss surpassing mortal dream. The night outside is black as Shiloh’s night, Save for electric-litten streaks of rain; My dripping eaves declare November’s shower Falling as fast as early April’s did When first this time-worn body grew aware Of Death’s reluctant yielding to the Soul. Utter oblivion could not be from Sleep While battle roared, and dreaded evening fell, And sullen foemen kept the plain unsearched, And rain tempestuous stormed to midnight’s gloom. Oh, let me talk! I’ve seldom told the tale, And I care nothing if my strength be strained. Our generation ever held that Strength Was given only that it might be tried. What matters it if so my term of hours Ere second resurrection be forestalled? First did this body dimly sense its form As something vaguely unified in Space; Powerless, motionless, unaware of aught Save merely numbness, while a smothering nose And mumbling lips and tongue mechanical 92 Strove for they knew not what, which was to breathe— Strove as by instinct uncontrolled of Mind, Which nowise ordered hands enormous-like To fumble baffled till they slowly learned The fast-clutched rifle which bewildered them Was such a thing as fingers could let go. Then, to restore the breath, the forearms come Beneath the brow, and raised the face from mud; Yet all was numbness, but for tiny blows Patting behind the neck, and prankily Creeping at random down the cheeks and hair. I did not guess them pellets of cold rain Until a stab came up as from the ground Into my wounded breast. Then Mind awoke To wetness, night, and all the agonies That dogged resolution rose to bear. Shocked Memory cried, That stroke one instant past Was shrapnel shell! The reasoning power replied, It laid the body dead on Shiloh field. Then staunch the Soul, I live—and God is here. Visions came lightning-quick, clear, unconfused,— The City tumult in my childish ears, Our tremulous Church at Sumter’s bulletin, Me naked in the cold recruiting room Stripped to the hurrying Doctor’s callous test;— All the innumerable recollections flashed On to that battle-moment when my chum Charging beside me on red Shiloh field Gasped out, “Oh, John,” clutched horribly his throat, Frowned on his bloodied hands, stared wild at me Who, in that moment, felt the stroke, and fell. Was Harry nigh? I groped in puddled grass Seeking his comrade corpse, and sought in vain. 93 The wound might not have killed him! Could I turn, And so gain ground to search a little more? Yes—but the agony! Yet turn I did, And, groping farther, felt a little bush. It seemed more friendly to the finger hold Than emptiness, or muddy earth, or grass; So there I lay, face up, in absolute night Whose stillness deepened with the lessening rain. How long, O Lord, how long the darkness held! Despite the feverish wound my body chilled, And oft my desperate fingers strove to loose The soaking blanket roll which trenched my back As if it lay diagonal on a ridge. It may be true that slight delirium touched My brain that night, for when a little wind Came rustling through the bushes of the plain, And drizzling ceased, how clearly my closed eyes Could see within the house where I was born! There sister voices conned their lesson books, And Mother’s dress was trailing on the stair As she were coming up to comfort me, While in my heart an expectation flowed Of some inexplicable joy anear, Angelic, shining-robed, austerely fair. With that I opened wondering eyes—and Lo The heavenly host of stars o’er Shiloh field! And oh the glory of them, and the peace, The promise, the ethereal hope renewed! Up rose my soul, supreme past bodily grief, 94 To rest enraptured as of Heaven assured. In that blest trance my gaze became intent On beams I deemed at first a rising moon, Until mine eyes conceived the luminous space Haloed a tall and human-seeming Form, Of countenance uplifted unto God, And palms breast-clasped as if entreating Him. In vain my straining sight sought certainty Whose was the sorrowing figure which I dreamed To wear a visage as if Christ were come In pity for the carnage of that plain. It seemed that nigh that Presence rose a voice Most heavenly pure of note, and manlike strong; “When I can read my title clear,” it sang Triumphantly, “To mansions in the skies,” Lifting the hymn in exultation high Till other voices took it—wounded men Lying, like me, in pain and close to death; Myself chimed in, while all about me rang The soldier chanting of that prostrate host, Northern and Southern, one united choir Solemnly glad in Man’s supernal dream.* Comrade, when that high service of great song Died down, there was no semblance of a moon! And if indeed one rode the April sky That wonder-night, I never yet have learned. But I do know most surely this strange thing,— That when, in Richmond, Father Abraham, After three years grassed newly Shiloh plain, 95 Beheld my veteran men relieve his guard, I saw the triumph in my countenance Did grieve afresh his sad and infinite eyes Which gazed with gentle meaning into mine The while his silent lips seemed fashioning For me alone, “Remember Shiloh Choir.” Then clear I knew his brooding tenderness Bewailed our vanquished brethren, waked from years Of dreadful dream he was their enemy; The exultation vanished from my heart, A choking pity took me in the throat, And forth I rushed to join the ranks of Blue Fighting, as saviours, flames in Richmond Town, The while his kindly look seemed blessing me. Now in the contemplation of his eyes I lie content as stretched on Shiloh field, Dreaming triumphant, waiting for the dawn. There it broke fair, till shattering musketry And cheers of charging Blue right onward swept So far, it seemed that utter silence fell, And I lay waiting very peacefully, As now, for friendly hands to bear me home. ~ Edward William Thomson

490:EPODE 1a. I stood within the City disinterred; And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard The Mountains slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetrating shook The listening soul in my suspended blood; I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke-- I felt, but heard not:through white columns glowed The isle-sustaining ocean-flood, A plane of light between two heavens of azure! Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; But every living lineament was clear As in the sculptors thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine, Like winter leaves oergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine. EPODE 2a. Then gentle winds arose With many a mingled close Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours keen; And where the Baian ocean Welters with airlike motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, Even as the ever stormless atmosphere Floats oer the Elysian realm, It bore me, like an Angel, oer the waves Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air No storm can overwhelm. I sailed, where ever flows Under the calm Serene A spirit of deep emotion From the unknown graves Of the dead Kings of Melody. Shadowy Aornos darkened oer the helm The horizontal aether; Heaven stripped bare Its depth over Elysium, where the prow Made the invisible water white as snow; From that Typhaean mount, Inarime, There streamed a sunbright vapour, like the standard Of some aethereal host; Whilst from all the coast, Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea Prophesyings which grew articulate-- They seize meI must speak them!be they fate! STROPHE 1. Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven! Elysian City, which to calm enchantest The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even As sleep round Love, are driven! Metropolis of a ruined Paradise Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice Which armed Victory offers up unstained To Love, the flower-enchained! Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free, If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,-- Hail, hail, all hail! STROPHE 2. Thou youngest giant birth Which from the groaning earth Leapst, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale! Last of the Intercessors! Who gainst the Crowned Transgressors Pleadest before Gods love! Arrayed in Wisdoms mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth Nor let thy high heart fail, Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors With hurried legions move! Hail, hail, all hail! ANTISTROPHE 1a. What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; A new Actaeons error Shall theirs have beendevoured by their own hounds! Be thou like the imperial Basilisk Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk Aghast she pass from the Earths disk: Fear not, but gazefor freemen mightier grow, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:-- If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail, Thou shalt be greatAll hail! ANTISTROPHE 2a. From Freedoms form divine, From Natures inmost shrine, Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil; Oer Ruin desolate, Oer Falsehoods fallen state, Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale! And equal laws be thine, And winged words let sail, Freighted with truth even from the throne of God: That wealth, surviving fate, Be thine.All hail! ANTISTROPHE 1b. Didst thou not start to hear Spains thrilling paean From land to land re-echoed solemnly, Till silence became music? From the Aeaean To the cold Alps, eternal Italy Starts to hear thine! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs In light, and music; widowed Genoa wan By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, Murmuring, Where is Doria? fair Milan, Within whose veins long ran The vipers palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the seal (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail) Art thou of all these hopes.--O hail! ANTISTROPHE 2b. Florence! beneath the sun, Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for Freedoms expectation: From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope, As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,-- An athlete stripped to run From a remoter station For the high prize lost on Philippis shore:-- As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail! EPODE 1b. Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms Arrayed against the ever-living Gods? The crash and darkness of a thousand storms Bursting their inaccessible abodes Of crags and thunder-clouds? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide With iron light is dyed; The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Like Chaos oer creation, uncreating; An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries,down the aereal regions Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, Their dull and savage lust On Beautys corse to sickness satiating-- They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary With firefrom their red feet the streams run gory! EPODE 2b. Great Spirit, deepest Love! Which rulest and dost move All things which live and are, within the Italian shore; Who spreadest Heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, oer Oceans western floor; Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison From the Earths bosom chill; Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison! Bid the Earths plenty kill! Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, Be their tomb who planned To make it ours and thine! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill And raise thy sons, as oer the prone horizon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire-- Be mans high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, And frowns and fears from thee, Would not more swiftly flee Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.-- Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be This city of thy worship ever free! The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.SHELLEYS NOTE. Composed at San Juliano di Pisa, August 17-25, 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a copy, 'for the most part neat and legible,' amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode To Naples

491:Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on - Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track: Whilst above the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily, And behind the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, He is ever drifted on O'er the unreposing wave To the haven of the grave. What, if there no friends will greet; What, if there no heart will meet His with love's impatient beat; Wander wheresoe'er he may, Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress In friendship's smile, in love's caress? Then 'twill wreak him little woe Whether such there be or no: Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold; Bloodless are the veins and chill Which the pulse of pain did fill; Every little living nerve That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December's bough. On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, Where a few grey rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: Nor is heard one voice of wail But the sea-mews, as they sail O'er the billows of the gale; Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town, When a king in glory rides Through the pomp and fratricides: Those unburied bones around There is many a mournful sound; There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim, Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves nor murmurs not. Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony: To such a one this morn was led, My bark by soft winds piloted: 'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the paean With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain, Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes On the morning's fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail, And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow, down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill. Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day's azure eyes Ocean's nursling, Venice, lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old. Sea-girt City, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne, among the waves Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of Ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters of his path. Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aereal gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres, where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms, To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered, and now mouldering: But if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime; If not, perish thou ldering: But if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime; If not, perish thou and they! - Clouds which stain truth's rising day By her sun consumed away - Earth can spare ye; while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring With more kindly blossoming. Perish -let there only be Floating o'er thy heartless sea As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan; - That a tempest-cleaving Swan Of the sons of Albion, Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit, Chastening terror: -what though yet Poesy's unfailing River, Which through Albion winds forever Lashing with melodious wave Many a sacred Poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled? What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay Aught thine own? oh, rather say Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul? As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs; As divinest Shakespeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light Like omniscient power which he Imaged 'mid mortality; As the love from Petrarch's urn, Yet amid yon hills doth burn, A quenchless lamp by which the heart Sees things unearthly; -so thou art, Mighty spirit -so shall be The City that did refuge thee. Lo, the sun floats up the sky Like thought-winged Liberty, Till the universal light Seems to level plain and height; From the sea a mist has spread, And the beams of morn lie dead On the towers of Venice now, Like its glory long ago. By the skirts of that gray cloud Many-domed Padua proud Stands, a peopled solitude, 'Mid the harvest-shining plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe, And the milk-white oxen slow With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage will; And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction's harvest-home: Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. Padua, thou within whose walls Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, "I win, I win!" And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, When the destined years were o'er, Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian. She smiled so as Sin only can, And since that time, ay, long before, Both have ruled from shore to shore, - That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time. In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning; Like a meteor, whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray: Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth: Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might; But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by Tyranny. As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells, One light flame among the brakes, While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn By the fire thus lowly born: The spark beneath his feet is dead, He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With a myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear: so thou, O Tyranny, beholdest now Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest: Grovel on the earth; ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride! Noon descends around me now: 'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, When a soft and purple mist Like a vapourous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance, far From the curved horizon's bound To the point of Heaven's profound, Fills the overflowing sky; And the plains that silent lie Underneath the leaves unsodden Where the infant Frost has trodden With his morning-winged feet, Whose bright print is gleaming yet; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellised lines The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air; the flower Glimmering at my feet; the line Of the olive-sandalled Apennine In the south dimly islanded; And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun; And of living things each one; And my spirit which so long Darkened this swift stream of song, - Interpenetrated lie By the glory of the sky: Be it love, light, harmony, Odour, or the soul of all Which from Heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe. Noon descends, and after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon, And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset's radiant springs: And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies Mid remembered agonies, The frail bark of this lone being) Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, And its ancient pilot, Pain, Sits beside the helm again. Other flowering isles must be In the sea of Life and Agony: Other spirits float and flee O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folded wings they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell mid lawny hills, Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine Of all flowers that breathe and shine: We may live so happy there, That the Spirits of the Air, Envying us, may even entice To our healing Paradise The polluting multitude; But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves Under which the bright sea heaves; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies; And the love which heals all strife Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood: They, not it, would change; and soon Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain, And the earth grow young again. Composed at Este, October, 1818. Published with Rosalind and Helen, 1819. Amongst the late Mr. Fredk. Locker-Lampsons collections at Rowfant there is a manuscript of the lines (167-205) on Byron, interpolated after the completion of the poem. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills

