classes ::: Place, the Palace,
children :::
branches ::: palace, The Palace

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object:palace
class:Place
class:the Palace

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [1] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
The_Palace
the_Palace
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Awaken_the_Giant_Within
Collected_Fictions
Savitri
The_Book_of_Light
The_Essential_Songs_of_Milarepa
The_Imitation_of_Christ
The_Odyssey
The_Way_of_Perfection

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.poe_-_The_Haunted_Palace
1.ww_-_Picture_of_Daniel_in_the_Lion's_Den_at_Hamilton_Palace

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.05_-_Letters_to_a_Child
0_1958-11-20
0_1961-08-05
0_1962-06-30
0_1963-02-19
0_1965-06-05
0_1965-06-23
0_1966-12-17
0_1970-02-07
02.07_-_The_Descent_into_Night
02.09_-_Two_Mystic_Poems_in_Modern_French
04.03_-_The_Call_to_the_Quest
04.04_-_The_Quest
05.03_-_Satyavan_and_Savitri
06.01_-_The_Word_of_Fate
07.01_-_The_Joy_of_Union;_the_Ordeal_of_the_Foreknowledge
07.02_-_The_Parable_of_the_Search_for_the_Soul
09.02_-_Meditation
10.04_-_Lord_of_Time
10.04_-_The_Dream_Twilight_of_the_Earthly_Real
1.00_-_Main
1.00_-_Preliminary_Remarks
1.01_-_Archetypes_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.01_-_BOOK_THE_FIRST
1.01_-_Economy
1.01f_-_Introduction
1.01_-_On_renunciation_of_the_world
1.01_-_the_Call_to_Adventure
1.01_-_The_King_of_the_Wood
1.01_-_Who_is_Tara
1.024_-_Affiliation_With_Larger_Wholes
1.025_-_The_Criterion
1.027_-_The_Ant
1.02_-_BOOK_THE_SECOND
1.02_-_Taras_Tantra
1.02_-_The_Human_Soul
1.02_-_The_Recovery
1.02_-_The_Refusal_of_the_Call
1.02_-_The_Three_European_Worlds
1.02_-_The_Virtues
1.03_-_A_Sapphire_Tale
1.03_-_Bloodstream_Sermon
1.03_-_Invocation_of_Tara
1.03_-_Supernatural_Aid
1.03_-_The_Sephiros
1.04_-_BOOK_THE_FOURTH
1.04_-_GOD_IN_THE_WORLD
1.04_-_Narayana_appearance,_in_the_beginning_of_the_Kalpa,_as_the_Varaha_(boar)
1.04_-_On_Knowledge_of_the_Future_World.
1.04_-_The_Qabalah__The_Best_Training_for_Memory
1.05_-_BOOK_THE_FIFTH
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_War_And_Politics
1.06_-_BOOK_THE_SIXTH
1.06_-_Magicians_as_Kings
1.06_-_MORTIFICATION,_NON-ATTACHMENT,_RIGHT_LIVELIHOOD
1.06_-_Yun_Men's_Every_Day_is_a_Good_Day
1.07_-_BOOK_THE_SEVENTH
1.07_-_Incarnate_Human_Gods
1.07_-_Savitri
1.07_-_THE_MASTER_AND_VIJAY_GOSWAMI
1.07_-_TRUTH
1.08a_-_The_Ladder
1.08_-_BOOK_THE_EIGHTH
1.096_-_Powers_that_Accrue_in_the_Practice
1.10_-_BOOK_THE_TENTH
1.11_-_BOOK_THE_ELEVENTH
1.12_-_BOOK_THE_TWELFTH
1.12_-_The_Left-Hand_Path_-_The_Black_Brothers
1.12_-_The_Sociology_of_Superman
1.13_-_BOOK_THE_THIRTEENTH
1.13_-_The_Kings_of_Rome_and_Alba
1.16_-_PRAYER
1.17_-_Legend_of_Prahlada
1.17_-_The_Burden_of_Royalty
1.19_-_Dialogue_between_Prahlada_and_his_father
1.19_-_Tabooed_Acts
1.20_-_RULES_FOR_HOUSEHOLDERS_AND_MONKS
1.21_-_Tabooed_Things
1.21_-_WALPURGIS-NIGHT
1.23_-_FESTIVAL_AT_SURENDRAS_HOUSE
1.24_-_The_Killing_of_the_Divine_King
1.25_-_Temporary_Kings
1.28_-_Describes_the_nature_of_the_Prayer_of_Recollection_and_sets_down_some_of_the_means_by_which_we_can_make_it_a_habit.
1.29_-_Concerning_heaven_on_earth,_or_godlike_dispassion_and_perfection,_and_the_resurrection_of_the_soul_before_the_general_resurrection.
1.29_-_The_Myth_of_Adonis
1.31_-_Continues_the_same_subject._Explains_what_is_meant_by_the_Prayer_of_Quiet._Gives_several_counsels_to_those_who_experience_it._This_chapter_is_very_noteworthy.
1.34_-_Fourth_Division_of_the_Ninth_Circle,_the_Judecca__Traitors_to_their_Lords_and_Benefactors._Lucifer,_Judas_Iscariot,_Brutus,_and_Cassius._The_Chasm_of_Lethe._The_Ascent.
1.439
1.51_-_How_to_Recognise_Masters,_Angels,_etc.,_and_how_they_Work
1.550_-_1.600_Talks
1.56_-_The_Public_Expulsion_of_Evils
1.57_-_Public_Scapegoats
1.59_-_Killing_the_God_in_Mexico
1.60_-_Between_Heaven_and_Earth
1.63_-_The_Interpretation_of_the_Fire-Festivals
1.66_-_The_External_Soul_in_Folk-Tales
1956-07-18_-_Unlived_dreams_-_Radha-consciousness_-_Separation_and_identification_-_Ananda_of_identity_and_Ananda_of_union_-_Sincerity,_meditation_and_prayer_-_Enemies_of_the_Divine_-_The_universe_is_progressive
1957-02-07_-_Individual_and_collective_meditation
1970_02_20
1.ac_-_Adela
1.ac_-_The_Wizard_Way
1.ami_-_Selfhood_can_demolish_the_magic_of_this_world_(from_Baal-i-Jibreel)
1.anon_-_If_this_were_a_world
1.anon_-_Less_profitable
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_III
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_XI_The_Story_of_the_Flood
1.anon_-_The_Poem_of_Antar
1.anon_-_The_Seven_Evil_Spirits
1f.lovecraft_-_Beyond_the_Wall_of_Sleep
1f.lovecraft_-_Memory
1f.lovecraft_-_Poetry_and_the_Gods
1f.lovecraft_-_Sweet_Ermengarde
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Doom_That_Came_to_Sarnath
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dream-Quest_of_Unknown_Kadath
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Hoard_of_the_Wizard-Beast
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Mound
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Nameless_City
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Quest_of_Iranon
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Silver_Key
1f.lovecraft_-_The_White_Ship
1f.lovecraft_-_Through_the_Gates_of_the_Silver_Key
1.fs_-_Dithyramb
1.fs_-_Melancholy_--_To_Laura
1.fs_-_The_Assignation
1.fs_-_The_Gods_Of_Greece
1.fs_-_The_Lay_Of_The_Bell
1.fua_-_The_moths_and_the_flame
1.fua_-_The_peacocks_excuse
1.hs_-_Naked_in_the_Bee-House
1.jk_-_Answer_To_A_Sonnet_By_J.H.Reynolds
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_I
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_II
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_III
1.jk_-_Hyperion,_A_Vision_-_Attempted_Reconstruction_Of_The_Poem
1.jk_-_Hyperion._Book_I
1.jk_-_Lamia._Part_I
1.jk_-_Lamia._Part_II
1.jk_-_Otho_The_Great_-_Act_I
1.jk_-_Otho_The_Great_-_Act_III
1.jk_-_Song_Of_Four_Faries
1.jk_-_Sonnet._Written_In_Answer_To_A_Sonnet_By_J._H._Reynolds
1.jk_-_The_Cap_And_Bells;_Or,_The_Jealousies_-_A_Faery_Tale_.._Unfinished
1.jlb_-_The_Cyclical_Night
1.jr_-_Moving_Water
1.jr_-_Who_Is_At_My_Door?
1.jwvg_-_Mahomets_Song
1.kbr_-_Poem_5
1.lb_-_Bringing_in_the_Wine
1.lb_-_Chiang_Chin_Chiu
1.lb_-_Climbing_West_Of_Lotus_Flower_Peak
1.lb_-_Climbing_West_of_Lotus_Flower_Peak
1.lb_-_Exile's_Letter
1.lb_-_His_Dream_Of_Skyland
1.lb_-_On_A_Picture_Screen
1.lb_-_On_Climbing_In_Nan-King_To_The_Terrace_Of_Phoenixes
1.lb_-_On_Kusu_Terrace
1.lb_-_Song_Of_The_Jade_Cup
1.lb_-_The_River_Song
1.lb_-_The_Roosting_Crows
1.lovecraft_-_Nemesis
1.lovecraft_-_The_Outpost
1.ltp_-_My_heart_is_the_clear_water_in_the_stony_pond
1.mb_-_I_have_heard_that_today_Hari_will_come
1.mb_-_Mira_is_Steadfast
1.mb_-_No_one_knows_my_invisible_life
1.mdl_-_The_Creation_of_Elohim
1.pbs_-_Charles_The_First
1.pbs_-_Chorus_from_Hellas
1.pbs_-_Epipsychidion
1.pbs_-_Ginevra
1.pbs_-_Julian_and_Maddalo_-_A_Conversation
1.pbs_-_Lines_Written_Among_The_Euganean_Hills
1.pbs_-_Marenghi
1.pbs_-_Mariannes_Dream
1.pbs_-_Ode_To_Heaven
1.pbs_-_Ode_To_Liberty
1.pbs_-_Ode_to_the_West_Wind
1.pbs_-_Oedipus_Tyrannus_or_Swellfoot_The_Tyrant
1.pbs_-_Peter_Bell_The_Third
1.pbs_-_Prometheus_Unbound
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_II.
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_III.
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_IV.
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_IX.
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_V.
1.pbs_-_Scenes_From_The_Faust_Of_Goethe
1.pbs_-_The_Cenci_-_A_Tragedy_In_Five_Acts
1.pbs_-_The_Mask_Of_Anarchy
1.pbs_-_The_Revolt_Of_Islam_-_Canto_I-XII
1.pbs_-_The_Witch_Of_Atlas
1.pbs_-_To_A_Skylark
1.pbs_-_To_Death
1.poe_-_The_City_In_The_Sea
1.poe_-_The_City_Of_Sin
1.poe_-_The_Haunted_Palace
1.rb_-_Abt_Vogler
1.rb_-_Andrea_del_Sarto
1.rb_-_Bishop_Blougram's_Apology
1.rb_-_Fra_Lippo_Lippi
1.rb_-_In_A_Gondola
1.rb_-_Introduction:_Pippa_Passes
1.rb_-_Love_Among_The_Ruins
1.rb_-_Paracelsus_-_Part_II_-_Paracelsus_Attains
1.rb_-_Paracelsus_-_Part_I_-_Paracelsus_Aspires
1.rb_-_Paracelsus_-_Part_V_-_Paracelsus_Attains
1.rb_-_Pippa_Passes_-_Part_III_-_Evening
1.rb_-_Pippa_Passes_-_Part_IV_-_Night
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_First
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_Fourth
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_Sixth
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_Third
1.rt_-_(101)_Ever_in_my_life_have_I_sought_thee_with_my_songs_(from_Gitanjali)
1.rt_-_Fairyland
1.rt_-_Gitanjali
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_IV_-_Ah_Me
1.rt_-_The_Land_Of_The_Exile
1.rwe_-_Alphonso_Of_Castile
1.rwe_-_Boston
1.rwe_-_Dmonic_Love
1.rwe_-_Initial_Love
1.rwe_-_May-Day
1.rwe_-_Quatrains
1.rwe_-_Woodnotes
1.sig_-_Who_can_do_as_Thy_deeds
1.sig_-_Who_could_accomplish_what_youve_accomplished
1.wby_-_The_Three_Beggars
1.wby_-_The_Two_Kings
1.whitman_-_Salut_Au_Monde
1.whitman_-_Song_Of_The_Exposition
1.whitman_-_Spain_1873-74
1.whitman_-_Unnamed_Lands
1.whitman_-_Year_Of_Meteors,_1859_60
1.ww_-_A_Whirl-Blast_From_Behind_The_Hill
1.ww_-_Book_Eighth-_Retrospect--Love_Of_Nature_Leading_To_Love_Of_Man
1.ww_-_Book_Ninth_[Residence_in_France]
1.ww_-_Book_Seventh_[Residence_in_London]
1.ww_-_Book_Tenth_{Residence_in_France_continued]
1.ww_-_Book_Twelfth_[Imagination_And_Taste,_How_Impaired_And_Restored_]
1.ww_-_Hart-Leap_Well
1.ww_-_Laodamia
1.ww_-_Memorials_Of_A_Tour_In_Scotland-_1803
1.ww_-_Ode_on_Intimations_of_Immortality
1.ww_-_Picture_of_Daniel_in_the_Lion's_Den_at_Hamilton_Palace
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_IV-_Book_Third-_Despondency
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_X-_Book_Ninth-_Discourse_of_the_Wanderer,_and_an_Evening_Visit_to_the_Lake
1.ww_-_Troilus_And_Cresida
20.04_-_Act_II:_The_Play_on_Earth
2.01_-_On_Books
2.02_-_THE_DURGA_PUJA_FESTIVAL
2.05_-_Apotheosis
2.05_-_The_Tale_of_the_Vampires_Kingdom
2.06_-_WITH_VARIOUS_DEVOTEES
2.07_-_The_Cup
2.07_-_The_Triangle_of_Love
2.08_-_AT_THE_STAR_THEATRE_(II)
2.08_-_The_Sword
2.08_-_Three_Tales_of_Madness_and_Destruction
2.10_-_THE_MASTER_AND_NARENDRA
2.12_-_THE_MASTERS_REMINISCENCES
2.13_-_THE_MASTER_AT_THE_HOUSES_OF_BALARM_AND_GIRISH
2.16_-_VISIT_TO_NANDA_BOSES_HOUSE
2.17_-_THE_MASTER_ON_HIMSELF_AND_HIS_EXPERIENCES
2.19_-_Feb-May_1939
2.2.3_-_Depression_and_Despondency
2.29_-_The_Worlds_of_Creation,_Formation_and_Action
2.3.04_-_The_Mother's_Force
31.10_-_East_and_West
3.16.2_-_Of_the_Charge_of_the_Spirit
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light
31_Hymns_to_the_Star_Goddess
3.21_-_Of_Black_Magic
4.2_-_Karma
4.41_-_Chapter_One
5.01_-_The_Dakini,_Salgye_Du_Dalma
5.1.01.1_-_The_Book_of_the_Herald
5.1.01.2_-_The_Book_of_the_Statesman
5.1.01.4_-_The_Book_of_Partings
5.1.01.8_-_The_Book_of_the_Gods
5.4.01_-_Notes_on_Root-Sounds
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
7.02_-_Courage
7.04_-_Self-Reliance
7.06_-_The_Simple_Life
7.08_-_Sincerity
7.11_-_Building_and_Destroying
7.12_-_The_Giver
7.14_-_Modesty
7.15_-_The_Family
Aeneid
Book_1_-_The_Council_of_the_Gods
BOOK_II._-_A_review_of_the_calamities_suffered_by_the_Romans_before_the_time_of_Christ,_showing_that_their_gods_had_plunged_them_into_corruption_and_vice
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
Chapter_II_-_WHICH_TREATS_OF_THE_FIRST_SALLY_THE_INGENIOUS_DON_QUIXOTE_MADE_FROM_HOME
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
COSA_-_BOOK_VIII
COSA_-_BOOK_X
Diamond_Sutra_1
DS2
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.07_-_How_Ideas_Multiplied,_and_the_Good.
Guru_Granth_Sahib_first_part
IS_-_Chapter_1
Liber_111_-_The_Book_of_Wisdom_-_LIBER_ALEPH_VEL_CXI
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Liber_71_-_The_Voice_of_the_Silence_-_The_Two_Paths_-_The_Seven_Portals
Phaedo
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Tablets_of_Baha_u_llah_text
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Anapanasati_Sutta__A_Practical_Guide_to_Mindfullness_of_Breathing_and_Tranquil_Wisdom_Meditation
The_Book_of_Certitude_-_P2
The_Book_of_the_Prophet_Isaiah
The_Book_of_the_Prophet_Micah
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
The_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Philippians
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_1
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_2
The_Gospel_According_to_Luke
The_Gospel_According_to_Mark
The_Gospel_According_to_Matthew
The_Immortal
The_Pilgrims_Progress
The_Poems_of_Cold_Mountain
The_Wall_and_the_BOoks
Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra_text
Verses_of_Vemana