492:Malmaison How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there, beyond the high wall! How quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, over there, over there, sliding through the green countryside! Like ships of the line, stately with canvas, the tall clouds pass along the sky, over the glittering roof, over the trees, over the looped and curving river. A breeze quivers through the linden-trees. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! But the road is dusty. Already the Citoyenne Beauharnais wearies of her walk. Her skin is chalked and powdered with dust, she smells dust, and behind the wall are roses! Roses with smooth open petals, poised above rippling leaves . . . Roses . . . They have told her so. The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs her shoulders and makes a little face. She must mend her pace if she would be back in time for dinner. Roses indeed! The guillotine more likely. The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles in the sun. II Gallop! Gallop! The General brooks no delay. Make way, good people, and scatter out of his path, you, and your hens, and your dogs, and your children. The General is returned from Egypt, and is come in a `caleche' and four to visit his new property. Throw open the gates, you, Porter of Malmaison. Pull off your cap, my man, this is your master, the husband of Madame. Faster! Faster! A jerk and a jingle and they are arrived, he and she. Madame has red eyes. Fie! It is for joy at her husband's return. Learn your place, Porter. A gentleman here for two months? Fie! Fie, then! Since when have you taken to gossiping. Madame may have a brother, I suppose. That -- all green, and red, and glitter, with flesh as dark as ebony -- that is a slave; a bloodthirsty, stabbing, slashing heathen, come from the hot countries to cure your tongue of idle whispering. A fine afternoon it is, with tall bright clouds sailing over the trees. 125 'Bonaparte, mon ami, the trees are golden like my star, the star I pinned to your destiny when I married you. The gypsy, you remember her prophecy! My dear friend, not here, the servants are watching; send them away, and that flashing splendour, Roustan. Superb -- Imperial, but . . . My dear, your arm is trembling; I faint to feel it touching me! No, no, Bonaparte, not that -- spare me that -- did we not bury that last night! You hurt me, my friend, you are so hot and strong. Not long, Dear, no, thank God, not long.' The looped river runs saffron, for the sun is setting. It is getting dark. Dark. Darker. In the moonlight, the slate roof shines palely milkily white. The roses have faded at Malmaison, nipped by the frost. What need for roses? Smooth, open petals -- her arms. Fragrant, outcurved petals -- her breasts. He rises like a sun above her, stooping to touch the petals, press them wider. Eagles. Bees. What are they to open roses! A little shivering breeze runs through the linden-trees, and the tiered clouds blow across the sky like ships of the line, stately with canvas. III The gates stand wide at Malmaison, stand wide all day. The gravel of the avenue glints under the continual rolling of wheels. An officer gallops up with his sabre clicking; a mameluke gallops down with his charger kicking. `Valets de pied' run about in ones, and twos, and groups, like swirled blown leaves. Tramp! Tramp! The guard is changing, and the grenadiers off duty lounge out of sight, ranging along the roads toward Paris. The slate roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles milkily, vaguely, the great glass-houses put out its shining. Glass, stone, and onyx now for the sun's mirror. Much has come to pass at Malmaison. New rocks and fountains, blocks of carven marble, fluted pillars uprearing antique temples, vases and urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers everywhere, new flowers, rare flowers, parterre after parterre of flowers. Indeed, the roses bloom at Malmaison. It is youth, youth untrammeled and advancing, trundling a country ahead of it as though it were a hoop. Laughter, and spur janglings in tessellated vestibules. Tripping of clocked 126 and embroidered stockings in little low-heeled shoes over smooth grass-plots. India muslins spangled with silver patterns slide through trees -mingle -- separate -- white day fireflies flashing moon-brilliance in the shade of foliage. 'The kangaroos! I vow, Captain, I must see the kangaroos.' 'As you please, dear Lady, but I recommend the shady linden alley and feeding the cockatoos.' 'They say that Madame Bonaparte's breed of sheep is the best in all France.' 'And, oh, have you seen the enchanting little cedar she planted when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of Marengo?' Picking, choosing, the chattering company flits to and fro. Over the trees the great clouds go, tiered, stately, like ships of the line bright with canvas. Prisoners'-base, and its swooping, veering, racing, giggling, bumping. The First Consul runs plump into M. de Beauharnais and falls. But he picks himself up smartly, and starts after M. Isabey. Too late, M. Le Premier Consul, Mademoiselle Hortense is out after you. Quickly, my dear Sir! Stir your short legs, she is swift and eager, and as graceful as her mother. She is there, that other, playing too, but lightly, warily, bearing herself with care, rather floating out upon the air than running, never far from goal. She is there, borne up above her guests as something indefinably fair, a rose above periwinkles. A blown rose, smooth as satin, reflexed, one loosened petal hanging back and down. A rose that undulates languorously as the breeze takes it, resting upon its leaves in a faintness of perfume. There are rumours about the First Consul. Malmaison is full of women, and Paris is only two leagues distant. Madame Bonaparte stands on the wooden bridge at sunset, and watches a black swan pushing the pink and silver water in front of him as he swims, crinkling its smoothness into pleats of changing colour with his breast. Madame Bonaparte presses against the parapet of the bridge, and the crushed roses at her belt melt, petal by petal, into the pink water. 127 IV A vile day, Porter. But keep your wits about you. The Empress will soon be here. Queer, without the Emperor! It is indeed, but best not consider that. Scratch your head and prick up your ears. Divorce is not for you to debate about. She is late? Ah, well, the roads are muddy. The rain spears are as sharp as whetted knives. They dart down and down, edged and shining. Clop-trop! Clop-trop! A carriage grows out of the mist. Hist, Porter. You can keep on your hat. It is only Her Majesty's dogs and her parrot. Clop-trop! The Ladies in Waiting, Porter. Clop-trop! It is Her Majesty. At least, I suppose it is, but the blinds are drawn. 'In all the years I have served Her Majesty she never before passed the gate without giving me a smile!' You're a droll fellow, to expect the Empress to put out her head in the pouring rain and salute you. She has affairs of her own to think about. Clang the gate, no need for further waiting, nobody else will be coming to Malmaison to-night. White under her veil, drained and shaking, the woman crosses the antechamber. Empress! Empress! Foolish splendour, perished to dust. Ashes of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth! Over the glass domes of the hot-houses drenches the rain. Behind her a clock ticks -- ticks again. The sound knocks upon her thought with the echoing shudder of hollow vases. She places her hands on her ears, but the minutes pass, knocking. Tears in Malmaison. And years to come each knocking by, minute after minute. Years, many years, and tears, and cold pouring rain. 'I feel as though I had died, and the only sensation I have is that I am no more.' Rain! Heavy, thudding rain! 128 The roses bloom at Malmaison. And not only roses. Tulips, myrtles, geraniums, camelias, rhododendrons, dahlias, double hyacinths. All the year through, under glass, under the sky, flowers bud, expand, die, and give way to others, always others. From distant countries they have been brought, and taught to live in the cool temperateness of France. There is the `Bonapartea' from Peru; the `Napoleone Imperiale'; the `Josephinia Imperatrix', a pearl-white flower, purple-shadowed, the calix pricked out with crimson points. Malmaison wears its flowers as a lady wears her gems, flauntingly, assertively. Malmaison decks herself to hide the hollow within. The glass-houses grow and grow, and every year fling up hotter reflections to the sailing sun. The cost runs into millions, but a woman must have something to console herself for a broken heart. One can play backgammon and patience, and then patience and backgammon, and stake gold napoleons on each game won. Sport truly! It is an unruly spirit which could ask better. With her jewels, her laces, her shawls; her two hundred and twenty dresses, her fichus, her veils; her pictures, her busts, her birds. It is absurd that she cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought of her ingratitude. What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as never before. It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller figure? Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife. She owes her chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor; her grocer, her butcher, her poulterer; her architect, and the shopkeeper who sells her rouge; her perfumer, her dressmaker, her merchant of shoes. She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and chairs. She owes masons and carpenters, vintners, lingeres. The lady's affairs are in sad confusion. And why? Why? Can a river flow when the spring is dry? Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock ticks, one after one. The clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by 129 brushing against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for the moon. Scarlet, clear-blue, purple epauletted with gold. It is a parade of soldiers sweeping up the avenue. Eight horses, eight Imperial harnesses, four caparisoned postilions, a carriage with the Emperor's arms on the panels. Ho, Porter, pop out your eyes, and no wonder. Where else under the Heavens could you see such splendour! They sit on a stone seat. The little man in the green coat of a Colonel of Chasseurs, and the lady, beautiful as a satin seed-pod, and as pale. The house has memories. The satin seed-pod holds his germs of Empire. We will stay here, under the blue sky and the turreted white clouds. She draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him to replenish it. Her soft transparent texture woos his nervous fingering. He speaks to her of debts, of resignation; of her children, and his; he promises that she shall see the King of Rome; he says some harsh things and some pleasant. But she is there, close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot with violet, pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose-leaves in a twilit room. Suddenly the Emperor calls his carriage and rolls away across the looping Seine. VI Crystal-blue brightness over the glass-houses. Crystal-blue streaks and ripples over the lake. A macaw on a gilded perch screams; they have forgotten to take out his dinner. The windows shake. Boom! Boom! It is the rumbling of Prussian cannon beyond Pecq. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, rotting beneath them. Fallen flowers strew the unraked walks. Fallen flowers for a fallen Emperor! The General in charge of him draws back and watches. Snatches of music -snarling, sneering music of bagpipes. They say a Scotch regiment is besieging Saint-Denis. The Emperor wipes his face, or is it his eyes. His tired eyes which see nowhere the grace they long for. Josephine! Somebody asks him a question, he does not answer, somebody else does that. There are voices, but one voice he does not hear, and yet he hears it all the time. Josephine! The Emperor puts up his hand to screen his face. The white light of a bright cloud spears sharply through the linden-trees. 130 `Vive l'Empereur!' There are troops passing beyond the wall, troops which sing and call. Boom! A pink rose is jarred off its stem and falls at the Emperor's feet. 'Very well. I go.' Where! Does it matter? There is no sword to clatter. Nothing but soft brushing gravel and a gate which shuts with a click. 'Quick, fellow, don't spare your horses.' A whip cracks, wheels turn, why burn one's eyes following a fleck of dust. VII Over the slate roof tall clouds, like ships of the line, pass along the sky. The glass-houses glitter splotchily, for many of their lights are broken. Roses bloom, fiery cinders quenching under damp weeds. Wreckage and misery, and a trailing of petty deeds smearing over old recollections. The musty rooms are empty and their shutters are closed, only in the gallery there is a stuffed black swan, covered with dust. When you touch it, the feathers come off and float softly to the ground. Through a chink in the shutters, one can see the stately clouds crossing the sky toward the Roman arches of the Marly Aqueduct. ~ Amy Lowell

493:BY MICHING MALLECHO, Esq. Is it a party in a parlour, Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, Some sipping punchsome sipping tea; But, as you by their faces see, All silent, and alldamned! Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth. Ophelia.What means this, my lord? Hamlet.Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief. ~Shakespeare. PROLOGUE Peter Bells, one, two and three, O'er the wide world wandering be. First, the antenatal Peter, Wrapped in weeds of the same metre, The so-long-predestined raiment Clothed in which to walk his way meant The second Peter; whose ambition Is to link the proposition, As the mean of two extremes (This was learned from Aldric's themes) Shielding from the guilt of schism The orthodoxal syllogism; The First Peterhe who was Like the shadow in the glass Of the second, yet unripe, His substantial antitype. Then came Peter Bell the Second, Who henceforward must be reckoned The body of a double soul, And that portion of the whole Without which the rest would seem Ends of a disjointed dream. And the Third is he who has O'er the grave been forced to pass To the other side, which is, Go and try else,just like this. Peter Bell the First was Peter Smugger, milder, softer, neater, Like the soul before it is Born from that world into this. The next Peter Bell was he, Predevote, like you and me, To good or evil as may come; His was the severer doom, For he was an evil Cotter, And a polygamic Potter. And the last is Peter Bell, Damned since our first parents fell, Damned eternally to Hell Surely he deserves it well! PART THE FIRST DEATH And Peter Bell, when he had been With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed, Grew seriousfrom his dress and mien 'Twas very plainly to be seen Peter was quite reformed. His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down; His accent caught a nasal twang; He oiled his hair; there might be heard The grace of God in every word Which Peter said or sang. But Peter now grew old, and had An ill no doctor could unravel; His torments almost drove him mad; Some said it was a fever bad Some swore it was the gravel. His holy friends then came about, And with long preaching and persuasion Convinced the patient that, without The smallest shadow of a doubt, He was predestined to damnation. They said'Thy name is Peter Bell; Thy skin is of a brimstone hue; Alive or deaday, sick or well The one God made to rhyme with hell; The other, I think, rhymes with you.' Then Peter set up such a yell! The nurse, who with some water gruel Was climbing up the stairs, as well As her old legs could climb themfell, And broke them boththe fall was cruel. The Parson from the casement lept Into the lake of Windermere And many an eelthough no adept In God's right reason for itkept Gnawing his kidneys half a year. And all the rest rushed through the door, And tumbled over one another, And broke their skulls.Upon the floor Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore, And cursed his father and his mother; And raved of God, and sin, and death, Blaspheming like an infidel; And said, that with his clenchd teeth He'd seize the earth from underneath, And drag it with him down to hell. As he was speaking came a spasm, And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder; Like one who sees a strange phantasm He lay,there was a silent chasm Between his upper jaw and under. And yellow death lay on his face; And a fixed smile that was not human Told, as I understand the case, That he was gone to the wrong place: I heard all this from the old woman. Then there came down from Langdale Pike A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail; It swept over the mountains like An ocean,and I heard it strike The woods and crags of Grasmere vale. And I saw the black storm come Nearer, minute after minute; Its thunder made the cataracts dumb; With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum, It neared as if the Devil was in it. The Devil was in it:he had bought Peter for half-a-crown; and when The storm which bore him vanished, nought That in the house that storm had caught Was ever seen again. The gaping neighbours came next day They found all vanished from the shore: The Bible, whence he used to pray, Half scorched under a hen-coop lay; Smashed glassand nothing more! PART THE SECOND THE DEVIL The Devil, I safely can aver, Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting; Nor is he, as some sages swear, A spirit, neither here nor there, In nothingyet in everything. He iswhat we are; for sometimes The Devil is a gentleman; At others a bard bartering rhymes For sack; a statesman spinning crimes; A swindler, living as he can; A thief, who cometh in the night, With whole boots and net pantaloons, Like some one whom it were not right To mention;or the luckless wight From whom he steals nine silver spoons. But in this case he did appear Like a slop-merchant from Wapping, And with smug face, and eye severe, On every side did perk and peer Till he saw Peter dead or napping. He had on an upper Benjamin (For he was of the driving schism) In the which he wrapped his skin From the storm he travelled in, For fear of rheumatism. He called the ghost out of the corse; It was exceedingly like Peter, Only its voice was hollow and hoarse It had a queerish look of course Its dress too was a little neater. The Devil knew not his name and lot; Peter knew not that he was Bell: Each had an upper stream of thought, Which made all seem as it was not; Fitting itself to all things well. Peter thought he had parents dear, Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies, In the fens of Lincolnshire; He perhaps had found them there Had he gone and boldly shown his Solemn phiz in his own village; Where he thought oft when a boy He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage The produce of his neighbour's tillage, With marvellous pride and joy. And the Devil thought he had, 'Mid the misery and confusion Of an unjust war, just made A fortune by the gainful trade Of giving soldiers rations bad The world is full of strange delusion That he had a mansion planned In a square like Grosvenor Square, That he was aping fashion, and That he now came to Westmoreland To see what was romantic there. And all this, though quite ideal, Ready at a breath to vanish, Was a state not more unreal Than the peace he could not feel, Or the care he could not banish. After a little conversation, The Devil told Peter, if he chose, He'd bring him to the world of fashion By giving him a situation In his own serviceand new clothes. And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud, And after waiting some few days For a new liverydirty yellow Turned up with blackthe wretched fellow Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise. PART THE THIRD HELL Hell is a city much like London A populous and a smoky city; There are all sorts of people undone, And there is little or no fun done; Small justice shown, and still less pity. There is a Castles, and a Canning, A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh; All sorts of caitiff corpses planning All sorts of cozening for trepanning Corpses less corrupt than they. There is a -, who has lost His wits, or sold them, none knows which; He walks about a double ghost, And though as thin as Fraud almost Ever grows more grim and rich. There is a Chancery Court; a King; A manufacturing mob; a set Of thieves who by themselves are sent Similar thieves to represent; An army; and a public debt. Which last is a scheme of paper money, And meansbeing interpreted 'Bees, keep your waxgive us the honey, And we will plant, while skies are sunny, Flowers, which in winter serve instead.' There is a great talk of revolution And a great chance of despotism German soldierscampsconfusion Tumultslotteriesragedelusion Ginsuicideand methodism; Taxes too, on wine and bread, And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese, From which those patriots pure are fed, Who gorge before they reel to bed The tenfold essence of all these. There are mincing women, mewing, (Like cats, who amant miser,) Of their own virtue, and pursuing Their gentler sisters to that ruin, Without whichwhat were chastity? Lawyersjudgesold hobnobbers Are therebailiffschancellors Bishopsgreat and little robbers Rhymesterspamphleteersstock-jobbers Men of glory in the wars, Things whose trade is, over ladies To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper, Till all that is divine in woman Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper. Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling, Frowning, preachingsuch a riot! Each with never-ceasing labour, Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour, Cheating his own heart of quiet. And all these meet at levees; Dinners convivial and political; Suppers of epic poets;teas, Where small talk dies in agonies; Breakfasts professional and critical; Lunches and snacks so aldermanic That one would furnish forth ten dinners, Where reigns a Cretan-tongud panic, Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic Should make some losers, and some winners; At conversazioniballs Conventiclesand drawing-rooms Courts of lawcommitteescalls Of a morningclubsbook-stalls Churchesmasqueradesand tombs. And this is Helland in this smother All are damnable and damned; Each one damning, damns the other They are damned by one another, By none other are they damned. 'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns!' Where was Heaven's Attorney General When they first gave out such flams? Let there be an end of shams, They are mines of poisonous mineral. Statesmen damn themselves to be Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls To the auction of a fee; Churchmen damn themselves to see God's sweet love in burning coals. The rich are damned, beyond all cure, To taunt, and starve, and trample on The weak and wretched; and the poor Damn their broken hearts to endure Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan. Sometimes the poor are damned indeed To take,not means for being blessed, But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed From which the worms that it doth feed Squeeze less than they before possessed. And some few, like we know who, Damnedbut God alone knows why To believe their minds are given To make this ugly Hell a Heaven; In which faith they live and die. Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken, Each man be he sound or no Must indifferently sicken; As when day begins to thicken, None knows a pigeon from a crow, So good and bad, sane and mad, The oppressor and the oppressed; Those who weep to see what others Smile to inflict upon their brothers; Lovers, haters, worst and best; All are damnedthey breathe an air, Thick, infected, joy-dispelling: Each pursues what seems most fair, Mining like moles, through mind, and there Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care In thrond state is ever dwelling. PART THE FOURTH SIN Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square, A footman in the Devil's service! And the misjudging world would swear That every man in service there To virtue would prefer vice. But Peter, though now damned, was not What Peter was before damnation. Men oftentimes prepare a lot Which ere it finds them, is not what Suits with their genuine station. All things that Peter saw and felt Had a peculiar aspect to him; And when they came within the belt Of his own nature, seemed to melt, Like cloud to cloud, into him. And so the outward world uniting To that within him, he became Considerably uninviting To those who, meditation slighting, Were moulded in a different frame. And he scorned them, and they scorned him; And he scorned all they did; and they Did all that men of their own trim Are wont to do to please their whim, Drinking, lying, swearing, play. Such were his fellow-servants; thus His virtue, like our own, was built Too much on that indignant fuss Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us To bully one another's guilt. He had a mind which was somehow At once circumference and centre Of all he might or feel or know; Nothing went ever out, although Something did ever enter. He had as much imagination As a pint-pot;he never could Fancy another situation, From which to dart his contemplation, Than that wherein he stood. Yet his was individual mind, And new created all he saw In a new manner, and refined Those new creations, and combined Them, by a master-spirit's law. Thusthough unimaginative An apprehension clear, intense, Of his mind's work, had made alive The things it wrought on; I believe Wakening a sort of thought in sense. But from the first 'twas Peter's drift To be a kind of moral eunuch, He touched the hem of Nature's shift, Felt faintand never dared uplift The closest, all-concealing tunic. She laughed the while, with an arch smile, And kissed him with a sister's kiss, And said'My best Diogenes, I love you wellbut, if you please, Tempt not again my deepest bliss. ''Tis you are coldfor I, not coy, Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true; And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy His errors prove itknew my joy More, learnd friend, than you. 'Bocca bacciata non perde ventura, Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna: So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.' Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe, And smoothed his spacious forehead down With his broad palm;'twixt love and fear, He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer, And in his dream sate down. The Devil was no uncommon creature; A leaden-witted thiefjust huddled Out of the dross and scum of nature; A toad-like lump of limb and feature, With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled. He was that heavy, dull, cold thing, The spirit of evil well may be: A drone too base to have a sting; Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing, And calls lust, luxury. Now he was quite the kind of wight Round whom collect, at a fixed aera, Venison, turtle, hock, and claret, Good cheerand those who come to share it And best East Indian madeira! It was his fancy to invite Men of science, wit, and learning, Who came to lend each other light; He proudly thought that his gold's might Had set those spirits burning. And men of learning, science, wit, Considered him as you and I Think of some rotten tree, and sit Lounging and dining under it, Exposed to the wide sky. And all the while, with loose fat smile, The willing wretch sat winking there, Believing 'twas his power that made That jovial sceneand that all paid Homage to his unnoticed chair. Though to be sure this place was Hell; He was the Deviland all they What though the claret circled well, And wit, like ocean, rose and fell? Were damned eternally. PART THE FIFTH GRACE Among the guests who often stayed Till the Devil's petits-soupers, A man there came, fair as a maid, And Peter noted what he said, Standing behind his master's chair. He was a mighty poetand A subtle-souled psychologist; All things he seemed to understand, Of old or newof sea or land But his own mindwhich was a mist. This was a man who might have turned Hell into Heavenand so in gladness A Heaven unto himself have earned; But he in shadows undiscerned Trusted,and damned himself to madness. He spoke of poetry, and how 'Divine it wasa lighta love A spirit which like wind doth blow As it listeth, to and fro; A dew rained down from God above; 'A power which comes and goes like dream, And which none can ever trace Heaven's light on earthTruth's brightest beam.' And when he ceased there lay the gleam Of those words upon his face. Now Peter, when he heard such talk, Would, heedless of a broken pate, Stand like a man asleep, or balk Some wishing guest of knife or fork, Or drop and break his master's plate. At night he oft would start and wake Like a lover, and began In a wild measure songs to make On moor, and glen, and rocky lake, And on the heart of man And on the universal sky And the wide earth's bosom green, And the sweet, strange mystery Of what beyond these things may lie, And yet remain unseen. For in his thought he visited The spots in which, ere dead and damned, He his wayward life had led; Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed Which thus his fancy crammed. And these obscure remembrances Stirred such harmony in Peter, That, whensoever he should please, He could speak of rocks and trees In poetic metre. For though it was without a sense Of memory, yet he remembered well Many a ditch and quick-set fence; Of lakes he had intelligence, He knew something of heath and fell. He had also dim recollections Of pedlars tramping on their rounds; Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections Old parsons make in burying-grounds. But Peter's verse was clear, and came Announcing from the frozen hearth Of a cold age, that none might tame The soul of that diviner flame It augured to the Earth: Like gentle rains, on the dry plains, Making that green which late was gray, Or like the sudden moon, that stains Some gloomy chamber's window-panes With a broad light like day. For language was in Peter's hand Like clay while he was yet a potter; And he made songs for all the land, Sweet both to feel and understand, As pipkins late to mountain Cotter. And Mr. -, the bookseller, Gave twenty pounds for some;then scorning A footman's yellow coat to wear, Peter, too proud of heart, I fear, Instantly gave the Devil warning. Whereat the Devil took offence, And swore in his soul a great oath then, 'That for his damned impertinence He'd bring him to a proper sense Of what was due to gentlemen!' PART THE SIXTH DAMNATION 'O that mine enemy had written A book!'cried Job:a fearful curse, If to the Arab, as the Briton, 'Twas galling to be critic-bitten: The Devil to Peter wished no worse. When Peter's next new book found vent, The Devil to all the first Reviews A copy of it slyly sent, With five-pound note as compliment, And this short notice'Pray abuse.' Then seriatim, month and quarter, Appeared such mad tirades.One said 'Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter, Then drowned the mother in Ullswater, The last thing as he went to bed.' Another'Let him shave his head! Where's Dr. Willis?Or is he joking? What does the rascal mean or hope, No longer imitating Pope, In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?' One more, 'Is incest not enough? And must there be adultery too? Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire Is twenty times too good for you. 'By that last book of yours we think You've double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink You stood. From your black name will shrink The babe that is unborn.' All these Reviews the Devil made Up in a parcel, which he had Safely to Peter's house conveyed. For carriage, tenpence Peter paid Untied themread themwent half mad. 'What!' cried he, 'this is my reward For nights of thought, and days of toil? Do poets, but to be abhorred By men of whom they never heard, Consume their spirits' oil? 'What have I done to them?and who Is Mrs. Foy? 'Tis very cruel To speak of me and Betty so! Adultery! God defend me! Oh! I've half a mind to fight a duel. 'Or,' cried he, a grave look collecting, 'Is it my genius, like the moon, Sets those who stand her face inspecting, That face within their brain reflecting, Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?' For Peter did not know the town, But thought, as country readers do, For half a guinea or a crown, He bought oblivion or renown From God's own voice in a review. All Peter did on this occasion Was, writing some sad stuff in prose. It is a dangerous invasion When poets criticize; their station Is to delight, not pose. The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair For Born's translation of Kant's book; A world of words, tail foremost, where Rightwrongfalsetrueand fouland fair As in a lottery-wheel are shook. Five thousand crammed octavo pages Of German psychologics,he Who his furor verborum assuages Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages More than will e'er be due to me. I looked on them nine several days, And then I saw that they were bad; A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise, He never read them;with amaze I found Sir William Drummond had. When the book came, the Devil sent It to P. Verbovale, Esquire, With a brief note of compliment, By that night's Carlisle mail. It went, And set his soul on fire. Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum, Made him beyond the bottom see Of truth's clear wellwhen I and you, Ma'am, Go, as we shall do, subter humum, We may know more than he. Now Peter ran to seed in soul Into a walking paradox; For he was neither part nor whole, Nor good, nor badnor knave nor fool; Among the woods and rocks Furious he rode, where late he ran, Lashing and spurring his tame hobby; Turned to a formal puritan, A solemn and unsexual man, He half believed White Obi. This steed in vision he would ride, High trotting over nine-inch bridges, With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride, Mocking and mowing by his side A mad-brained goblin for a guide Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges. After these ghastly rides, he came Home to his heart, and found from thence Much stolen of its accustomed flame; His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame Of their intelligence. To Peter's view, all seemed one hue; He was no Whig, he was no Tory; No Deist and no Christian he; He got so subtle, that to be Nothing, was all his glory. One single point in his belief From his organization sprung, The heart-enrooted faith, the chief Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf, That 'Happiness is wrong'; So thought Calvin and Dominic; So think their fierce successors, who Even now would neither stint nor stick Our flesh from off our bones to pick, If they might 'do their do.' His morals thus were undermined: The old Peterthe hard, old Potter Was born anew within his mind; He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined, As when he tramped beside the Otter. In the death hues of agony Lambently flashing from a fish, Now Peter felt amused to see Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee, Mixed with a certain hungry wish. So in his Country's dying face He lookedand, lovely as she lay, Seeking in vain his last embrace, Wailing her own abandoned case, With hardened sneer he turned away: And coolly to his own soul said; 'Do you not think that we might make A poem on her when she's dead: Or, noa thought is in my head Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take: 'My wife wants one.Let who will bury This mangled corpse! And I and you, My dearest Soul, will then make merry, As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,' 'Ayand at last desert me too.' And so his Soul would not be gay, But moaned within him; like a fawn Moaning within a cave, it lay Wounded and wasting, day by day, Till all its life of life was gone. As troubled skies stain waters clear, The storm in Peter's heart and mind Now made his verses dark and queer: They were the ghosts of what they were, Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind. For he now raved enormous folly, Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves, 'Twould make George Colman melancholy To have heard him, like a male Molly, Chanting those stupid staves. Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse On Peter while he wrote for freedom, So soon as in his song they spy The folly which soothes tyranny, Praise him, for those who feed 'em. 'He was a man, too great to scan; A planet lost in truth's keen rays: His virtue, awful and prodigious; He was the most sublime, religious, Pure-minded Poet of these days.' As soon as he read that, cried Peter, 'Eureka! I have found the way To make a better thing of metre Than e'er was made by living creature Up to this blessd day.' Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil; In one of which he meekly said: 'May Carnage and Slaughter, Thy niece and thy daughter, May Rapine and Famine, Thy gorge ever cramming, Glut thee with living and dead!   'May Death and Damnation, And Consternation, Flit up from Hell with pure intent! Slash them at Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester; Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent. 'Let thy body-guard yeomen Hew down babes and women, And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent! When Moloch in Jewry Munched children with fury, It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.' PART THE SEVENTH DOUBLE DAMNATION The Devil now knew his proper cue. Soon as he read the ode, he drove To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's, A man of interest in both houses, And said:'For money or for love, 'Pray find some cure or sinecure; To feed from the superfluous taxes A friend of oursa poetfewer Have fluttered tamer to the lure Than he.' His lordship stands and racks his Stupid brains, while one might count As many beads as he had boroughs, At length replies; from his mean front, Like one who rubs out an account, Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows: 'It happens fortunately, dear Sir, I can. I hope I need require No pledge from you, that he will stir In our affairs;like Oliver, That he'll be worthy of his hire.' These words exchanged, the news sent off To Peter, home the Devil hied, Took to his bed; he had no cough, No doctor,meat and drink enough, Yet that same night he died. The Devil's corpse was leaded down; His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf, Mourning-coaches, many a one, Followed his hearse along the town: Where was the Devil himself? When Peter heard of his promotion, His eyes grew like two stars for bliss: There was a bow of sleek devotion Engendering in his back; each motion Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss. He hired a house, bought plate, and made A genteel drive up to his door, With sifted gravel neatly laid, As if defying all who said, Peter was ever poor. But a disease soon struck into The very life and soul of Peter He walked aboutslepthad the hue Of health upon his cheeksand few Dug betternone a heartier eater. And yet a strange and horrid curse Clung upon Peter, night and day; Month after month the thing grew worse, And deadlier than in this my verse I can find strength to say. Peter was dullhe was at first Dulloh, so dullso very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed Still with this dulness was he cursed Dullbeyond all conceptiondull. No one could read his booksno mortal, But a few natural friends, would hear him; The parson came not near his portal; His state was like that of the immortal Described by Swiftno man could bear him. His sister, wife, and children yawned, With a long, slow, and drear ennui, All human patience far beyond; Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned, Anywhere else to be. But in his verse, and in his prose, The essence of his dulness was Concentred and compressed so close, 'Twould have made Guatimozin doze On his red gridiron of brass. A printer's boy, folding those pages, Fell slumbrously upon one side; Like those famed Seven who slept three ages. To wakeful frenzy's vigil-rages, As opiates, were the same applied. Even the Reviewers who were hired To do the work of his reviewing, With adamantine nerves, grew tired; Gaping and torpid they retired, To dream of what they should be doing. And worse and worse, the drowsy curse Yawned in him, till it grew a pest A wide contagious atmosphere, Creeping like cold through all things near; A power to infect and to infest. His servant-maids and dogs grew dull; His kitten, late a sportive elf; The woods and lakes, so beautiful, Of dim stupidity were full, All grew dull as Peter's self. The earth under his feetthe springs, Which lived within it a quick life, The air, the winds of many wings, That fan it with new murmurings, Were dead to their harmonious strife. The birds and beasts within the wood, The insects, and each creeping thing, Were now a silent multitude; Love's work was left unwroughtno brood Near Peter's house took wing. And every neighbouring cottager Stupidly yawned upon the other: No jackass brayed; no little cur Cocked up his ears;no man would stir To save a dying mother. Yet all from that charmed district went But some half-idiot and half-knave, Who rather than pay any rent, Would live with marvellous content, Over his father's grave. No bailiff dared within that space, For fear of the dull charm, to enter; A man would bear upon his face, For fifteen months in any case, The yawn of such a venture. Seven miles abovebelowaround This pest of dulness holds its sway; A ghastly life without a sound; To Peter's soul the spell is bound How should it ever pass away? 'Composed at Florence, October 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (Nov. 2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author's name; ultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the Poetical Works, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, A Tale. These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt's criticisms the composition of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is chiefly owing.' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peter Bell The Third