PRIMARY CLASS

Place
the_Palace
SIMILAR TITLES
palace
the Divine Palace
The Palace
the Palace

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

palace ::: n. --> The residence of a sovereign, including the lodgings of high officers of state, and rooms for business, as well as halls for ceremony and reception.
The official residence of a bishop or other distinguished personage.
Loosely, any unusually magnificent or stately house.


Palace ::: (virtual reality, chat) A proprietary multi-user virtual reality-like talk system.The Palace is distinguished from most other VR-like systems in that it is only two-dimensional rather than three; rooms, avatars, and props are made up of relatively small 2D bitmap images.Palace is a crude hack, or lightweight, depending on your point of view. . (1997-09-14)

Palace "virtual reality, chat" A proprietary multi-user {virtual reality}-like {talk} system. The Palace is distinguished from most other VR-like systems in that it is only two-dimensional rather than three; rooms, {avatars}, and "props" are made up of relatively small 2D {bitmap} images. Palace is a crude {hack}, or lightweight, depending on your point of view. {(http://thepalace.com/)}. (1997-09-14)


TERMS ANYWHERE

Abhiniskramanasutra. (T. Mngon par 'byung ba'i mdo; C.Fo benxing ji jing; J. Butsuhongyojukkyo; K. Pul ponhaeng chip kyong 佛本行集經). In Sanskrit, "Sutra of the Great Renunciation"; this scripture relates the story of Prince SIDDHARTHA's "going forth" (abhiniskramana; P. abhinikkhamana) from his father's palace to pursue the life of a mendicant wanderer (sRAMAnA) in search of enlightenment. There are no extant Sanskrit versions of the SuTRA, but the work survives in Tibetan and in several distinct recensions available in Chinese translation, one dating to as early as the first century CE. The best-known Chinese translation is the Fo benxing ji jing, made by JNANAGUPTA around 587 CE, during the Sui dynasty. The text claims to be a DHARMAGUPTAKA recension of the JATAKA, or past lives of the Buddha. (Franklin Edgerton has suggested that this text may instead be a translation of the MAHAVASTU, "The Great Account," of the LOKOTTARAVADA offshoot of the MAHASAMGHIKA school.) JNAnagupta's recension has sixty chapters, in five major parts. The first part is an introduction to the work as a whole, which relates how rare it is for a buddha to appear in the world and why people should take advantage of this opportunity. Reference is made to the various meritorious roots (KUsALAMuLA) that sAKYAMUNI acquired throughout his many lifetimes of training, in order to prepare for this final life when he would finally attain enlightenment. The second part enumerates the entire lineage of the buddhas of antiquity, a lineage that sAkyamuni would soon join, and the third part follows with a genealogy of the sAKYA clan. The fourth part describes the decisive stages in sAkyamuni's life, from birth, through his awakening, to the first "turning of the wheel of the DHARMA" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA). The last part gives extended biographies (going even into their past lives) of his prominent disciples, of which the stories involving his longtime attendant, ANANDA, are particularly extensive. In 1876, SAMUEL BEAL translated this Chinese recension of the sutra into English as The Romantic Legend of sAkya Buddha.

alcazar ::: n. --> A fortress; also, a royal palace.

alhambra ::: n. --> The palace of the Moorish kings at Granada.