494:The Moat House PART I UNDER the shade of convent towers, Where fast and vigil mark the hours, From childhood into youth there grew A maid as fresh as April dew, And sweet as May's ideal flowers, Brighter than dawn in wind-swept skies, Like children's dreams most pure, unwise, Yet with a slumbering soul-fire too, That sometimes shone a moment through Her wondrous unawakened eyes. The nuns, who loved her coldly, meant The twig should grow as it was bent; That she, like them, should watch youth's bier, Should watch her day-dreams disappear, And go the loveless way they went. The convent walls were high and grey; How could Love hope to find a way Into that citadel forlorn, Where his dear name was put to scorn, Or called a sinful thing to say? Yet Love did come; what need to tell Of flowers downcast, that sometimes fell Across her feet when dreamily She paced, with unused breviary, Down paths made still with August's spell-- Of looks cast through the chapel grate, 331 Of letters helped by Love and Fate, That to cold fingers did not come But lay within a warmer home, Upon her heart inviolate? Somehow he loved her--she loved him: Then filled her soul's cup to the brim, And all her daily life grew bright With such a flood of rosy light As turned the altar candles dim. But love that lights is love that leads, And lives upon the heart it feeds; Soon grew she pale though not less fair, And sighed his name instead of prayer, And told her heart-throbs, not her beads. How could she find the sunlight fair, A sunlight that he did not share? How could a rose smell sweet within The cruel bars that shut her in, And shut him out while she was there? He vowed her fealty firm and fast, Then to the winds her fears she cast; They found a way to cheat the bars, And in free air, beneath free stars, Free, and with him, she stood at last. 'Now to some priest,' he said, 'that he May give thee--blessing us--to me.' 'No priest,' she cried in doubt and fear, 'He would divide, not join us, dear. I am mine--I give myself to thee. 'Since thou and I are mine and thine, 332 What need to swear it at a shrine? Would love last longer if we swore That we would love for evermore? God gives me thee--and thou art mine.' 'God weds us now,' he said, 'yet still Some day shall we all forms fulfil. Eternal truth affords to smile At laws wherewith man marks his guile, Yet law shall join us--when you will. 'So look your last, my love, on these Forbidding walls and wooing trees. Farewell to grief and gloom,' said he; 'Farewell to childhood's joy,' said she; But neither said, 'Farewell to peace.' Song. My sweet, my sweet, She is complete From dainty head to darling feet; So warm and white, So brown and bright, So made for love and love's delight. God could but spare One flower so fair, There is none like her anywhere; Beneath wide skies The whole earth lies, But not two other such brown eyes. The world we're in, If one might win? Not worth that dimple in her chin A heaven to know? I'll let that go 333 But once to see her lids droop low Over her eyes, By love made wise: To see her bosom fall and rise Is more than worth The angels' mirth, And all the heaven-joys of earth. This is the hour Which gives me power To win and wear earth's whitest flower. Oh, Love, give grace, Through all life's ways Keep pure this heart, her dwelling place. II The fields were reaped and the pastures bare, And the nights grown windy and chill, When the lovers passed through the beech woods fair, And climbed the brow of the hill. In the hill's spread arm the Moat House lies With elm and willow tree; 'And is that your home at last?' she sighs. 'Our home at last,' laughs he. Across the bridge and into the hall Where the waiting housefolk were. 'This is my lady,' he said to them all, And she looked so sweet and fair That every maid and serving-boy God-blessed them then and there, And wished them luck, and gave them joy, For a happy, handsome pair. And only the old nurse shook her head: 334 'Too young,' she said, 'too young.' She noted that no prayers were read, No marriage bells were rung; No guests were called, no feast was spread, As was meet for a marriage tide; The young lord in the banquet hall broke bread Alone with his little bride. Yet her old heart warmed to the two, and blessed, They were both so glad and gay, By to-morrow and yesterday unoppressed, Fulfilled of the joy of to-day; Like two young birds in that dull old nest, So careless of coming care, So rapt in the other that each possessed, The two young lovers were. He was heir to a stern hard-natured race, That had held the Moat House long, But the gloom of his formal dwelling place Dissolved at her voice and song; So bright, so sweet, to the house she came, So winning of way and word, The household knew her by one pet name, 'My Lady Ladybird.' First love so rarely gets leave to bring, In our world where money is might, Its tender buds to blossoming With the sun of its own delight. We love at rose or at vintage prime, In the glare and heat of the day, Forgetting the dawn and the violet time, And the wild sweet scent of the may. These loved like children, like children played, The old house laughed with delight At her song of a voice, at the radiance made 335 By her dress's flashing flight. Up the dark oak stair, through the gallery's gloom, She ran like a fairy fleet, And ever her lover from room to room Fast followed her flying feet. They gathered the buds of the late-lived rose In the ordered garden ways, They walked through the sombre yew-walled close And threaded the pine woods maze, They rode through woods where their horses came Knee-deep through the rustling leaves, Through fields forlorn of the poppies' flame And bereft of their golden sheaves. In the mellow hush of October noon They rowed in the flat broad boat, Through the lily leaves so thickly strewn On the sunny side of the moat. They were glad of the fire of the beech-crowned hill, And glad of the pale deep sky, And the shifting shade that the willows made On the boat as she glided by. They roamed each room of the Moat House through And questioned the wraiths of the past, What legends rare the old dresses knew, And the swords, what had wet them last? What faces had looked through the lozenge panes, What shadows darkened the door, What feet had walked in the jewelled stains That the rich glass cast on the floor? She dressed her beauty in old brocade That breathed of loss and regret, In laces that broken hearts had swayed, In the days when the swords were wet; And the rubies and pearls laughed out and said, 336 'Though the lovers for whom we were set, And the women who loved us, have long been dead, Yet beauty and we live yet.' When the wild white winter's spectral hand Effaced the green and the red, And crushed the fingers brown of the land Till they grew death-white instead, The two found cheer in their dark oak room, And their dreams of a coming spring, For a brighter sun shone through winter's gloom Than ever a summer could bring. They sat where the great fires blazed in the hall, Where the wolf-skins lay outspread, The pictured faces looked down from the wall To hear his praise of the dead. He told her ghostly tales of the past, And legends rare of his house, Till she held her breath at the shade fire-cast, And the scamper-rush of the mouse, Till she dared not turn her head to see What shape might stand by her chair-Till she cried his name, and fled to his knee, And safely nestled there. Then they talked of their journey, the city's crowd, Of the convent's faint joy and pain, Till the ghosts of the past were laid in the shroud Of commonplace things again. So the winter died, and the baby spring, With hardly voice for a cry, And hands too weak the signs to bring That all men might know her by, Yet woke, and breathed through the soft wet air The promise of all things dear, And poets and lovers knew she was there, 337 And sang to their hearts, 'She is here.' Song. Soft is the ground underfoot, Soft are the skies overhead, Green is the ivy round brown hedge root, Green is the moss where we tread. Purple the woods are, and brown; The blackbird is glossy and sleek, He knows that the worms are no more kept down By frost out of reach of his beak. Grey are the sheep in the fold, Tired of their turnip and beet, Dreaming of meadow and pasture and wold, And turf the warm rain will make sweet. Leaves sleep, no bud wakens yet, But we know by the song of the sun, And the happy way that the world smiles, wet, That the spring--oh, be glad!--is begun. What stirs the heart of the tree? What stirs the seed the earth bears? What is it stirring in you and in me Longing for summer, like theirs?-Longing you cannot explain, Yearning that baffles me still! Ah! that each spring should bring longings again No summer can ever fulfil! III When all the world had echoed the song 338 That the poet and lover sang, When 'Glory to spring,' sweet, soft, and strong, From the ferny woods outrang, In wet green meadow, in hollow green, The primrose stars outshone, And the bluebells balanced their drooping sheen In copses lovely and lone. The green earth laughed, full of leaf and flower, The sky laughed too, full of sun; Was this the hour for a parting hour, With the heaven of spring just won? The woods and fields were echoing To a chorus of life and bliss. Oh, hard to sting the face of the spring With the smart of a parting kiss! A kinsman ailing, a summons sent To haste to his dying bed. 'Oh, cruel sentence of banishment! For my heart says 'Go'!' he said. 'So now good-bye to my home, my dear, To the spring we watched from its birth; There is no spring, oh, my sweet, but here, 'Tis winter all over the earth. 'But I come again, oh, spring of my life, You hold the cord in your hand That will draw me back, oh, my sweetheart wife, To the place where your dear feet stand; But a few short days, and my arms shall be Once more round your little head, And you will be weeping glad tears with me On the grave of our parting, dead! 'I leave you my heart for a short short while, It will ache if 'tis wrapped in fears; Keep it safe and warm in the sun of your smile, 339 Not wet with the rain of your tears. Be glad of the joy that shall soon be won, Be glad to-day, though we part; You shall weep for our parting when parting is done, And drop your tears on my heart.' Song. Good-bye, my love, my only dear, I know your heart is true And that it lingers here with me while mine fares forth with you. We part? Our hearts are almost one, and are so closely tied 'Tis yours that stirs my bosom-lace, mine beats against your side. So not at losing you I grieve, since heart and soul stay here, But all the gladness of my life, I cry to lose it, dear; Warmth of the sun, sweet of the rose, night's rest and light of day, I mourn for these, for if you go, you take them all away. You are sad too--not at leaving me, whose heart must with you go, But at the heaven you leave behind--ah, yes--you told me so, You said wherever you might go you could not ever find A spring so sweet, love so complete, as these you leave behind. No future joy will ever pay this moment's bitter ache, Yet I am glad to be so sad, since it is for your sake. You take so much, I do but wish that you could take the whole, Could take me, since you take my rest, my light, my joy, my soul. Song. Oh, love, I leave This springtide eve, When woods in sunset shine blood-red; The long road lies Before my eyes, My horse goes on with even tread. 340 I dare not turn These eyes that burn Back to the terrace where you lean; If I should see Your tears for me, I must turn back to dry them, O my queen! Yet I must go, Fate has it so, Duty spoke once, and I obey; Sadly I rise, Leave paradise, And turn my face the other way. Nothing is dear On earth but here, There is no joy away from you; What though there be New things to see, New friends, new faces, and adventures new? Yet since I may Not with you stay, Hey for the outer world of life! Brace limbs, shake rein, And seek again The hurry, jostle, jar and strife. Hey for the new! Yet, love, for you-I have loved you so--the last hand-kiss. How vast a world Lies here unfurled! How small, if sweet, home's inner round of bliss! The road bends right, 341 Leads out of sight, Here I may turn, nor fear to see; So far away, One could not say If you are weeping now for me. Behind this eve My love I leave, The big bright world spreads out before; Yet will I come, To you and home, Oh, love, and rest beneath your yoke once more. IV She stood upon the terrace, gazing still Down the long road to watch him out of sight, Dry-eyed at first, until the swelling hill Hid him. Then turned she to the garden bright, Whose ways held memories of lover's laughter, And lover's sadness that had followed after, Both born of passion's too intense delight. The garden knew her secrets, and its bowers Threw her her secrets back in mocking wise; ''Twas here he buried you in lilac flowers. Here while he slept you covered up his eyes With primroses. They died; and by that token Love, like a flower whose stalk has once been broken, Will live no more for all your tears and sighs.' The sundial that had marked their happy hours Cried out to her, 'I know that he is gone; So many twos have wreathed me round with flowers, And always one came afterwards alone, And always wept--even as you are weeping. The flowers while they lived were cold, shade keeping, But always through the tears the sun still shone.' 342 She left the garden; but the house still more Whispered, 'You love him--he has gone away.' Where fell her single footstep sighed the floor, 'Another foot than yours fell here to-day.' The very hound she stroked looked round and past her, Then in her face, and whined, 'Where is our master?' The whole house had the same one thing to say. Empty, without its soul, disconsolate, The great house was: through all the rooms went she, And every room was dark and desolate, Nothing seemed good to do or good to see. At last, upon the wolf-skins, worn with weeping, The old nurse found her, like a tired child, sleeping With face tear-stained, and sobbing brokenly. Wearily went the days, all sad the same, Yet each brought its own added heaviness. Why was it that no letter from him came To ease the burden of her loneliness? Why did he send no message, word, or greeting, To help her forward to their day of meeting, No written love--no black and white caress? At last there came a letter, sweet but brief, 'He was so busy--had no time for more.' No time! She had had time enough for grief, There never had been so much time before; And yet the letter lay within her bosom, Pressed closely to her breathing beauty's blossom, Worn for a balm, because her heart was sore. She knew not where he stayed, and so could send, Of all the letters that she wrote, not one; Hour after soft spring hour the child would spend In pouring out her soul, for, once begun, 343 The tale of all her love and grief flowed over Upon the letters that she wrote her lover, And that the fire read when the tale was done. And yet she never doubted he would come, If not before, yet when a baby's eyes Should look for him, when his deserted home Should waken to a baby's laughs and cries. 'He judges best--perhaps he comes to-morrow, But come he will, and we shall laugh at sorrow When in my arms our little baby lies.' And in the August days a soft hush fell Upon the house--the old nurse kept her place Beside the little wife--and all was well; After rapt anguish came a breathing space, And she, mid tears and smiles, white-faced, glad-eyed, Felt her wee baby move against her side, Kissed its small hands, worshipped its tiny face. Song. Oh, baby, baby, baby dear, We lie alone together here; The snowy gown and cap and sheet With lavender are fresh and sweet; Through half-closed blinds the roses peer To see and love you, baby dear. We are so tired, we like to lie Just doing nothing, you and I, Within the darkened quiet room. The sun sends dusk rays through the gloom, Which is no gloom since you are here, My little life, my baby dear. Soft sleepy mouth so vaguely pressed Against your new-made mother's breast, 344 Soft little hands in mine I fold, Soft little feet I kiss and hold, Round soft smooth head and tiny ear, All mine, my own, my baby dear. And he we love is far away! But he will come some happy day. You need but me, and I can rest At peace with you beside me pressed. There are no questions, longings vain, No murmuring, nor doubt, nor pain, Only content and we are here, My baby dear. PART II While winged Love his pinions folded in the Moat House by the hill, In the city there was anger, doubt, distrust, and thoughts of ill; For his kinsmen, hearing rumours of the life the lovers led, Wept, and wrung their hands, and sorrowed--'Better that the lad were dead Than to live thus--he, the son of proudest man and noblest earl-Thus in open sin with her, a nameless, shameless, foreign girl.' (Ever when they thus lamented, 'twas the open sin they named, Till one wondered whether sinning, if less frank, had been less blamed.) ''Tis our duty to reclaim him--mate him to a noble bride Who shall fitly grace his station, and walk stately by his side-Gently loose him from the fetters of this siren fair and frail (In such cases time and absence nearly always will prevail). He shall meet the Duke's fair daughter--perfect, saintly Lady May-Beauty is the surest beacon to a young man gone astray! Not at all precipitately, but with judgment sure and fine, We will rescue and redeem him from his shameful husks and swine. So--his uncle's long been ailing (gout and dropsy for his sins)-Let that serve for pretext; hither bring the youth--his cure begins.' So they summoned him and welcomed, and their utmost efforts bent 345 To snatch back a brand from burning and a soul from punishment-Sought to charm him with their feastings, each more sumptuous than the last, From his yearning recollections of his very sinful past-Strove to wipe his wicked doings from his memory's blotted By the chaster, purer interests of the ball-room and the stage. And for Lady May--they hinted to the girl, child-innocent, That her hand to save the sinner by her Saviour had been sent, That her voice might bring his voice her Master's triumph choir to swell, And might save a man from sorrow and a human soul from hell. So she used her maiden graces, maiden glances, maiden smiles, To protect the erring pilgrim from the devil's subtle wiles-Saw him daily, sent him letters, pious verses by the score, Every angel's trap she baited with her sweet religious lore-Ventured all she knew, not knowing that her beauty and her youth Were far better to bait traps with than her odds and ends of truth. First he listened, vain and flattered that a girl as fair as she Should be so distinctly anxious for his lost humanity, Yet determined no attentions, even from the Lady May, Should delay his home-returning one unnecessary day. But as she--heart-wrung with pity for his erring soul--grew kind, Fainter, fainter grew the image of his sweetheart left behind; Till one day May spoke of sorrow--prayed him to reform--repent, Urged the festival in heaven over every penitent; Bold in ignorance, spoke vaguely and low-toned of sin and shame, And at last her voice, half breathless, faltered, broke upon his name, And two tears fell from her lashes on the roses at her breast, Far more potent in their silence than her preaching at its best. And his weak soul thrilled and trembled at her beauty, and he cried, 'Not for me those priceless tears: I am your slave--you shall decide.' 'Save your soul,' she sighed. 'Was ever man so tempted, tried, before? It is yours!' and at the word his soul was lost for evermore. Never woman pure and saintly did the devil's work so well! Never soul ensnared for heaven took a surer road to hell! Lady May had gained her convert, loved him, and was satisfied, And before the last leaves yellowed she would kneel down as his bride. She was happy, and he struggled to believe that perfidy Was repentance--reformation was not one with cruelty, 346 Yet through all congratulations, friends' smiles, lovers' flatteries, Lived a gnawing recollection of the lost love harmonies. In the day he crushed it fiercely, kept it covered out of sight, But it held him by the heart-strings and came boldly out at night: In the solemn truthful night his soul shrank shuddering from its lies, And his base self knew its baseness, and looked full in its false eyes. In the August nights, when all the sky was deep and toneless blue, And the gold star-points seemed letting the remembered sunlight through, When the world was hushed and peaceful in the moonlight's searching white, He would toss and cast his arms out through the silence and the night To those eyes that through the night and through the silence came again, Haunting him with the persistence and the passion of their pain. 'Oh, my little love--my sweetheart--oh, our past--our sweet love-day-Oh, if I were only true--or you were only Lady May!' But the sunshine scared the vision, and he rose once more love-warm To the Lady May's perfections and his own proposed reform. Coward that he was! he could not write and break that loving heart: To the worn-out gouty kinsman was assigned that pleasing part. 'Say it kindly,' said her lover, 'always friends--I can't forget-We must meet no more--but give her tenderest thought and all regret; Bid her go back to the convent--she and I can't meet as friends-Offer her a good allowance--any terms to make amends For what nought could make amends for--for my baseness and my sin. Oh, I know which side the scale this deed of mine will figure in! Curse reform!--she may forget me--'tis on me the burdens fall, For I love her only, solely--not the Lady May at all!' 'Patience,' said the uncle, 'patience, this is but the natural pain When a young man turns from sinning to the paths of grace again. Your wild oats are sown--you're plighted to the noble Lady May (Whose estates adjoin your manor in a providential way). Do your duty, sir, for surely pangs like these are such as win Pardon and the heavenly blessing on the sinner weaned from sin.' Song. Day is fair, and so is she Whom so soon I wed; 347 But the night, when memory Guards my sleepless bed, And with cold hands brings once more Thorns from rose-sweet days of yore-Night I curse and dread. Day is sweet, as sweet as her Girlish tenderness; But the night, when near me stir Rustlings of a dress, Echoes of a loving tone Now renounced, forsworn, foregone, Night is bitterness. Day can stir my blood like wine Or her beauty's fire, But at night I burn and pine, Torture, turn and tire, With a longing that is pain, Just to kiss and clasp again Love's one lost desire. Day is glad and pure and bright, Pure, glad, bright as she; But the sad and guilty night Outlives day--for me. Oh, for days when day and night Equal balance of delight Were alike to me! In the day I see my feet Walk in steadfast wise, Following my lady sweet To her Paradise, Like some stray-recovered lamb; But I see the beast I am When the night stars rise. 348 Yet in wedding day there lies Magic--so they say; Ghosts will have no chance to rise Near my Lady May. Vain the hope! In good or ill Those lost eyes will haunt me still Till my dying day. II Quickly died the August roses, and the kin of Lady May Dowered her richly, blessed her freely, and announced her wedding day; And his yearnings and remorses fainter grew as days went on 'Neath the magic of the beauty of the woman he had won; And less often and less strongly was his fancy caught and crossed By remembrance of the dearness of the woman he had lost. Long sweet mornings in the boudoir where the flowers stood about, Whisperings in the balcony when stars and London lamps came out, Concerts, flower shows, garden parties, balls and dinners, rides and drives, All the time-killing distractions of these fashionable lives; Dreary, joyless as a desert, pleasure's everlasting way, But enchantment can make lovely even deserts, so they say, Sandy waste, or waste of London season, where no green leaf grows, Shone on but by love or passion, each will blossom like the rose! Came no answer to the letter that announced his marriage day; But his people wrote that Lady Ladybird had gone away. So he sent to bid get ready to receive his noble wife. Two such loving women granted to one man, and in one life! Though he shuddered to remember with what ghosts the Moat House swarmed-Ghosts of lovely days and dreamings ere the time when he reformed-Yet he said, 'She cannot surely greatly care, or I had heard Some impulsive, passionate pleading, had some sorrowing written word; She has journeyed to her convent--will be glad as ere I came, Through her beauty's dear enchantment, to a life of shameless shame; And the memories of her dearness passion's flaming sword shall slay, When the Moat House sees the bridal of myself and Lady May!' III 349 Bright the mellow autumn sunshine glows upon the wedding day; Lawns are swept from leaves, and doorways are wreathed round with garlands gay, Flowery arches span the carriage drive from grass again to grass, Flowers are ready for the flinging when the wedded pair shall pass; Bells are ringing, clanging, clamouring from the belfry 'mid the trees, And the sound rings out o'er woodlands, parks and gardens, lawns and leas; All the village gay with banners waits the signal, 'Here they come!' To strew flowers, wave hats, drop curtseys, and hurra its 'Welcome home!' At the gates the very griffins on the posts are wreathed with green. In their ordered lines wait servants for the pair to pass between; But among them there is missing more than one familiar face, And new faces, blank expectant, fill up each vacated place, And the other servants whisper, 'Nurse would wail to see this day, It was well she left the service when 'my Lady' ran away.' Louder, clearer ring the joy-bells through the shaken, shattered air, Till the echoes of them waken in the hillside far and fair; Level shine the golden sunbeams in the golden afternoon. In the east the wan ghost rises of the silver harvest moon. Hark! wheels was it? No, but fancy. Listen! No--yes--can you hear? Yes, it is the coming carriage rolling nearer and more near! Till the horse-hoofs strike the roadway, unmistakable and clear! They are coming! shout your welcome to my lord and lady fair: May God shower his choicest blessings on the happy wedded pair! Here they are! the open carriage and surrounding dusty cloud, Whence he smiles his proud acceptance of the homage of the crowd; And my lady's sweet face! Bless her! there's a one will help the poor, Eyes like those could never turn a beggar helpless from her door! Welcome, welcome! scatter flowers: see, they smile--bow left and right, Reach the lodge gates--God of heaven! what was that, the flash of white? Shehas sprung out from the ambush of the smiling, cheering crowd: 'Fling your flowers--here's my welcome!' sharp the cry rings out and loud. Sudden sight of wild white face, and haggard eyes, and outstretched hands-Just one heart-beat's space before the bridal pair that figure stands, Then the horses, past controlling, forward bound, their hoofs down thrust-And the carriage wheels jolt over something bloody in the dust. 'Stop her! Stop her! Stop the horses!' cry the people all too late, 350 For my lord and Lady May have had their welcome at their gate. 'Twas the old nurse who sprang to her, raised the brown-haired, dust-soiled head, Looked a moment, closed the eyelids--then turned to my lord and said, Kneeling still upon the roadway, with her arm flung round the dead, While the carriage waited near her, blood and dust upon its wheels (Ask my lord within to tell you how a happy bridegroom feels): 'Now, my lord, you are contented; you have chosen for your bride This same fine and dainty lady who is sitting by your side. Did ye tell her ere this bridal of the girl who bore your shame, Bore your love-vows--bore your baby--everything except your name? When they strewed the flowers to greet you, and the banners were unfurled, She has flung before your feet the sweetest flower in all the world! Woe's the day I ever nursed you--loved your lisping baby word, For you grew to name of manhood, and to title of my lord; Woe's the day you ever saw her, brought her home to wreck her life, Throwing by your human plaything, to seek out another wife. God will judge, and I would rather be the lost child lying there, With your babe's milk in her bosom, your horse-hoof marks on her hair, Than be you when God shall thunder, when your days on earth are filled, 'Where is she I gave, who loved you, whom you ruined, left and killed?' Murderer, liar, coward, traitor, look upon your work and say That your heart is glad within you on your happy wedding day! And for you, my noble lady, take my blessing on your head, Though it is not like the blessing maidens look for when they wed. Never bride had such a welcome, such a flower laid on her way, As was given you when your carriage crushed her out of life to-day. Take my blessing--see her body, see what you and he have done-And I wish you joy, my lady, of the bridegroom you have won.' Like a beaten cur, that trembles at the whistling of the lash, He stands listening, hands a-tremble, face as pale as white wood ash; But the Lady May springs down, her soul shines glorious in her eyes, Moving through the angry silence comes to where the other lies, Gazes long upon her silent, but at last she turns her gaze On the nurse, and lips a-tremble, hands outstretched, she slowly says, 'She is dead--but, but her baby--' all her woman's heart is wild 351 With an infinite compassion for the little helpless child. Then she turns to snatch the baby from the arms of one near by, Holds it fast and looks towards him with a voiceless bitter cry, As imploring him to loose her from some nightmare's deadly bands. Dogged looks he down and past her, and she sees and understands, Then she speaks--'I keep your baby--that's my right in sight of men, But by God I vow I'll never see your dastard face again.' So she turned with no word further towards the purple-clouded west, And passed thither with his baby clasped against her maiden breast. Little Ladybird was buried in the old ancestral tomb. From that grave there streams a shadow that wraps up his life in gloom, And he drags the withered life on, longs for death that will not come, The interminable night hours riven by that 'Welcome home!' And he dares not leave this earthly hell of sharp remorse behind, Lest through death not rest but hotter fire of anguish he should find. Coward to the last, he will not risk so little for so much, So he burns, convicted traitor, in the hell self-made of such: And at night he wakes and shivers with unvanquishable dread At the ghosts that press each other for a place beside his bed, And he shudders to remember all the dearness that is dead. Song. I had a soul, Not strong, but following good if good but led. I might have kept it clean and pure and whole, And given it up at last, grown strong with days Of steadfast striving in truth's stern sweet ways; Instead, I soiled and smutched and smothered it With poison-flowers it valued not one whit-Now it is dead. I had a heart Most true, most sweet, that on my loving fed. I might have kept her all my life, a part Of all my life--I let her starve and pine, Ruined her life and desolated mine. Sin brushed my lips--I yielded at a touch, 352 Tempted so little, and I sinned so much, And she is dead. There was a life That in my sin I took and chained and wed, And made--perpetual remorse!--my wife. In my sin's harvest she must reap her share, That makes its sheaves less light for me to bear. Oh, life I might have left to bloom and grow! I struck its root of happiness one blow, And it is dead. Once joy I had, Now I have only agony instead, That maddens, yet will never send me mad. The best that comes is numbed half-sick despair, Remembering how sweet the dear dead were. My whole life might have been one clear joy song! Now--oh, my heart, how still life is, how long, For joy is dead. Yet there is this: I chose the thorns not grapes, the stones not bread; I had my chance, they say, to gain or miss. And yet I feel it was predestinate From the first hour, from the first dawn of fate, That I, thus placed, when that hour should arise, Must act thus, and could not act otherwise. This is the worst of all that can be said; For hope is dead. ~ Edith Nesbit