Amarapura. The "Immortal City"; Burmese royal capital during the Konbaung period (1752-1885), built by King Bodawpaya (r. 1782-1819). Amarapura was one of five Burmese capitals established in Upper Burma (Myanmar) after the fall of Pagan between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, the others being Pinya, SAGAING, AVA (Inwa), and Mandalay. Located five miles north of the old capital of Ava (Inwa) and seven miles south of Mandalay on the southern bank of the Irrawaddy river, it served as the capital of the Burmese kingdom twice: from 1783 to 1823 and again from 1837 to 1857. The city was mapped out in the form of a perfect square, its perimeter surrounded by stout brick walls and further protected by a wide moat. The city walls were punctuated by twelve gates, three on each side, every gate crowned with a tiered wooden pavilion (B. pyatthat). Broad avenues laid out in a grid pattern led to the center of the city where stood the royal palace and ancillary buildings, all constructed of teak and raised above the ground on massive wooden pylons. Located to the north of the city was a shrine housing the colossal MAHAMUNI image of the Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA), which was acquired by the Burmese as war booty in 1784 when King Bodawpaya conquered the neighboring Buddhist kingdom of Arakan. Since its relocation at the shrine, the seated image has been covered with so many layers of gold leaf that its torso is now completely obscured, leaving only the head and face visible. In 1816, Bodawpaya erected the monumental Pahtodawgyi pagoda, modeled after the Shwezigon pagoda at Pagan. Its lower terraces are adorned with carved marble plaques depicting episodes from the JATAKAs. Another major shrine is the Kyauktawgyi pagoda, located to the southeast of the city on the opposite shore of Taungthaman lake. Kyauktawgyi pagoda is reached via the U Bein Bridge, a 3,000-foot- (1,200-meter) long bridge spanning the lake, which was constructed from teakwood salvaged from the royal palace at the vanquished capital of Ava. Amarapura was site of the THUDHAMMA (P. Sudhamma) reformation begun in 1782 under the patronage of Bodawpaya, which for a time unified the Burmese sangha under a single leadership and gave rise to the modern Thudhamma NikAya, contemporary Burma's largest monastic fraternity. The Thudhamma council that Bodawpaya organized was directed to reform the Burmese sangha throughout the kingdom and bring it under Thudhamma administrative control. In 1800, the president of the council conferred higher ordination (UPASAMPADA) on a delegation of five low-caste Sinhalese ordinands who returned to Sri Lanka in 1803 and established a branch of the reformed Burmese order on the island; that fraternity was known as the AMARAPURA NIKAYA and was dedicated to opening higher ordination to all without caste distinction. In 1857, when the royal residence was shifted from Amarapura to nearby Mandalay, the city walls and palace compound of Amarapura were disassembled and used as building material for the new capital. Today, Amarapura is home to modern Burma's most famous monastic college, Mahagandayon Kyaung Taik, built during the British period and belonging to the Shwegyin NikAya.

amber room ::: --> A room formerly in the Czar&

Amoghavajra. (C. Bukong; J. Fuku; K. Pulgong 不空) (705-774). Buddhist émigré ACARYA who played a major role in the introduction and translation of seminal Buddhist texts belonging to the esoteric tradition or mijiao (see MIKKYo; TANTRA). His birthplace is uncertain, but many sources allude to his ties to Central Asia. Accompanying his teacher VAJRABODHI, Amoghavajra arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang'an in 720-1 and spent most of his career in that cosmopolitan city. In 741, following the death of his mentor, Amoghavajra made an excursion to India and Sri Lanka with the permission of the Tang-dynasty emperor and returned in 746 with new Buddhist texts, many of them esoteric scriptures. Amoghavajra's influence in the Tang court reached its peak when he was summoned by the emperor to construct an ABHIsEKA, or consecration, altar on his behalf. Amoghavajra's activities in Chang'an were interrupted by the An Lushan rebellion (655-763), but after the rebellion was quelled, he returned to his work at the capital and established an inner chapel for HOMA rituals and abhiseka in the imperial palace. He was later honored by the emperor with the purple robe, the highest honor for a Buddhist monk and the rank of third degree. Along with XUANZANG, Amoghavajra was one of the most prolific translators and writers in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Among the many texts that he translated into Chinese, especially important are the SARVATATHAGATATATTVASAMGRAHA and the BHADRACARĪPRAnIDHANA.

anchin kokkaho. (安鎭國家法). In Japanese, the "technique for pacifying the state." Japanese TENDAI priests often performed this ritual in the palace at the request of the emperor. Offerings were made to the deity fudo myoo (S. ACALANATHA-VIDYARAJA), who in return would quell the demons who were disturbing the peace of the state. A simplified version of this ritual known as kachin or chintaku is now commonly performed for laity at their homes.

and mahall meaning palace, mansion. A marble mausoleum completed in 1649 AD at Agra, India, by the Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan, in memory of his favorite wife.

angels of one of the halls or palaces of the 3rd

AriyapariyesanAsutta. (C. Luomo jing; J. Ramakyo; K. Rama kyong 羅摩經). In PAli, "Discourse on the Noble Quest"; the twenty-sixth sutta (SuTRA) in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA, also known as the PAsarAsisutta (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension appears as the 204th SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA); preached by the Buddha to an assembly of monks at the hemitage of the brAhmana Rammaka in the town of sRAVASTĪ. The Buddha explains the difference between noble and ignoble quests and recounts his own life as an example of striving to distinguish between the two. Beginning with his renunciation of the householder's life, he tells of his training under two meditation masters, his rejection of this training in favor of austerities, and ultimately his rejection of austerities in order to discover for himself his own path to enlightenment. The Buddha also relates how he was initially hesitant to teach what he had discovered, but was convinced to do so by the god BRAHMA SAHAMPATI, and how he then converted the "group of five" ascetics (PANCAVARGIKA) who had been his companions while he practiced austerities. There is an understated tone of the narrative, devoid of the detail so familiar from the biographies. There is no mention of the opulence of his youth, no mention of his wife, no mention of the chariot rides, no description of the departure from the palace in the dead of night, no mention of MARA. Instead, the Buddha states, "Later, while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life, though my mother and father wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the home life into homelessness." Although the accounts of his study with other meditation masters assume a sophisticated system of states of concentration, the description of the enlightenment itself is both simple and sober, portrayed as the outcome of long reflection rather than as an ecstatic moment of revelation.

Asita. (T. Mdog nag po; C. Asituo; J. Ashida; K. Asat'a 阿私陀). Sanskrit and PAli name for an Indian brAhmana who, according to PAli sources, was chaplain to the BODHISATTVA's grandfather Sīhahanu (S. SiMhahanu) and teacher of the bodhisattva's father Suddhodana (S. sUDDHODANA). After his retirement from the world, Asita developed various supranormal powers through his mastery of meditation and used them to sojourn in the realm of the divinities (DEVA). Once while staying in TRAYASTRIMsA heaven, he learned that the future buddha SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA had been born as the son of King suddhodana. Asita went to the palace to examine the infant and saw that the child was endowed with the thirty-two marks of a MAHAPURUsA, or great man. From these signs, he realized that SiddhArtha was destined to become a fully enlightened buddha. Despite his great joy, Asita was also dismayed to realize that, at his current age of ninety, he would not live long enough to witness this event. Instead, he would die and be reborn in the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU), where he would not be able to hear the Buddha preach and could not be liberated by his salvific message. Asita urged his nephew NAlaka to renounce the world in anticipation of the future buddha's enlightenment. The boy complied and later attained arhatship after reflecting on the sermon the Buddha delivered to him in the NAlakasutta.

Asoka (Sanskrit) Aśoka The name of two celebrated kings of the Maurya dynasty of Magadha. According to the chronicles of Northern Buddhism there were two Asokas: King Chandragupta, named by Max Muller the Constantine of India, and his grandson King Asoka. King Chandragupta was called Piyadasi (beloved of us, benignant), Devanam-piya (beloved of the gods), and Kalasoka (the Asoka who has come in time). His grandson received the name of Dharmasoka (the asoka of the Good Law) because of his devotion to Buddhism, his zealous support of it and its spreading. The second Asoka had never followed the Brahmanical faith, but was a Buddhist born. It was his grandfather who had been converted to the new teaching, after which he had a number of edicts inscribed on pillars and rocks, a custom followed also by his grandson; but it was the second Asoka who was the more zealous supporter of Buddhism. He is said to have maintained in his palace from 60,000 to 70,000 monks and priests, and erected 84,000 topes or stupas throughout the world. The inscriptions of various edicts published by him display most noble ethical sentiments, especially the edict found at Allahabad on the so-called Asoka’s column in the Fort.

Assyrians—those huge, forbidding stone images placed before temples and palaces—emerge

Asuka. (飛鳥). Japan's first historical epoch, named after a region in the plains south of modern NARA. Until the eighth century (710) when the capital was moved to Nara, a new palace, and virtually a new capital, was built every time a new ruler succeeded to the throne. One of the earliest capitals was located in the region of Asuka. The Asuka period is characterized by the rise of powerful aristocratic clans such as the Soga and Mononobe and attempts such as the Taika reform (646) to counteract the rise of these clans and to strengthen the authority of the emperor. According to the NIHON SHOKI ("Historical Records of Japan"), the inception of Buddhism occurred in the Japanese isles during this period, when Emperor Kimmei (r. 532-571) received an image of the Buddha from the King Songmyong of the Korean kingdom of Paekche in 552 (var. 538). Buddhism became the central religion of the Asuka court with the support of such famous figures as Prince SHoTOKU, Empress Suiko (r. 593-628), and Empress Jito (r. 686-697). After the establishment of the grand monastery ASUKADERA by the descendants of a Korean clan, other temples modeled after early Chinese monastery campuses, such as HoRYuJI, were also constructed during this period. These temples enshrined the magnificent sculptures executed by Tori Busshi.

Avalokitesvara. (T. Spyan ras gzigs; C. Guanshiyin/Guanyin; J. Kanzeon/Kannon; K. Kwanseŭm/Kwanŭm 觀世音/觀音). In Sanskrit, "Lord who Looks Down [in Empathy]"; the BODHISATTVA of compassion, the most widely worshipped of the MAHAYANA bodhisattvas and one of the earliest to appear in Buddhist literature. According to legend, Avalokitesvara was produced from a beam of light that radiated from the forehead of AMITABHA while that buddha was deep in meditation. For this reason, Buddhist iconography often depicts AmitAbha as embedded in Avalokitesvara's crown. His name dates back to the beginning of the Common Era, when he replaced the Vedic god BRAHMA as the attendant to sAKYAMUNI Buddha, inheriting in turn BrahmA's attribute of the lotus (PADMA). Images of Avalokitesvara as PADMAPAnI LOKEsVARA ("Lord with a Lotus in his Hand"), an early name, are numerous. Avalokitesvara is the interlocutor or main figure in numerous important MahAyAna sutras, including the PRAJNAPARAMITAHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). His cult was introduced to China in the first century CE, where his name was translated as Guanshiyin ("Perceiver of the Sounds of the World") or GUANYIN ("Perceiver of Sounds"); his cult entered Korea and Japan with the advent of Buddhism in those countries. Avalokitesvara was once worshipped widely in Southeast Asia as well, beginning at the end of the first millennium CE. Although the MahAyAna tradition eventually faded from the region, images of Avalokitesvara remain. Avalokitesvara is also the patron deity of Tibet, where he is said to have taken the form of a monkey and mated with TARA in the form of a local demoness to produce the Tibetan race. Tibetan political and religious leaders have been identified as incarnations of him, such as the seventh-century king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO (although that attribution was most likely a later addition to the king's legacy) and, notably, the DALAI LAMAs. The PO TA LA Palace, the residence of the Dalai Lamas, in the Tibetan capital of LHA SA is named for Avalokitesvara's abode on Mount POTALAKA in India. In China, Avalokitesvara as Guanyin underwent a transformation in gender into a popular female bodhisattva, although the male iconographic form also persists throughout East Asia. PUTUOSHAN, located off the east coast of China south of Shanghai, is said to be Potalaka. Avalokitesvara is generally depicted in the full raiments of a bodhisattva, often with an image of AmitAbha in his crown. He appears in numerous forms, among them the two-armed PadmapAni who stands and holds a lotus flower; the four-armed seated Avalokitesvara, known either as Caturbhuja Avalokitesvara [CaturbhujAvalokitesvara] or CintAmani Avalokitesvara [CintAmanyavalokitesvara], who holds the wish-fulfilling jewel (CINTAMAnI) with his central hands in ANJALIMUDRA, and a lotus and crystal rosary in his left and right hands, respectively; the eleven-armed, eleven-faced EKADAsAMUKHA; and the thousand-armed and thousand-headed SAHASRABHUJASAHASRANETRAVALOKITEsVARA (q.v. MAHAKARUnIKA). Tradition holds that his head split into multiple skulls when he beheld the suffering of the world. Numerous other forms also exist in which the god has three or more heads, and any number of arms. In his wrathful form as AstabhayatrAnAvalokitesvara (T. Spyan ras gzigs 'jigs pa brgyad skyob), "Avalokitesvara who Protects against the Eight Fears," the bodhisattva stands in ARDHAPARYAnKA ("half cross-legged posture") and has one face and eight hands, each of which holds a symbol of one of the eight fears. This name is also given to eight separate forms of Avalokitesvara that are each dedicated to protecting from one of the eight fears, namely: AgnibhayatrAnAvalokitesvara ("Avalokitesvara Who Protects from Fear of Fire") and so on, replacing fire with Jala (water), SiMha (lion), Hasti (elephant), Danda (cudgel), NAga (snake), dAkinī (witch) [alt. PisAcī]; and Cora (thief). In addition to his common iconographic characteristic, the lotus flower, Avalokitesvara also frequently holds, among other accoutrements, a jeweled rosary (JAPAMALA) given to him by Aksamati (as related in chapter twenty-five of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA), or a vase. In East Asia, Avalokitesvara often appears in a triad: the buddha AmitAbha in the center, flanked to his left and right by his two bodhisattva attendants, Avalokitesvara and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA, respectively. In Tibet, Avalokitesvara is part of a popular triad with VAJRAPAnI and MANJUsRĪ. As one of the AstAMAHOPAPUTRA, Avalokitesvara also appears with the other bodhisattvas in group representation. The tantric deity AMOGHAPAsA is also a form of Avalokitesvara. The famous mantra of Avalokitesvara, OM MAnI PADME HuM, is widely recited in the MahAyAna traditions and nearly universally in Tibetan Buddhism. In addition to the twenty-fifth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the KARAndAVYuHA is also devoted to him. See also BAIYI GUANYIN; GUANYIN; MIAOSHAN; MAnI BKA' 'BUM.

avatar ::: 1. (chat, virtual reality) An image representing a user in a multi-user virtual reality (or VR-like, in the case of Palace) space.2. (CMU, Tektronix) root, superuser. There are quite a few Unix computers on which the name of the superuser account is avatar rather than root. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term superuser, and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.[Jargon File] (1997-09-14)

avatar 1. "chat, virtual reality" An {image} representing a user in a multi-user {virtual reality} (or VR-like, in the case of {Palace}) space. 2. (CMU, Tektronix) {root}, {superuser}. There are quite a few {Unix} computers on which the name of the superuser account is "avatar" rather than "root". This quirk was originated by a {CMU} hacker who disliked the term "superuser", and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at {Tektronix}. [{Jargon File}] (1997-09-14)

Avesa. (T. 'bebs pa; C. aweishe; J. abisha; K. amisa 阿尾捨). In Sanskrit, "possession"; the possession of shamans and mediums by a spirit or divinity so they could serve as oracles. Specific rites are outlined in esoteric Buddhist materials to incite possession in young children of usually seven or eight years of age; once the children began to shake from their inhabitation by the possessing deity, they would be asked a series of questions regarding portents for the future. In China, the tantric master VAJRABODHI was said to have used two seven-year-old girls as oracles in the palace, who were claimed to have been possessed by two deceased princesses. In Tibet, some of the bodies (rten, sku rten) through which an oracle (lha) speaks attained considerable importance in the religious and even political affairs of the state; among them the GNAS CHUNG (Nechung) oracle, said to be the pre-Buddhist spirit PE HAR, who was tamed by PADMASAMBHAVA and tasked with protecting the Buddha's teaching, has the status of state oracle.

Babel (Hebrew) Bābāh The inner meaning of the Tower of Babel, by which it was hoped that divinity might be reached or attained, is a house of initiation, a gate, portal, opening, or entrance to the divine. The physical tower was both the building set aside to house and protect the initiation chambers, together with the ceremonies that take place in them, and an architectural emblem to signify a raising up towards heaven. The tower may have either a divine or evil significance, either haughty pride and self-sufficiency or spiritual aspiration. Similar is the lightning-struck tower of the Tarot cards, and the Arabian Nights story of the man who built a palace completely except only for a roc’s egg to hang in the dome, and when the egg is thus hung, the whole palace collapses. The work of the black magician, building from below upwards, is impermanent and, when it strikes the sky, is blasted. If such a tower and system be followed by adepts of the left-hand path for ultimate and foredestined confusion, it is one thing; but if the tower and its inner mysteries be in the charge of adepts of the right-hand path, it is another. The concentration of the narrator in the Bible concerning the Tower of Babel seems to have been entirely upon its aspect of left-hand magic.

Barlaam and Josaphat. A Christian saint's tale that contains substantial elements drawn from the life of the Buddha. The story tells the tale of the Christian monk Barlaam's conversion of an Indian prince, Josaphat. (Josaphat is a corrupted transcription of the Sanskrit term BODHISATTVA, referring to GAUTAMA Buddha prior to his enlightenment.) The prince then undertakes the second Christian conversion of India, which, following the initial mission of the apostle Thomas, had reverted to paganism. For their efforts, both Barlaam and Josaphat were eventually listed by the Roman Catholic Church among the roster of saints (their festival day is November 27). There are obvious borrowings from Buddhist materials in the story of Josaphat's life. After the infant Josaphat's birth, for example, astrologers predict he either will become a powerful king or will embrace the Christian religion. To keep his son on the path to royalty, his pagan father has him ensconced in a fabulous palace so that he will not be exposed to Christianity. Josaphat grows dissatisfied with his virtual imprisonment, however, and the king eventually accedes to his son's request to leave the palace, where he comes across a sick man, a blind man, and an old man. He eventually meets the monk Barlaam, who instructs him using parables. Doctrines that exhibit possible parallels between Buddhism and Christianity, such as the emphasis on impermanence and the need to avoid worldly temptations, are a particular focus of Barlaam's teachings, and the account of the way of life followed by Barlaam and his colleagues has certain affinities with that of wandering Indian mendicants (sRAMAnA). By the late nineteenth century, the story of Barlaam and Josaphat was recognized to be a Christianized version of the life of the Buddha. The Greek version of the tale is attributed to "John the Monk," whom the Christian scholastic tradition assumed to be St. John of Damascus (c. 676-749). The tale was, however, first rendered into Greek from Georgian in the eleventh century, perhaps by Euthymius (d. 1028). The Georgian version, called the Balavariani, appears to be based on an Arabic version, KitAb Bilawhar wa BudhAsaf. The source of the Arabic version has not been identified, nor has the precise Buddhist text from which the Buddhist elements were drawn. After the Greek text was translated into Latin, the story was translated into many of the vernaculars of Europe, becoming one of the most popular saint's tales of the Middle Ages.

BimbisAra. (T. Gzugs can snying po; C. Pinposuoluo; J. Binbashara; K. Pinbasara 頻婆娑羅) (r. c. 465-413 BCE). King of MAGADHA, and chief royal patron of the Buddha during his lifetime, who reigned from his capital city of RAJAGṚHA (P. RAjagaha). There are several accounts of how the two first met. According to the PAli JATAKA, the two first met at RAjagṛha just after GAUTAMA had renounced the world when the BODHISATTVA passed beneath the king's window. Impressed with the mendicant's demeanor, BimbisAra invited him to join his court. When the bodhisattva refused, BimbisAra wished him success in his quest for enlightenment and requested that he visit his palace as soon as he achieved his goal. The Buddha honored his request and, soon after attaining enlightenment, returned to RAjagṛha to preach to BimbisAra and his courtiers. Immediately upon listening to the sermon, the king and his attendants became stream-enterers (SROTAAPANNA). The PAli MAHAVAMSA, however, states instead that they were childhood friends. BimbisAra was munificent in his support for the Buddha and his SAMGHA. The most famous of his donations was the VEnUVANA (P. Veluvana) bamboo grove, where it is said he constructed a multistoried residence for the monks. He repaired the road from RAjagṛha to the Ganges River, a distance of five leagues, just so the Buddha would have an easier walk on his way to VAIsALĪ. With such gifts, BimbisAra declared that the five ambitions of his life had been fulfilled: that he would become king, that the Buddha would visit his kingdom, that he would render service to the Buddha, that the Buddha would preach to him, and that he would understand the meaning of the Buddha's teachings. BimbisAra met a tragic death at the hands of his son AJATAsATRU (P. AjAtasattu). Even as his son was conceived, according to some accounts, astrologers had predicted that the unborn child would kill his father and recommended to the king that the fetus be aborted. The king would not hear of it and instead showered affection on his son throughout his childhood. AjAtasatru was persuaded to murder his father by DEVADATTA, the Buddha's evil cousin, who saw BimbisAra's continued patronage of the Buddha as the chief obstacle to his ambition to become leader of the saMgha himself. According to some reports, it was only upon the birth of his own son that he realized the paternal love that his father had had for him. According to the PAli account, BimbisAra was reborn as a yakkha (YAKsA) named Janavasabha and is said to have visited the Buddha in that form. See also VAIDEHĪ.