495:A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make 'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake, Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms: And such too is the grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead; All lovely tales that we have heard or read: An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. Nor do we merely feel these essences For one short hour; no, even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast, They alway must be with us, or we die. Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I Will trace the story of Endymion. The very music of the name has gone Into my being, and each pleasant scene Is growing fresh before me as the green Of our own vallies: so I will begin Now while I cannot hear the city's din; Now while the early budders are just new, And run in mazes of the youngest hue About old forests; while the willow trails Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer My little boat, for many quiet hours, With streams that deepen freshly into bowers. Many and many a verse I hope to write, Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white, Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas, I must be near the middle of my story. O may no wintry season, bare and hoary, See it half finished: but let Autumn bold, With universal tinge of sober gold, Be all about me when I make an end. And now at once, adventuresome, I send My herald thought into a wilderness: There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress My uncertain path with green, that I may speed Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed. Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed So plenteously all weed-hidden roots Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits. And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep, Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens, Never again saw he the happy pens Whither his brethren, bleating with content, Over the hills at every nightfall went. Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever, That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever From the white flock, but pass'd unworried By angry wolf, or pard with prying head, Until it came to some unfooted plains Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many, Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny, And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly To a wide lawn, whence one could only see Stems thronging all around between the swell Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell The freshness of the space of heaven above, Edg'd round with dark tree tops? through which a dove Would often beat its wings, and often too A little cloud would move across the blue. Full in the middle of this pleasantness There stood a marble altar, with a tress Of flowers budded newly; and the dew Had taken fairy phantasies to strew Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve, And so the dawned light in pomp receive. For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass; Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold, To feel this sun-rise and its glories old. Now while the silent workings of the dawn Were busiest, into that self-same lawn All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped A troop of little children garlanded; Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry Earnestly round as wishing to espy Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited For many moments, ere their ears were sated With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then Fill'd out its voice, and died away again. Within a little space again it gave Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave, To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking Through copse-clad vallies,ere their death, oer-taking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. And now, as deep into the wood as we Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light Fair faces and a rush of garments white, Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last Into the widest alley they all past, Making directly for the woodland altar. O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter In telling of this goodly company, Of their old piety, and of their glee: But let a portion of ethereal dew Fall on my head, and presently unmew My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring, To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing. Leading the way, young damsels danced along, Bearing the burden of a shepherd song; Each having a white wicker over brimm'd With April's tender younglings: next, well trimm'd, A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks As may be read of in Arcadian books; Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe, When the great deity, for earth too ripe, Let his divinity o'er-flowing die In music, through the vales of Thessaly: Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground, And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these, Now coming from beneath the forest trees, A venerable priest full soberly, Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept, And after him his sacred vestments swept. From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white, Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light; And in his left he held a basket full Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull: Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill. His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath, Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd, Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car, Easily rolling so as scarce to mar The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown: Who stood therein did seem of great renown Among the throng. His youth was fully blown, Shewing like Ganymede to manhood grown; And, for those simple times, his garments were A chieftain king's: beneath his breast, half bare, Was hung a silver bugle, and between His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen. A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd, To common lookers on, like one who dream'd Of idleness in groves Elysian: But there were some who feelingly could scan A lurking trouble in his nether lip, And see that oftentimes the reins would slip Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh, And think of yellow leaves, of owlets cry, Of logs piled solemnly.Ah, well-a-day, Why should our young Endymion pine away! Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd, Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd To sudden veneration: women meek Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear. Endymion too, without a forest peer, Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face, Among his brothers of the mountain chase. In midst of all, the venerable priest Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least, And, after lifting up his aged hands, Thus spake he: "Men of Latmos! shepherd bands! Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks: Whether descended from beneath the rocks That overtop your mountains; whether come From vallies where the pipe is never dumb; Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge, Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn: Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air; And all ye gentle girls who foster up Udderless lambs, and in a little cup Will put choice honey for a favoured youth: Yea, every one attend! for in good truth Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan. Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had Great bounty from Endymion our lord. The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd His early song against yon breezy sky, That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity." Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire; Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god. Now while the earth was drinking it, and while Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile, And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright 'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang: "O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness; Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken; And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken The dreary melody of bedded reeds In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth; Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth Thou wast to lose fair Syrinxdo thou now, By thy love's milky brow! By all the trembling mazes that she ran, Hear us, great Pan! "O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, What time thou wanderest at eventide Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees Their golden honeycombs; our village leas Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn; The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year All its completionsbe quickly near, By every wind that nods the mountain pine, O forester divine! "Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies For willing service; whether to surprise The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit; Or upward ragged precipices flit To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewildered shepherds to their path again; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, And gather up all fancifullest shells For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells, And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping; Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping, The while they pelt each other on the crown With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown By all the echoes that about thee ring, Hear us, O satyr king! "O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn, When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a swooning over hollow grounds, And wither drearily on barren moors: Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading to universal knowledgesee, Great son of Dryope, The many that are come to pay their vows With leaves about their brows! Be still the unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth Gives it a touch ethereala new birth: Be still a symbol of immensity; A firmament reflected in a sea; An element filling the space between; An unknownbut no more: we humbly screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, And giving out a shout most heaven rending, Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean, Upon thy Mount Lycean! Even while they brought the burden to a close, A shout from the whole multitude arose, That lingered in the air like dying rolls Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine. Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine, Young companies nimbly began dancing To the swift treble pipe, and humming string. Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly To tunes forgottenout of memory: Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred Thermopyl its heroesnot yet dead, But in old marbles ever beautiful. High genitors, unconscious did they cull Time's sweet first-fruitsthey danc'd to weariness, And then in quiet circles did they press The hillock turf, and caught the latter end Of some strange history, potent to send A young mind from its bodily tenement. Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent On either side; pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him,Zephyr penitent, Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. The archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip, And very, very deadliness did nip Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd, Uplifting his strong bow into the air, Many might after brighter visions stare: After the Argonauts, in blind amaze Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways, Until, from the horizon's vaulted side, There shot a golden splendour far and wide, Spangling those million poutings of the brine With quivering ore: 'twas even an awful shine From the exaltation of Apollo's bow; A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe. Who thus were ripe for high contemplating, Might turn their steps towards the sober ring Where sat Endymion and the aged priest 'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas'd The silvery setting of their mortal star. There they discours'd upon the fragile bar That keeps us from our homes ethereal; And what our duties there: to nightly call Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather; To summon all the downiest clouds together For the sun's purple couch; to emulate In ministring the potent rule of fate With speed of fire-tailed exhalations; To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these, A world of other unguess'd offices. Anon they wander'd, by divine converse, Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse Each one his own anticipated bliss. One felt heart-certain that he could not miss His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs, Where every zephyr-sigh pouts and endows Her lips with music for the welcoming. Another wish'd, mid that eternal spring, To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails, Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales: Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind, And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind; And, ever after, through those regions be His messenger, his little Mercury. Some were athirst in soul to see again Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign In times long past; to sit with them, and talk Of all the chances in their earthly walk; Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores Of happiness, to when upon the moors, Benighted, close they huddled from the cold, And shar'd their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told Their fond imaginations,saving him Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim, Endymion: yet hourly had he striven To hide the cankering venom, that had riven His fainting recollections. Now indeed His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed The sudden silence, or the whispers low, Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe, Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms, Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms: But in the self-same fixed trance he kept, Like one who on the earth had never stept. Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man, Frozen in that old tale Arabian. Who whispers him so pantingly and close? Peona, his sweet sister: of all those, His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made, And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade A yielding up, a cradling on her care. Her eloquence did breathe away the curse: She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse Of happy changes in emphatic dreams, Along a path between two little streams, Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow, From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small; Until they came to where these streamlets fall, With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush, Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush With crystal mocking of the trees and sky. A little shallop, floating there hard by, Pointed its beak over the fringed bank; And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank, And dipt again, with the young couple's weight, Peona guiding, through the water straight, Towards a bowery island opposite; Which gaining presently, she steered light Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove, Where nested was an arbour, overwove By many a summer's silent fingering; To whose cool bosom she was used to bring Her playmates, with their needle broidery, And minstrel memories of times gone by. So she was gently glad to see him laid Under her favourite bower's quiet shade, On her own couch, new made of flower leaves, Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves When last the sun his autumn tresses shook, And the tann'd harvesters rich armfuls took. Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest: But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest Peona's busy hand against his lips, And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps A patient watch over the stream that creeps Windingly by it, so the quiet maid Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling Among seer leaves and twigs, might all be heard. O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfin'd Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world Of silvery enchantment!who, upfurl'd Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour, But renovates and lives?Thus, in the bower, Endymion was calm'd to life again. Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain, He said: "I feel this thine endearing love All through my bosom: thou art as a dove Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings About me; and the pearliest dew not brings Such morning incense from the fields of May, As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray From those kind eyes,the very home and haunt Of sisterly affection. Can I want Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears? Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears That, any longer, I will pass my days Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar: Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll Around the breathed boar: again I'll poll The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow: And, when the pleasant sun is getting low, Again I'll linger in a sloping mead To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet, And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat My soul to keep in its resolved course." Hereat Peona, in their silver source, Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim, And took a lute, from which there pulsing came A lively prelude, fashioning the way In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay More subtle cadenced, more forest wild Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child; And nothing since has floated in the air So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand; For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd The quick invisible strings, even though she saw Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw Before the deep intoxication. But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon Her self-possessionswung the lute aside, And earnestly said: "Brother, 'tis vain to hide That thou dost know of things mysterious, Immortal, starry; such alone could thus Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught A Paphian dove upon a message sent? Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent, Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen Her naked limbs among the alders green; And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace Something more high perplexing in thy face!" Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand, And said, "Art thou so pale, who wast so bland And merry in our meadows? How is this? Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss! Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange? Or more complete to overwhelm surmise? Ambition is no sluggard: 'tis no prize, That toiling years would put within my grasp, That I have sigh'd for: with so deadly gasp No man e'er panted for a mortal love. So all have set my heavier grief above These things which happen. Rightly have they done: I, who still saw the horizontal sun Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world, Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd My spear aloft, as signal for the chace I, who, for very sport of heart, would race With my own steed from Araby; pluck down A vulture from his towery perching; frown A lion into growling, loth retire To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire, And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest. "This river does not see the naked sky, Till it begins to progress silverly Around the western border of the wood, Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood Seems at the distance like a crescent moon: And in that nook, the very pride of June, Had I been used to pass my weary eves; The rather for the sun unwilling leaves So dear a picture of his sovereign power, And I could witness his most kingly hour, When he doth lighten up the golden reins, And paces leisurely down amber plains His snorting four. Now when his chariot last Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast, There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red: At which I wondered greatly, knowing well That but one night had wrought this flowery spell; And, sitting down close by, began to muse What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus, In passing here, his owlet pinions shook; Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth, Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought, Until my head was dizzy and distraught. Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul; And shaping visions all about my sight Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light; The which became more strange, and strange, and dim, And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim: And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell The enchantment that afterwards befel? Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream That never tongue, although it overteem With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring, Could figure out and to conception bring All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay Watching the zenith, where the milky way Among the stars in virgin splendour pours; And travelling my eye, until the doors Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight, I became loth and fearful to alight From such high soaring by a downward glance: So kept me stedfast in that airy trance, Spreading imaginary pinions wide. When, presently, the stars began to glide, And faint away, before my eager view: At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue, And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge; And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge The loveliest moon, that ever silver'd o'er A shell for Neptune's goblet: she did soar So passionately bright, my dazzled soul Commingling with her argent spheres did roll Through clear and cloudy, even when she went At last into a dark and vapoury tent Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train Of planets all were in the blue again. To commune with those orbs, once more I rais'd My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed By a bright something, sailing down apace, Making me quickly veil my eyes and face: Again I look'd, and, O ye deities, Who from Olympus watch our destinies! Whence that completed form of all completeness? Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness? Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O Where Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair? Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun; Notthy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun Such follying before theeyet she had, Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad; And they were simply gordian'd up and braided, Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded, Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow; The which were blended in, I know not how, With such a paradise of lips and eyes, Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs, That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings And plays about its fancy, till the stings Of human neighbourhood envenom all. Unto what awful power shall I call? To what high fane?Ah! see her hovering feet, More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion; 'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed, Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed, Handfuls of daisies.""Endymion, how strange! Dream within dream!""She took an airy range, And then, towards me, like a very maid, Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid, And press'd me by the hand: Ah! 'twas too much; Methought I fainted at the charmed touch, Yet held my recollection, even as one Who dives three fathoms where the waters run Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon, I felt upmounted in that region Where falling stars dart their artillery forth, And eagles struggle with the buffeting north That balances the heavy meteor-stone; Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone, But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky. Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high, And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd; Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side: There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd To faint once more by looking on my bliss I was distracted; madly did I kiss The wooing arms which held me, and did give My eyes at once to death: but 'twas to live, To take in draughts of life from the gold fount Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd A second self, that each might be redeem'd And plunder'd of its load of blessedness. Ah, desperate mortal! I ev'n dar'd to press Her very cheek against my crowned lip, And, at that moment, felt my body dip Into a warmer air: a moment more, Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes A scent of violets, and blossoming limes, Loiter'd around us; then of honey cells, Made delicate from all white-flower bells; And once, above the edges of our nest, An arch face peep'd,an Oread as I guess'd. "Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me In midst of all this heaven? Why not see, Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark, And stare them from me? But no, like a spark That needs must die, although its little beam Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream Fell into nothinginto stupid sleep. And so it was, until a gentle creep, A careful moving caught my waking ears, And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears, My clenched hands;for lo! the poppies hung Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung A heavy ditty, and the sullen day Had chidden herald Hesperus away, With leaden looks: the solitary breeze Bluster'd, and slept, and its wild self did teaze With wayward melancholy; and r thought, Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus! Away I wander'dall the pleasant hues Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills Seem'd sooty, and o'er-spread with upturn'd gills Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd In little journeys, I beheld in it A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit My soul with under darkness; to entice My stumblings down some monstrous precipice: Therefore I eager followed, and did curse The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse, Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven! These things, with all their comfortings, are given To my down-sunken hours, and with thee, Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea Of weary life."          Thus ended he, and both Sat silent: for the maid was very loth To answer; feeling well that breathed words Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps, And wonders; struggles to devise some blame; To put on such a look as would say, Shame On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife, She could as soon have crush'd away the life From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause, She said with trembling chance: "Is this the cause? This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas! That one who through this middle earth should pass Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave His name upon the harp-string, should achieve No higher bard than simple maidenhood, Singing alone, and fearfully,how the blood Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray He knew not where; and how he would say, nay, If any said 'twas love: and yet 'twas love; What could it be but love? How a ring-dove Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path; And how he died: and then, that love doth scathe, The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses; And then the ballad of his sad life closes With sighs, and an alas!Endymion! Be rather in the trumpet's mouth,anon Among the winds at largethat all may hearken! Although, before the crystal heavens darken, I watch and dote upon the silver lakes Pictur'd in western cloudiness, that takes The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands, Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands With horses prancing o'er them, palaces And towers of amethyst,would I so tease My pleasant days, because I could not mount Into those regions? The Morphean fount Of that fine element that visions, dreams, And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams Into its airy channels with so subtle, So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle, Circled a million times within the space Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace, A tinting of its quality: how light Must dreams themselves be; seeing they're more slight Than the mere nothing that engenders them! Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick? Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick For nothing but a dream?" Hereat the youth Look'd up: a conflicting of shame and ruth Was in his plaited brow: yet his eyelids Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids A little breeze to creep between the fans Of careless butterflies: amid his pains He seem'd to taste a drop of manna-dew, Full palatable; and a colour grew Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake. "Peona! ever have I long'd to slake My thirst for the world's praises: nothing base, No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar'd Though now 'tis tatter'd; leaving my bark bar'd And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope, To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks. Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven! Fold A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness, And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds, And with a sympathetic touch unbinds Eolian magic from their lucid wombs: Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs; Old ditties sigh above their father's grave; Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot; Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, Where long ago a giant battle was; And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass In every place where infant Orpheus slept. Feel we these things?that moment have we stept Into a sort of oneness, and our state Is like a floating spirit's. But there are Richer entanglements, enthralments far More self-destroying, leading, by degrees, To the chief intensity: the crown of these Is made of love and friendship, and sits high Upon the forehead of humanity. All its more ponderous and bulky worth Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth A steady splendour; but at the tip-top, There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop Of light, and that is love: its influence, Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense, At which we start and fret; till in the end, Melting into its radiance, we blend, Mingle, and so become a part of it, Nor with aught else can our souls interknit So wingedly: when we combine therewith, Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith, And we are nurtured like a pelican brood. Aye, so delicious is the unsating food, That men, who might have tower'd in the van Of all the congregated world, to fan And winnow from the coming step of time All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime Left by men-slugs and human serpentry, Have been content to let occasion die, Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium. And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, Than speak against this ardent listlessness: For I have ever thought that it might bless The world with benefits unknowingly; As does the nightingale, upperched high, And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood. Just so may love, although 'tis understood The mere commingling of passionate breath, Produce more than our searching witnesseth: What I know not: but who, of men, can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet? "Now, if this earthly love has power to make Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake Ambition from their memories, and brim Their measure of content; what merest whim, Seems all this poor endeavour after fame, To one, who keeps within his stedfast aim A love immortal, an immortal too. Look not so wilder'd; for these things are true, And never can be born of atomies That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies, Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure, My restless spirit never could endure To brood so long upon one luxury, Unless it did, though fearfully, espy A hope beyond the shadow of a dream. My sayings will the less obscured seem, When I have told thee how my waking sight Has made me scruple whether that same night Was pass'd in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona! Beyond the matron-temple of Latona, Which we should see but for these darkening boughs, Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart, And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught, And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide Past them, but he must brush on every side. Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell, Far as the slabbed margin of a well, Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky. Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet Edges them round, and they have golden pits: 'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat, When all above was faint with mid-day heat. And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed, I'd bubble up the water through a reed; So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips, With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily, When love-lorn hours had left me less a child, I sat contemplating the figures wild Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through. Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver; So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver The happy chance: so happy, I was fain To follow it upon the open plain, And, therefore, was just going; when, behold! A wonder, fair as any I have told The same bright face I tasted in my sleep, Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap Through the cool depth.It moved as if to flee I started up, when lo! refreshfully, There came upon my face, in plenteous showers, Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers, Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight, Bathing my spirit in a new delight. Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss Alone preserved me from the drear abyss Of death, for the fair form had gone again. Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth On the deer's tender haunches: late, and loth, 'Tis scar'd away by slow returning pleasure. How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure Of weary days, made deeper exquisite, By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night! Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still, Than when I wander'd from the poppy hill: And a whole age of lingering moments crept Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept Away at once the deadly yellow spleen. Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen; Once more been tortured with renewed life. When last the wintry gusts gave over strife With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes In pity of the shatter'd infant buds, That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs, My hunting cap, because I laugh'd and smil'd, Chatted with thee, and many days exil'd All torment from my breast;'twas even then, Straying about, yet, coop'd up in the den Of helpless discontent,hurling my lance From place to place, and following at chance, At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck, And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck In the middle of a brook,whose silver ramble Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble, Tracing along, it brought me to a cave, Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave The nether sides of mossy stones and rock, 'Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead, Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home. "Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?" Said I, low voic'd: "Ah whither! 'Tis the grot Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot, Doth her resign; and where her tender hands She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands: Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits, And babbles thorough silence, till her wits Are gone in tender madness, and anon, Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone Of sadness. O that she would take my vows, And breathe them sighingly among the boughs, To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head, Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed, And weave them dyinglysend honey-whispers Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers May sigh my love unto her pitying! O charitable echo! hear, and sing This ditty to her!tell her"so I stay'd My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid, Stood stupefied with my own empty folly, And blushing for the freaks of melancholy. Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name Most fondly lipp'd, and then these accents came: Endymion! the cave is secreter Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys And trembles through my labyrinthine hair." At that oppress'd I hurried in.Ah! where Are those swift moments? Whither are they fled? I'll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed Sorrow the way to death, but patiently Bear up against it: so farewel, sad sigh; And come instead demurest meditation, To occupy me wholly, and to fashion My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink. No more will I count over, link by link, My chain of grief: no longer strive to find A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see, Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be; What a calm round of hours shall make my days. There is a paly flame of hope that plays Where'er I look: but yet, I'll say 'tis naught And here I bid it die. Have not I caught, Already, a more healthy countenance? By this the sun is setting; we may chance Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car." This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star Through autumn mists, and took Peona's hand: They stept into the boat, and launch'd from land. ENDYMION. A Romance. "The stretched metre of an antique song." ~ Shakspeare's Sonnets. INSCRIBED, With Every Feeling Of Pride and Regret and With "A Bowed Mind," To the Memory of The Most English of Poets Except Shakspeare, THOMAS CHATTERON. ------------------------ (line 144): A lovely allusion to the story of Apollo's nine years' sojourn on earth as the herdsman of Admetus, when banished from Olympus for killing the Cyclops who had forged the thunder-bolts wherewith AEsculapius had been slain. (line 232): It was the Hymn to Pan beginning here that the young poet when engaged in the composition of Endymion was induced to recite in the presence of Wordsworth, on the 28th of December 1817, at Haydon's house. Leigh Hunt records that the elder poet pronounced it "a very pretty piece of paganism." (line 319): Doubtless meant to refer specially to the Elgin marbles. (line 347): The reference here is to the passage from the second Book of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, beginning at verse 674 ... which Shelley had in mind when (Prose Works, Vol. 3, p. 56) he alluded to the Apollo "so finely described by Apollonius Rhodius when the dazzling radiance of his beautiful limbs suddenly shone over the dark Euxine." __ note found before the Preface of Endymion, in the Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. ..., 'In Woodhouse's copy of Endymion there is a note against the passage "so I will begin" &c., line 39, Book I, to the effect that the poem was begun in the spring of 1817 and finished in the winter of 1817-18; and in the title-page he has inserted April before 1818. The statement corresponds with Keats's own record of May 1817, that he was busying himself at Margate with the commencement of Endymion.' PREFACE. Knowing within myself the manner in which this Poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public. What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the press; nor should they if I thought a year's castigation would do them any good; -- it will not: the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live. This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honor of English literature. The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages. I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness: for I wish to try once more, before I bid it farewell. Teignmouth, April 10, 1818. [footnote] Woodhouse notes -- "[for I wish to try once more,] This alluded to his then intention of writing a poem on the fall of Hyperion. He commenced this poem: but, thanks to the critics who fell foul of this work, he discontinued it. The fragment was published in 1820." by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes ~ John Keats, Endymion - Book I