Bodawpaya. (r. 1782-1819). Burmese king and sixth monarch of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885). Originally known as Badon Min, he was the fourth son of Alaungpaya (r. 1752-1760), founder of the dynasty, and ascended to the throne through usurpation. His official regnal title was Hsinpyumyashin, "Lord of Many White Elephants"; the name by which he is most commonly known, Bodawpaya, "Lord Grandfather," is a posthumous sobriquet. Immediately upon becoming king in 1782, he began construction of a new capital, AMARAPURA, and convened a conclave of abbots, known as the THUDHAMMA (P. Sudhamm) council, to oversee a reform of the Burmese SAMGHA. In 1784, he conquered the kingdom of Arakan and transported its colossal palladium, the MAHAMUNI image of the Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA), to Amarapura and enshrined it in a temple to the north of the city. Later, in 1787 he dispatched a Buddhist mission to Arakan to bring the Arakanese THERAVADA saMgha into conformity with Thudhamma standards. In 1791 Buddhist missions were sent from the capital to forty-two cities around the realm, each equipped with Thudhamma handbooks and newly edited copies of the Buddhist canon (tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA). The missions were charged with the threefold task of defrocking unworthy monks, disestablishing local monastic fraternities, and reordaining worthy monks from these local groups into a single empire-wide monastic order under Thudhamma control. In conjunction with this policy of saMgha unification, a standardized syllabus for monastic education was promulgated and monks and novices throughout the realm were thenceforth required to pass state-administered PAli examinations or to leave the order. That same year (1791), Bodawpaya retired from the palace, placing the daily affairs of the kingdom in the hands of his son, the crown prince. While retaining ultimate royal authority, he donned the robes of a mendicant and took up residence at Mingun, some fifteen miles north of Amarapura on the opposite bank of the Irrawaddy River. There, he oversaw for several years the construction of the great Mingun pagoda, which, if it had been completed, would have been the largest pagoda in the world. The labor force for this project, numbering some twenty thousand people, was conscripted from the vanquished kingdom of Arakan. Strict and austere in temperament, Bodawpaya was quick to suppress heresy and banned the use of intoxicants and the slaughter of cattle, on penalty of death. He was enamored of Hindu science and sent several missions to India to acquire Brahmanical treatises on medicine, alchemy, astrology, calendrics, and what he hoped would be original Indian recensions of Buddhist scriptures. His missions reached BODHGAYA and returned with models of the main shrine and maps of its environs, which were used to create a miniature replica of the site at Mingun. He appointed Indian brAhmanas to refine court punctilio and attempted to reform the Burmese calendar along Indian lines. The calendar reforms were rejected by monastic leaders and this rebuff appears to have caused the king to become increasingly critical of the monkhood. Toward the end of his reign, Bodawpaya defrocked the Thudhamma patriarch, declaring the dispensation (P. sAsana; S. sASANA) of Gotama (GAUTAMA) Buddha to be extinct and its saMgha therefore defunct. This attempt to disestablish the Burmese saMgha met with little success outside the capital and was later abandoned. Bodawpaya's military campaigns against Arakan and Assam extended the borders of the Burmese empire to the frontiers of the British East India Company. The cruelty of Bodawpaya's rule in Arakan created an influx of refugees into British territory, who were regularly pursued by Burmese troops. Although British diplomacy kept tensions with the Burmese kingdom under control throughout Bodawpaya's reign, the stage was set for eventual military conflict between the two powers and the subsequent British conquest of Burma in three wars during the nineteenth century.

bouch ::: n. --> A mouth.
An allowance of meat and drink for the tables of inferior officers or servants in a nobleman&


palace ::: n. --> The residence of a sovereign, including the lodgings of high officers of state, and rooms for business, as well as halls for ceremony and reception.
The official residence of a bishop or other distinguished personage.
Loosely, any unusually magnificent or stately house.


(palace) of the 1st Heaven. According to The Zo-

'Bras spungs. (Drepung). In Tibetan, literally "Rice Heap"; one of the three monastic seats (GDAN SA GSUM) of the DGE LUGS sect of Tibetan Buddhism; located eight kilometers west of the Tibetan capital of LHA SA. The monastery is named after the Dhanyakataka stupa in AMARAVATĪ in southern India, where the Buddha is said to have first taught the KALACAKRATANTRA. It was founded in 1416 by 'JAM DBYANGS CHOS RJE BKRA SHIS DPAL LDAN, one of TSONG KHA PA's leading disciples, and after only a few years in operation already housed over 2,000 monks. In the early sixteenth century, the second DALAI LAMA Dge 'dun rgya mtsho (Gendün Gyatso, 1475-1542) became the monastery's abbot; in 1530, he established a residence and political institution there called the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG or "Palace of TUsITA." Following him, Bsod nams grags pa (Sonam Drakpa, 1478-1554) became the abbot. Thereafter, until the ascendancy of the Dalai Lamas, the most powerful religious dignitaries in the monastery were the Dalai Lamas and the reincarnations of Bsod nams grags pa. In the seventeenth century, under the direction of the fifth Dalai Lama NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, the Dga' ldan pho brang (also known as the gzims khang 'og ma or "lower chambers" to distinguish it from the "upper chambers," gzims khang gong ma, where the incarnations of Bsod nams grags pa resided), was moved to the PO TA LA palace. There it functioned as the seat of the Tibetan government until the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959. The monastery is an enormous complex of assembly halls, temples, chapels, living quarters and mountain hermitages. At the time of the fifth Dalai Lama, 'Bras spungs housed over 10,000 monks divided into seven (and later four) colleges (grwa tshang), more than fifty regional dormitories (khams tshan), and occupied an area of some 180,000 square feet, easily forming the largest monastery in Tibet. At the height of its florescence, 'Bras spungs drew applicants from all quarters of the Tibetan cultural world including the far east and northeast in A mdo, as well as Mongolia, Kalmykia, and Buryatia. The monastery was large enough to accommodate individuals of a wide range of capacities and interests. A large percentage of its monks engaged in little formal intellectual study, instead choosing to work for the institution as laborers, cooks, and ritual assistants. Even so, 'Bras spungs's numerous monastic colleges also attracted some of Tibet's most talented and gifted scholars, producing a line of elite academicians and authors. The complex was sacked a number of times, first by the King of Gtsang (Tsang) during a civil war in 1618, then by the Mongol army in 1635, and again by Lha bzang Khan in 1706. It was most recently plundered by the People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Cultural Revolution but opened again in 1980 with five hundred monks.

Buddhacarita. (T. Sangs rgyas kyi spyod pa; C. Fosuoxing zan; J. Butsushogyosan; K. Pulsohaeng ch'an 佛所行讚). In Sanskrit, "Acts [viz., Life] of the Buddha"; the title of two verse compositions written in the first and second centuries CE that were intended to serve as a complete biography of the historical Buddha. The first was by the monk Sangharaksa (c. first century CE), whose work survives today only in its Chinese translation. The second version, which became hugely popular across Asia, was composed by the well-known Indian philosopher-poet AsVAGHOsA (c. second century), who was supposedly an opponent of Buddhism until he converted after losing a debate with the VAIBHAsIKA teacher PARsVA. Because of the early date of Asvaghosa's epic poem, it is of great importance for both the history of Indian Buddhism, as well as the study of classical Indian linguistics and thought. Asvaghosa's version of the Buddha's life begins with a description of his parents-King sUDDHODANA and Queen MAYA-and ends with the events that immediately follow his death, or PARINIRVAnA. His text is written in the style of high court poetry, or kAvya. In keeping with this style, the Buddhacarita is characterized by lengthy digressions and elaborate descriptions. For example, one entire canto is devoted to a detailed description of the sight of the women sleeping in the palace that precedes GAUTAMA's renunciation (pravrajya; see PRAVRAJITA). Canto XII provides an invaluable outline of the ancient Indian SAMkhya philosophical system. The Buddhacarita has served an important role within the Buddhist tradition itself, as the canonical works do not offer a systematic, chronological account of the Buddha's life from his birth through his death. Only the first half of the Buddhacarita is extant in its original Sanskrit; the remainder survives in Tibetan and Chinese translations.

CakrasaMvaratantra. (T. 'Khor lo bde mchog gi rgyud). In Sanskrit, the "Binding of the Wheel Tantra" an important Buddhist tantra, often known simply as the CakrasaMvara (T. 'Khor lo bde mchog). The text is extant in Sanskrit and in a Tibetan translation in seven hundred stanzas, which is subdivided into fifty-one sections; it is also known by the name srīherukAbhidhAna (a name appearing at the end of each section), and commonly known in Tibet as the CakrasaMvara Laghutantra ("short tantra" or "light tantra") or Mulatantra ("root tantra") because, according to legend, there was once a longer text of one hundred thousand stanzas. The main deity of the tantra is HERUKA (also known as CakrasaMvara) and his consort is VAJRAVARAHĪ. Historically, the tantra originated as part of a literature that focused on a class of female divinities called YOGINĪ or dAKINĪ. It and its sister tantra, the HEVAJRATANTRA, probably appeared toward the end of the eighth century, and both show the influence of the Sarvabuddhasamayoga-dAkinījAlasaMvaratantra (referred to by Amoghavajra after his return from India to China in 746 CE). All are classed as yoginītantras. The use of skulls, the presence of the KHATVAnGA staff, and the references to sites holy to saivite KApAlikas (those who use skulls) point to a very close relationship between the saiva KApAlika literature and the early yoginītantras, such that some scholars have suggested an actual appropriation of the saiva literature by Buddhists outside mainstream Buddhist practice. Other scholars suggest this class of tantric literature originates from a SIDDHA tradition, i.e., from individual charismatic yogins and yoginīs with magical powers unaffiliated with particular religions or sects. Among the four classes of tantras-KRIYATANTRA, CARYATANTRA, YOGATANTRA, and ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA-the CakrasaMvaratantra is included in the last category; between the father tantras (PITṚTANTRA) and mother tantra (MATṚTANTRA) categories of anuttarayogatantras, it is classified in the latter category. The siddhas Luipa and SARAHA are prominent in accounts of its origin and transmission, and the siddha NAROPA is of particular importance in the text's transmission in India and from there to Tibet. Like many root tantras, the text contains very little that might be termed doctrine or theology, focusing instead on ritual matters, especially the use of MANTRA for the achievement of various powers (SIDDHI), especially the mundane (LAUKIKA) powers, such as the ability to fly, become invisible, etc. The instructions are generally not presented in a systematic way, although it is unclear whether this is the result of the development of the text over time or the intention of the authors to keep practices secret from the uninitiated. Later commentators found references in the text to elements of both the stage of generation (UTPATTIKRAMA) and stage of completion (NIsPANNAKRAMA). The DAkArnavatantra is included within the larger category of tantras related to the CakrasaMvara cycle, as is the Abhidhanottara and the SaMvarodayatantra. The tantra describes, in greater and less detail, a MAndALA with goddesses in sacred places in India (see PĪtHA) and the process of ABHIsEKA. The practice of the MAYADEHA (T. sgyu lus, "illusory body") and CAndALĪ (T. gtum mo, often translated as "psychic heat") are closely associated with this tantra. It was translated twice into Tibetan and is important in all three new-translation (GSAR MA) Tibetan sects, i.e., the SA SKYA, BKA' BRGYUD, and DGE LUGS. Iconographically, the CakrasaMvara mandala, starting from the outside, has first eight cremation grounds (sMAsANA), then a ring of fire, then VAJRAs, then lotus petals. Inside that is the palace with five concentric placement rings going in toward the center. In the center is the main deity Heruka with his consort VajravArAhī trampling on BHAIRAVA and his consort KAlarAtri (deities associated with saivism). There are a number of different representations. One has Heruka (or CakrasaMvara) dark blue in color with four faces and twelve arms, and VArAhī with a single face and two hands, red and naked except for bone ornaments. In the next circles are twenty-four vīras (heroes) with their consorts (related with the twenty-four pītha), with the remaining deities in the mandala placed in different directions in the outer circles.