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

10

   5 Fiction
   4 Poetry
   3 Philosophy
   3 Occultism
   2 Psychology
   1 Science
   1 Integral Yoga
   1 Christianity
   1 Alchemy


   4 Carl Jung
   3 H P Lovecraft
   2 Walt Whitman
   2 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   2 Aldous Huxley


   2 Whitman - Poems
   2 The Secret Doctrine
   2 The Perennial Philosophy
   2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   2 Shelley - Poems
   2 Aion

1.01_-_To_Watanabe_Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #Hakuin Ekaku, #Zen   Years later this brief letter became the basis for The Cloth Drum Refitted [with a New Drumhead], a series of accounts of retri bution for unfilial behavior that appeared as a single volume in 1747. It was greatly enlarged and reissued in 1753 in a five-volume edition. This edition opens with the letter to   Watanabe Sukefusa, which takes up less than a third of volume one, and is followed by twenty-two more stories of karmic cause and effect. Hakuin returned to this genre in later collections such as   Accounts of the Miraculous Effects of the Ten Phrase Kannon Sutra for Prolonging Life. Whereas

1.03_-_PERSONALITY,_SANCTITY,_DIVINE_INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy      The will is free and we are at liberty to identify our being either exclusively with our selfness and its interests, regarded as independent of indwelling Spirit and transcendent Godhead (in which case we shall be passively damned or actively fiendish), or exclusively with the divine within us and without (in which case we shall be saints), or finally with self at one moment or in one context and with spiritual not-self at other moments and in other contexts (in which case we shall be average citizens, too theocentric to be wholly lost, and too egocentric to achieve enlightenment and a total deliverance). Since human craving can never be satisfied except by the unitive knowledge of God and since the mind-body is capable of an enormous variety of experiences, we are free to identify ourselves with an almost infinite number of possible objectswith the pleasures of gluttony, for example, or intemperance, or sensuality; with money, power or fame; with our family, regarded as a possession or actually an extension and projection of our own selfness; with our goods and chattels, our hobbies, our collections; with our artistic or scientific talents; with some favourite branch of knowledge, some fascinating special subject; with our professions, our political parties, our churches; with our pains and illnesses; with our memories of success or misfortune, our hopes, fears and schemes for the future; and finally with the eternal Reality within which and by which all the rest has its being. And we are free, of course, to identify ourselves with more than one of these things simultaneously or in succession. Hence the quite astonishingly improbable combination of traits making up a complex personality. Thus a man can be at once the craftiest of politicians and the dupe of his own verbiage, can have a passion for brandy and money, and an equal passion for the poetry of George Meredith and under-age girls and his mother, for horse-racing and detective stories and the good of his country the whole accompanied by a sneaking fear of hell-fire, a hatred of Spinoza and an unblemished record for Sunday church-going. A person born with one kind of psycho-physical constitution will be tempted to identify himself with one set of interests and passions, while a person with another kind of temperament will be tempted to make very different identifications. But these temptations (though extremely powerful, if the constitutional bias is strongly marked) do not have to be succumbed to; people can and do resist them, can and do refuse to identify themselves with what it would be all too easy and natural for them to be; can and do become better and quite other than their own selves. In this context the following brief article on How Men Behave in Crisis (published in a recent issue of Harpers Magazine) is highly significant. A young psychiatrist, who went as a medical observer on five combat missions of the Eighth Air Force in England says that in times of great stress and danger men are likely to react quite uniformly, even though under normal circumstances, they differ widely in personality. He went on one mission, during which the B-17 plane and crew were so severely damaged that survival seemed impossible. He had already studied the on the ground personalities of the crew and had found that they represented a great diversity of human types. Of their behaviour in crisis he reported:

1.03_-_Tara,_Liberator_from_the_Eight_Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset   and what doesnt and between what to practice and what to abandon. In this   way, our collections of wisdom and positive potentialwhich resemble   towns and hermitages of ease and blissare protected, and our happiness

1.03_-_The_Phenomenon_of_Man, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   as sums of nuclei and electrons; molecules as sums of atoms;   cells as collections of molecules. Could there not be, in   formation ahead of us, a humanity which will be the sum of

1.06_-_Agni_and_the_Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Atri. In each of these Mandalas the Suktas addressed to Agni are first collected together and followed by those of which Indra is the deity; the invocations of other gods, Brihaspati, Surya, the Ribhus, Usha etc. close the Mandala. A whole book, the ninth, is given to a single god, Soma. The first, eighth and tenth   Mandalas are collections of Suktas by various Rishis, but the hymns of each seer are ordinarily placed together in the order of their deities, Agni leading, Indra following, the other gods succeeding. Thus the first Mandala opens with ten hymns of the seer Madhuchchhandas, son of Vishwamitra, and an eleventh ascribed to Jetri, son of Madhuchchhandas. This last Sukta, however, is identical in style, manner and spirit with the ten that precede it and they can all be taken together as a single block of hymns one in intention and diction.

1.06_-_The_Sign_of_the_Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology      1 Early collections of such allegories in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius, and in   Augustine, Contra Faustum. For nycticorax and aquila see Eucherius, Liber for-

1.13_-_SALVATION,_DELIVERANCE,_ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy      The allegory is fairly clear. The ships that bear the individual voyagers across the sea of life are sects and churches, collections of dogmas and religious organizations. The planks which also sink at last are all good works falling short of total selfsurrender and all faith less absolute than the unitive knowledge of God. Liberation into eternity is the result of throwing oneself into the sea"; in the language of the Gospels, one must lose ones life in order to save it. But throwing oneself into the sea is a risky business not so risky, of course, as travelling in a vast Queen Mary, fitted up with the very latest in dogmatic conveniences and liturgical decorations, and bound either for Davy Joness locker or at best, the wrong port, but still quite dangerous enough. For the surface of the sea the divine Ground as it is manifested in the world of time and multiplicitygleams with a reflected radiance that can no more be seized than the image of beauty in a mirror; while the bottom, the Ground as it is eternally in itself seems merely darkness to the analytic mind, as it peers down into the depdis; and when the analytic mind decides to join the will in the final necessary plunge into self-naughting it must run the gantlet, as it sinks down, of those devouring pseudosalvations described in the Chandogya Upanishaddreamsalvation into that fascinating psychic world, where the ego still survives, but with a happier and more untrammelled kind of life, or else the sleep-salvation of false samadhi, of unity in sub-consciousness instead of unity in super-consciousness.

1.14_-_Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   The items of the bibliography are arranged alphabetically under   two headings: A. Ancient volumes containing collections of alchemi-   cal tracts by various authors; B. General bibliography, including

1.14_-_The_Limits_of_Philosophical_Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertr and Russell, #Philosophy      Again, if we take any two points on a line, it seems evident that there must be other points between them however small the distance between them may be: every distance can be halved, and the halves can be halved again, and so on _ad infinitum_. In time, similarly, however little time may elapse between two moments, it seems evident that there will be other moments between them. Thus space and time appear to be infinitely divisible. But as against these apparent facts--infinite extent and infinite divisibility--philosophers have advanced arguments tending to show that there could be no infinite collections of things, and that therefore the number of points in space, or of instants in time, must be finite. Thus a contradiction emerged between the apparent nature of space and time and the supposed impossibility of infinite collections.      --   Kant, who first emphasized this contradiction, deduced the impossibility of space and time, which he declared to be merely subjective; and since his time very many philosophers have believed that space and time are mere appearance, not characteristic of the world as it really is. Now, however, owing to the labours of the mathematicians, notably Georg   Cantor, it has appeared that the impossibility of infinite collections was a mistake. They are not in fact self-contradictory, but only contradictory of certain rather obstinate mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great sources of metaphysical constructions is dried up.

1.22_-_How_to_Learn_the_Practice_of_Astrology, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy      Next, learn how to set up a figure of the heavens. This need not take an average intelligent person more than an hour at the most. You can learn it from a book. Lastly, get Barley's 1001 Notable nativities and More Nativites. Also any other collections available. Practice setting up the horoscopes. Use the Chaldean square system; it shows at the first glance what is happening in the angular houses, which are the keys of the whole figure.