CApAlacaitya. (P. CApAlacetiya; T. Tsa pa la mchod rten; C. Zhepoluo ta; J. Shabara no to; K. Ch'abara t'ap 遮婆羅塔) In Sanskrit, "CApAla shrine"; the site near the city of VAIsALĪ where the Buddha GAUTAMA announced his intention to die and enter PARINIRVAnA. According to the PAli MAHAPARINIBBANASUTTANTA, on an excursion to the shrine with his attendant, ANANDA, the Buddha mentioned that, because he had fully mastered the four bases of psychic power (P. iddhipAda, S. ṚDDHIPADA), he had the ability to extend his life "for an eon or until the end of the eon" (P. kappa; S. KALPA). (The PAli commentaries take "eon" here to mean "his full allotted lifespan," not a cosmological period.) Although he raised this prospect a second and third time, Ananda did not take the hint, and the Buddha finally "consciously and deliberately" renounced his remaining lifespan and proclaimed he would pass away in three months' time. When the earth quaked at his decision, Ananda finally realized what had happened and earnestly entreated the Buddha to extend his lifespan. However, the Buddha refused, enumerating the many occasions in the past when the Buddha had made the same statement and Ananda had failed to make the request. Ananda would later explain that he had been distracted by MARA. For his error, Ananda was publicly censured by his colleagues at the time of the first Buddhist council following the Buddha's death (see COUNCIL, FIRST). The CApAla shrine was probably some sort of pre-Buddhist tree shrine; it was almost certainly not a Buddhist reliquary or commemorative tumulus (CAITYA).

caturnimitta. (P. catunimitta; T. mtshan ma bzhi; C. sixiang; J. shiso; K. sasang 四相). In Sanskrit, the "four signs," "sights," or "portents," which were the catalysts that led the future buddha SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA to renounce the world (see PRAVRAJITA) and pursue liberation from the cycle of birth and death (SAMSARA): specifically, an old man, a diseased man, a dead man, and a religious mendicant (sRAMAnA). According to the many traditional biographies of the Buddha, eight brAhmana seers predicted at the time of his birth that, were Gautama to see all four of these portents, he would be led inexorably toward renunciation of his royal heritage. His father, sUDDHODANA, who wanted SiddhArtha to succeed him, sought to shield the prince from these sights. While distracting his son with all the sensual pleasures available in his palaces, the prince, at the age of twenty-nine, eventually became curious about the world beyond the palace and convinced his father to allow him to go out in his chariot, accompanied by the charioteer CHANDAKA. On four successive chariot rides, the prince saw an old man, a sick man, a corpse being taken to the charnel ground, and a mendicant. Gautama eventually determined to go forth (pravrajita) into homelessness after witnessing the four portents. The first three sights demonstrated to Gautama the vanity of life and the reality of suffering (DUḤKHA), and the sight of a religious mendicant provided him with the prospect of freedom of mind and a model to follow in finding a way leading to liberation. Some versions of the Buddha's biography refer only to the first three of these signs. In some versions, it is said that the four sights were not actually an old man, sick man, corpse, and mendicant, but apparitions of these created by the gods in order to spur the bodhisattva to renounce the world. In the LALITAVISTARA, it is the prince himself who creates the old man, the sick man, the corpse, and the mendicant, and then asks his charioteer who they are, pretending not to know the answer. Biographies of previous buddhas, such as VIPAsYIN, typically mention the role similar encounters played in their own renunciations.

Chandaka. (P. Channa; T. 'Dun pa; C. Cheni; J. Shanoku; K. Ch'anik 車匿). The charioteer and groom of SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA, who accompanied the BODHISATTVA prince on two momentous occasions. First, Chandaka drove the prince's chariot when he ventured outside the palace, where he was confronted with the four portents (CATURNIMITTA), encountering on separate occasions an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a mendicant. Having been confronted with these realities, the prince resolved to go forth in search of liberation from birth and death. According to the story, during his youth, the prince had never seen an old person, a sick person, or a corpse before and so asked Chandaka what each was. Chandaka's explanation that old age, sickness, and death were the ultimate fate of all humans led the prince to decide to renounce his royal inheritance and go out in search of a state beyond aging, sickness, and death. Second, Chandaka accompanied the prince on his ride into renunciation as a mendicant (see PRAVRAJITA). When Gautama left his father's palace in KAPILAVASTU to lead the homeless life, Chandaka departed with him, together with Gautama's noble steed, KAntHAKA. Once outside the city, after cutting off his topknot, the prince removed his jewelry and handed it over to Chandaka, exchanged clothes with him, and then ordered his groom to return to the palace with his horse and inform his father that he would not return to the city until his quest for enlightenment was fulfilled. Kanthaka was so grief-stricken at his master's departure that he died on the spot, and Chandaka, crushed at both losses, asked for permission to join the prince in mendicancy but was refused. (Some accounts state instead that Chandaka feared for his life if he returned alone with all the prince's possessions, and so left the worldly life that very night.) Chandaka was eventually ordained by the Buddha. Because he was so swollen with pride at his close relationship with his former charge Gautama, it is said that he was arrogant in accepting discipline from his colleagues and was ostracized from the order more than once, in one case for siding with nuns in a dispute with monks, in another for repeatedly reviling sARIPUTRA and MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA. In the account of the Buddha's final days in the MAHAPARINIBBANASUTTANTA, the Buddha's last disciplinary act before he died was to pass the penalty of brahmadanda (lit. the "holy rod") on Chandaka, which required that he be ostracized by his fellow monks. When the Buddha's attendant ANANDA went to Chandaka to announce the penalty, it is said that Chandaka finally was contrite and became an ARHAT on the spot.

chapel ::: n. --> A subordinate place of worship
a small church, often a private foundation, as for a memorial
a small building attached to a church
a room or recess in a church, containing an altar.
A place of worship not connected with a church; as, the chapel of a palace, hospital, or prison.
In England, a place of worship used by dissenters from the


chat ::: (chat, messaging) Any system that allows any number of logged-in users to have a typed, real-time, on-line conversation via a network.The medium of chat is descended from talk, but the terms (and the media) have been distinct since at least the early 1990s. talk is prototypically for a small however, there are many channels in which any number of people can talk; and users may send private (one-to-one) messages.Some early chat systems (in use 1998) include IRC, ICQ and Palace. More recent alternatives include MSN Messenger and Google Talk.Chat systems have given rise to a distinctive style combining the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written language entails. It is difficult to communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen to help with this.The conventions of chat systems include special items of jargon, generally abbreviations meant to save typing, which are not used orally. E.g. BCNU, BBL, BTW, CUL, FWIW, FYA, FYI, IMHO, OT, OTT, TNX, WRT, WTF, WTH, g>, gr&d>, BBL, HHOK, NHOH, ROTFL, AFK, b4, TTFN, TTYL, OIC, re.Much of the chat style is identical to (and probably derived from) Morse code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s, and there is, not talk systems. Many of these expressions are also common in Usenet news and electronic mail and some have seeped into popular culture, as with emoticons.The MUD community uses a mixture of emoticons, a few of the more natural of the old-style talk mode abbreviations, and some of the social list above. In MUD cultures, which tend to include many touch typists. Abbreviations specific to MUDs include: FOAD, ppl (people), THX (thanks), UOK? (are you OK?).Some BIFFisms (notably the variant spelling d00d) and aspects of ASCIIbonics appear to be passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders and are already pandemic on chat systems in general.See also hakspek. .(2006-05-31)

chat "chat, messaging" Any system that allows any number of logged-in users to have a typed, real-time, on-line conversation via a {network}. The medium of {chat} is descended from {talk}, but the terms (and the media) have been distinct since at least the early 1990s. {talk} is prototypically for a small number of people, generally with no provision for {channels}. In {chat} systems, however, there are many {channels} in which any number of people can talk; and users may send private (one-to-one) messages. Some early chat systems (in use 1998) include {IRC}, {ICQ} and {Palace}. More recent alternatives include {MSN Messenger} and {Google Talk}. Chat systems have given rise to a distinctive style combining the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written language entails. It is difficult to communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen to help with this. The conventions of chat systems include special items of jargon, generally abbreviations meant to save typing, which are not used orally. E.g. {BCNU}, {BBL}, {BTW}, {CUL}, {FWIW}, {FYA}, {FYI}, {IMHO}, {OT}, {OTT}, {TNX}, {WRT}, {WTF}, {WTH}, {"g"}, {"gr&d"}, {BBL}, {HHOK}, {NHOH}, {ROTFL}, {AFK}, {b4}, {TTFN}, {TTYL}, {OIC}, {re}. Much of the chat style is identical to (and probably derived from) {Morse code} jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s, and there is, not surprisingly, some overlap with {TDD} jargon. Most of the jargon was in use in {talk} systems. Many of these expressions are also common in {Usenet} {news} and {electronic mail} and some have seeped into popular culture, as with {emoticons}. The {MUD} community uses a mixture of {emoticons}, a few of the more natural of the old-style {talk mode} abbreviations, and some of the "social" list above. In general, though, MUDders express a preference for typing things out in full rather than using abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD cultures, which tend to include many touch typists. Abbreviations specific to MUDs include: {FOAD}, ppl (people), THX (thanks), UOK? (are you OK?). Some {BIFF}isms (notably the variant spelling "d00d") and aspects of {ASCIIbonics} appear to be passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders and are already pandemic on {chat} systems in general. See also {hakspek}. {Suck article "Screaming in a Vacuum" (http://suck.com/daily/96/10/23/)}. (2006-05-31)

Chatur-varna (Sanskrit) Caturvarṇa [from catur four + varṇa a caste, color, form, appearance] The Hindu four castes as presented in the Laws of Manu: the Brahmana or priest, Kshatriya or warrior and administrator, Vaisya or merchant, and Sudra or agriculturalist and servant. These four castes, while very ancient, belonged to the archaic civilization. In the Hindu view karmic merit and demerit work to place a person in his position in life in repetitive incarnations on earth. Thus a person might be a Brahmin, the highest of the castes, but if his life were such as to bring about a change in him, some subsequent incarnation would place him either in a higher or a lower position in life. A person might be a slave or beggar in one life, but if he lives in the higher part of his nature his next imbodiment might be that of a prince; or a prince in his palace might for karmic demerit, in his next life be born a slave.

Chinp'yo. (眞表) (fl. c. eighth century). Korean VINAYA master (yulsa) during the Silla dynasty. Chinp'yo was a native of Mangyong county in Wansan province (present-day Chonju). According to legend, Chinp'yo is said to have been a student of a certain dharma master named Sungje (d.u.) of the monastery of KŬMSANSA, and was himself responsible for a major expansion of the monastery that took place between 762 and 766. Sungje, who purportedly studied under the eminent Chinese monk SHANDAO, informed Chinp'yo of his vision of MANJUsRĪ on WUTAISHAN, after which Chinp'yo decided to devote himself to the practice of body-discarding repentance (mangsinch'am) at Pusaŭiam (Inconceivable Hermitage). In 740, after seven nights of ascetic repentance, Chinp'yo had a vision of the BODHISATTVA KsITIGARBHA. Chinp'yo continued his training at the monastery Yongsansa, where he had a vision of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. From Maitreya, Chinp'yo received the divination scripture, ZHANCHA SHANE YEBAO JING, and 189 divination sticks made of sandalwood, two of which were said to have been made of Maitreya's fingers. In 766, he began teaching at Kŭmsansa, where he installed six gilded images of Maitreya in the main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN). King Kyongdok (r. 742-764) later invited Chinp'yo to the palace and received the bodhisattva precepts (K. posal kye, C. PUSA JIE). Chinp'yo had many disciples, among whom Yongsim (d.u.) is most famous.

cockpit ::: n. --> A pit, or inclosed area, for cockfights.
The Privy Council room at Westminster; -- so called because built on the site of the cockpit of Whitehall palace.
That part of a war vessel appropriated to the wounded during an engagement.
In yachts and other small vessels, a space lower than the rest of the deck, which affords easy access to the cabin.


court ::: 1. An extent of open ground partially or completely enclosed by walls or buildings; a courtyard. 2. The place of residence of a sovereign or dignitary; a royal mansion or palace. courts, courtyard, courtyard"s.

court ::: n. --> An inclosed space; a courtyard; an uncovered area shut in by the walls of a building, or by different building; also, a space opening from a street and nearly surrounded by houses; a blind alley.
The residence of a sovereign, prince, nobleman, or ether dignitary; a palace.
The collective body of persons composing the retinue of a sovereign or person high in authority; all the surroundings of a sovereign in his regal state.


crown palace. From taj meaning crown, tiara, high-crowned cap;

CulatanhAsankhayasutta. In PAli, "Shorter Discourse on the Destruction of Craving"; the thirty-seventh sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (two separate recensions appear, but without title, in the Chinese translations of the EKOTTARAGAMA and SAMYUKTAGAMA), preached by the Buddha to Sakka (S. sAKRA), king of the gods, in the city of SAvatthi (S. sRAVASTĪ). Sakka inquires how the Buddha trained himself so that he achieved the destruction of craving and reached the ultimate goal of liberation, whereby he became foremost among humans and gods. In response, the Buddha describes how a householder, after renouncing the world, trains himself to purify his mind of mental defilements and reaches the final goal. MahAmoggallAna (MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA) overhears the sermon and travels to the heaven of the thirty-three (P. tAvatiMsa; S. TRAYASTRIMsA) to find out whether Sakka had correctly understood the meaning of the Buddha's words. While there, Sakka gives MahAmoggallAna a tour of his magnificent palace, which the king explains was constructed following the defeat of the demigods (ASURA).

cupbearers ::: servants who fill and serve wine in cups, as in a royal palace or at an elaborate banquet.

dazangjing. (J. daizokyo; K. taejanggyong 大藏經). In Chinese, "scriptures of the great repository"; the term the Chinese settled upon to describe their Buddhist canon, supplanting the Indian term TRIPItAKA ("three baskets"). The myriad texts of different Indian and Central Asian Buddhist schools were transmitted to China over a millennium, from about the second through the twelfth centuries CE, where they were translated with alacrity into Chinese. Chinese Buddhists texts therefore came to include not only the tripitakas of several independent schools of Indian Buddhism, but also different recensions of various MAHĀYĀNA scriptures and Buddhist TANTRAs, sometimes in multiple translations. As the East Asian tradition developed its own scholarly traditions, indigenous writings by native East Asian authors, composed in literary Chinese, also came to be included in the canon. These materials included scriptural commentaries, doctrinal treatises, biographical and hagiographical collections, edited transcriptions of oral lectures, Chinese-Sanskrit dictionaries, scriptural catalogues (JINGLU), and so on. Because the scope of the Buddhist canon in China was therefore substantially broader than the traditional tripartite structure of an Indian tripitaka, the Chinese coined alternative terms to refer to their collection of Buddhist materials, including "all the books" (yiqie jing), until eventually settling on the term dazangjing. The term dazangjing seems to derive from a Northern Song-dynasty term for an officially commissioned "great library" (dazang) that was intended to serve as a repository for "books" (jing) sanctioned by the court. Buddhist monasteries were the first places outside the imperial palaces that such officially sanctioned libraries were established. These collections of the official canonical books of Chinese Buddhism were arranged not by the VINAYA, SuTRA, ABHIDHARMA, and sĀSTRA categories of India, but in shelf lists that were more beholden to the categorizations used in court libraries. The earliest complete Buddhist canons in China date from the fifth century; by the eighth century, these manuscript collections included over one thousand individual texts in more than five thousand rolls. By the tenth century, woodblock printing techniques had become sophisticated enough that complete printed Buddhist canons began to be published, first during the Song dynasty, and thence throughout East Asia. The second xylographic canon of the Korean Koryo dynasty, the KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG, was especially renowned for its scholarly accuracy; it included some 1,514 texts, in 6,815 rolls, carved on 81,258 individual woodblocks, which are still housed today in the scriptural repository at the monastery of HAEINSA. The second Koryo canon is arranged with pride of place given to texts from the Mahāyāna tradition:

Dga' ldan pho brang. (Ganden Podrang). In Tibetan, lit. "Palace of TUsITA," the name by which the central government of Tibet was known from the time of fifth DALAI LAMA's ascension to power in the seventeenth century until 1959. The Dga' ldan pho brang was originally the residence or estate of Dge 'dun rgya mtsho (retrospectively named the second Dalai Lama) in 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery. He was a learned and diplomatic figure who protected the interests of the fledgling DGE LUGS sect during a difficult period when its original patron, the Sne'u dong royal family, was in decline. The residence, originally called the Rdo khang sngon mo, was given to him by the Sne'u dong princes in 1518, when he was the unquestioned leader of the major emerging Dge lugs monasteries. From this point, the Dga' ldan pho brang became the seat of the Dalai Lamas. NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, the fifth Dalai Lama, enlisted the help of the Qoshot Mongols and their leader, Gushri Khan, to decisively crush the KARMA PA and his patron, the King of Gtsang. From this point, the Dga' ldan pho brang came to designate not the residence of the Dalai Lama but the seat of the Dalai Lama's rulership of substantial regions of Tibet, from which he collected taxes. By extension, the term Dga' ldan pho brang has come to mean the government of Tibet during the reign of the Dalai Lamas. To consolidate Dge lugs power and prevent the the large Dge lugs monasteries (GDAN SA GSUM) from usurping his power, the fifth Dalai Lama moved the Dga' ldan pho brang into the PO TA LA palace, which then became the seat of the government he established.

Diẹu Nhan. (妙仁) (1042-1113). The only nun whose biography is recorded in the Vietnamese lineage history THIỀN UYỂN ṬP ANH. Diệu Nhan's personal name was Lý Ngọc Kièu. She came from Phù Đổng village, Tien Du prefecture in northern Vietnam, the eldest daughter of Lord Phụng Yét. She was raised in the imperial palace by King Lý Thánh Tông (r. 1054-72) and married a man named Le, a provincial governor. Upon his death, she vowed not to remarry and, moved by the Buddhist teaching on impermanence, decided to give away all her belongings and enter the Buddhist order. She studied under the monk Chan Không of Phù Đổng District who gave her the sobriquet Diệu Nhan. Diệu Nhan devoted herself to keeping the precepts and practicing meditation and was highly revered among nuns. Later, Chan Không appointed her head of the Hương Hải Convent.

edifice ::: n. --> A building; a structure; an architectural fabric; -- chiefly applied to elegant houses, and other large buildings; as, a palace, a church, a statehouse.

Ennin. (C. Yuanren 圓仁) (794-864). Japanese monk of the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG), who wrote a classic account of his ninth-century pilgrimage to China. A native of Tochigi prefecture, Ennin lost his father when young, and became a student of the eminent Japanese monk SAICHo at the monastery of ENRYAKUJI on HIEIZAN. Ennin was ordained on Mt. Hiei in 814 and received the full monastic precepts three years later at the precepts platform (kaidan) on the grounds of the monastery of ToDAIJI. In 838, Ennin traveled to China with his companions Engyo (799-852) and Jokyo (d. 866), arriving in Yangzhou (present-day Jiangsu province) at the mouth of the Yangzi River. The next year, he visited the monastery of Kaiyuansi, where he received the teachings and rituals of the various KONGoKAI (vajradhātu) deities from the monk Quanya (d.u.). Ennin also studied the Sanskrit SIDDHAM script while in China. When adverse winds kept him from returning to Japan, he remained behind at the monastery of Fahuayuan on Mt. Chi in Dengzhou (present-day Shandong province). From there, Ennin made a pilgrimage to WUTAISHAN and studied Tiantai doctrine and practice. In 840, Ennin arrived in the capital of Chang'an, where he studied the kongokai MAndALA under Yuanzheng (d.u.) of the monastery of Daxingshansi. The next year, Ennin also studied the teachings of the TAIZoKAI (garbhadhātu) and *SUSIDDHIKARASuTRA under Yizhen (d.u.) of the monastery of Qinglongsi. In 842, Ennin furthered his studies of the taizokai under Faquan (d.u.) at the monastery of Xuanfasi, siddham under Yuanjian (d.u.) of Da'anguosi, and siddham pronunciation under the Indian ĀCĀRYA Baoyue (d.u.). In 845, Ennin fled from the Huichang persecution of Buddhism (see HUICHANG FANAN) that then raged in Chang'an, and arrived back in Japan in 847. Ennin kept a detailed record of his sojourn in China in his famed diary, the NITTo GUHo JUNREI GYoKI (translated into English as A Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law). In 854, Ennin was appointed the head (zasu) of Enryakuji and three years later was allowed to perform the RYoBU ABHIsEKA for Emperor Buntoku (r. 850-858) in the palace. Ennin promoted the Tendai/Tiantai teachings of the four kinds of SAMĀDHI (sizhong sanmei), which he had brought back to Japan from China. He also made an effort to continue his teacher Saicho's attempt to implement the use of the bodhisattva precepts (see FANWANG JING) in Japan.

escurial ::: n. --> A palace and mausoleum of the kinds of Spain, being a vast and wonderful structure about twenty-five miles northwest of Madrid.

Faqin. (J. Hokin; K. Pophŭm 法欽) (714-792). In Chinese, "Dharma Reverence"; CHAN master in the NIUTOU ZONG, also known as Daoqin. A chance encounter with the monk HELIN XUANSU when Faqin was twenty-eight is said to have resulted in his decision to become a monk. In 741, Faqin went to Mt. Jing, where he established a small hut to study. Faqin was later summoned in 768 by Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779) to give a lecture in the imperial palace. In honor of his achievements, the emperor bestowed upon him the title Great Master Guoyi (Foremost of the Country) and a plaque for Faqin's monastery that bore the name Jingshansi, or Mt. Jing monastery, which later came to be known as WANSHOUSI. Faqin had many famous disciples; in addition, masters in other Chan lineages, such as XITANG ZHIZANG, TIANHUANG DAOWU, and DANXIA TIANRAN, also sought instruction from Faqin. In 790, Faqin moved to the hermitage Jingtuyuan at the monastery Rongxingsi, where he passed away two years later at the age of seventy-nine. Emperor Dezong (r. 779-805) later gave Faqin the posthumous title Chan master Dajue (Great Awakening).

Fazhao. (J. Hosho; K. Popcho 法照) (d.u.). Tang-dynasty Chinese monk, now revered by followers of the Japanese JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu as the fifth patriarch of the PURE LAND (JINGTU ZONG) tradition in China. Fazhao resided at LUSHAN early in his career, where he devoted himself to recitation of the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA (see NIANFO); there, Fazhao had a vision of AMITĀBHA, who personally taught him about the pure land. Fazhao subsequently traveled to the Chinese capital of Chang'an, where he developed the method of WUHUI NIANFO, or "five-tempo intonation of [the name of] the Buddha." When he demonstrated this practice in 767 at the monastery of Yunfengsi, the practice is said to have resulted in a series of miracles, such as the appearance of Amitābha amid the clouds, which in turn purportedly led Emperor Daizong (762-779) to invite Fazhao to the imperial palace. In addition to demonstrating the value of buddha-recitation practice, Fazhao also sought to explain pure land teachings in terms drawn from TIANTAI doctrine, bringing pure land beliefs into the mainstream of contemporary Buddhist intellectual discourse. Because of his success in propagating pure land teachings, his peers called Fazhao the "latter-day SHANDAO." Fazhao later moved to the monastery of Zhulinsi on WUTAISHAN and acquired the cognomen Wuhui fashi (Dharma Master Five-Tempo).

Fotudeng. [alt. Fotucheng] (J. Butsutocho/Buttocho; K. Pultojing 佛圖澄) (232-348). A monk and thaumaturge, perhaps from the Central Asian kingdom of KUCHA, who was a pioneer in the transmission of Buddhism to China. According to his hagiography in the GAOSENG ZHUAN, Fotudeng was a foreign monk, whose surname was BO, the ethnikon used for Kuchean monks; in some sources, his name is transcribed as BuddhasiMha. He was talented at memorizing and expounding scriptures, as well as in debate. Fotudeng is said to have received training in Kashmir (see KASHMIR-GANDHĀRA) and to have arrived in China in 310 intending to spread the DHARMA. Fotudeng is described as a skilled magician who could command spirits and predict the future. Despite his initial failure to establish a monastery in the Chinese capital of Luoyang, Fotudeng was able to convert the tyrannical ruler of the state of Later Zhao, Shi Le (r. 319-333), with a demonstration of his thaumaturgic skills. Fotudeng's continued assistance of Shi Le won him the title Daheshang (Great Monk). After Shi Le's general Shi Hu (r. 334-339) usurped the throne, Fotudeng was elevated to the highest status at the palace, and he continued to play the important role of political and spiritual advisor to the ruler. During his illustrious career as royal advisor, Fotudeng also taught many Buddhist disciples and is said to have established hundreds of monasteries. Among his disciples Zhu Faya (d.u.), DAO'AN, and Chu Fatai (320-387) are most famous.

Glass Palace Chronicle. See HMANNAN MAHAYAZAWIN-DAW-GYI.

Glass Palace Chronicle

greencloth ::: n. --> A board or court of justice formerly held in the counting house of the British sovereign&

Grotesque: (It. grottesca, from grotta, grotto) The idealized ugly. In aesthetics, the beauty of fantastic exaggeration, traditionally achieved by combining foliate and animal or human figures, as for example those found in the classic Roman and Pompeiian palaces and reproduced by Raphael in the Vatican. -- J.K.F.

Guifeng Zongmi. (J. Keiho Shumitsu; K. Kyubong Chongmil 圭峰宗密) (780-841). Chinese CHAN master and historian; putative fifth patriarch of the HUAYAN tradition and successor in the Heze school of CHAN; best known for positing the fundamental harmony between the scriptural teachings of Buddhism and Chan practice. Zongmi was a native of Xichong in present-day Sichuan province. Although little is known of his early life, Zongmi is said to have received a classical Confucian education. In 804, Zongmi encountered the monk Daoyuan (d.u.), purportedly a fourth-generation lineage holder of the Heze line of Chan (see HEZE SHENHUI), and became his student. During this period, Zongmi also carried on his studies of the YUANJUE JING. In 808, Zongmi received the full monastic precepts from Daoyuan, who then recommended the monk Nanyin Weizhong (d. 821) as a suitable teacher. In 810, Zongmi met the monk Lingfeng (d.u.), a disciple of the Huayan monk CHENGGUAN, at the monastery of Huijuesi. Two years later Zongmi began his studies of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA under CHENGGUAN in Chang'an. In 816, Zongmi began his residence at the monastery of Zhijusi on ZHONGNANSHAN and in 821 he retired to the temple Caotangsi on Gui peak (Guifeng), whence he acquired his toponym. There, Zongmi devoted himself to such works as his influential commentary on the Yuanjue jing, the Yuanjue jing dashu. In 828, Zongmi was invited to the palace and given a purple robe and the title Dade (Great Virtue). During his stay at the capital he met many important statesmen including Pei Xiu (787-860). Zongmi was a prolific writer whose works include commentaries on the AvataMsakasutra, VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, DASHENG QIXIN LUN, MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, SIFEN LÜ ("Four-Part Vinaya"), and others. He also composed a massive, 100-roll history of the Chan school, the Chanyuan zhuquanji ("Collected Writings on the Source of Chan"), only the prolegomenon to which is extant (see CHANYUAN ZHUQUANJI DUXU). Zongmi's writings were extremely influential in the mature Korean SoN school and, especially, in the thought and practice of POJO CHINUL (1158-1210), who drew on Zongmi to advocate an accord between the traditions of Son (C. Chan; meditation) and Kyo (C. JIAO; doctrine). See also LINGZHI; FANZHAO.

halls ::: 1. Large rooms of palaces or castles. 2. Large rooms for gatherings and events.

halls (or palaces) of the 4th Heaven. [Rf Pirke

heavenly halls or palaces guarded over by the

Himitsu mandara jujushinron. (秘密曼荼羅十住心論). In Japanese, "Ten Abiding States of Mind According to the Sacred MAndALA"; a treatise composed by the Japanese SHINGONSHumonk KuKAI; often referred to more briefly as the Jujushinron. In 830, Kukai submitted this treatise in reply to Emperor Junna's (r. 823-833) request to each Buddhist tradition in Japan to provide an explanation of its teachings. In his treatise, Kukai systematically classified the various Buddhist teachings (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) and placed them onto a spiritual map consisting of the ten stages of the mind (jujushin). The first and lowest stage of the mind ("the deluded, ram-like mind") is that of ignorant beings who, like animals, are driven by their uncontrolled desires for food and sex. The beings of the second stage ("the ignorant, childlike, but tempered mind") display ethical behavior consistent with the teachings of Confucius and the lay precepts of Buddhism. The third stage of mind ("the infantlike, fearless mind") is the state in which one worships the various gods and seeks rebirth in the various heavens, as would be the case in the non-Buddhist traditions of India and in Daoism. The fourth stage ("recognizing only SKANDHAs and no-self") corresponds to the sRĀVAKAYĀNA and the fifth stage ("mind free of karmic seeds") to that of the PRATYEKABUDDHAYĀNA. The sixth stage ("the mind of MAHĀYĀNA, which is concerned with others") corresponds to the YOGĀCĀRA teachings, the seventh ("mind awakened to its unborn nature") to MADHYAMAKA, the eighth ("mind of one path devoid of construction") to TIANTAI (J. TENDAI), and the ninth ("mind completely devoid of self-nature") to HUAYAN (J. Kegon). Kukai placed his own tradition of Shingon at the last and highest stage of mind ("the esoteric and adorned mind"). Kukai also likened each stage of mind to a palace and contended that these outer palaces surround an inner palace ruled by the buddha MAHĀVAIROCANA. To abide in the inner palace one must be initiated into the teachings of Shingon by receiving consecration (ABHIsEKA). Kukai thus provided a Buddhist (or Shingon) alternative to ideal rulership. To demonstrate his schema of the mind, Kukai frequently cites numerous scriptures and commentaries, which made his treatise extremely prolix; Kukai later provided an abbreviated version of his argument, without the numerous supporting references, in his HIZo HoYAKU.

Hmannan Mahayazawin-daw-gyi. In Burmese, "The Great Glass Palace Chronicle"; the best-known Burmese YAZAWIN, or royal chronicle, of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885). It was written by a committee of scholars headed by the royal minister and former sangharājā, Mahadhamma thin gyan, at Amarapura in 1831. It copies verbatim U Kala's MAHAYAZAWIN GYI, making occasional alterations to the narrative and adding criticisms and learned observations. An interesting feature of this text is its criticism of the legend of SHIN UPAGOT (UPAGUPTA), a key element in the story of King Asoka (S. AsOKA) found in the Mahayazawin gyi, as being inauthentic, because it is not attested in Pāli sources. The portion of the Hmannan Mahayazawin-daw-gyi that relates the ancient history of Burma from the founding of Tagaung to the fall of PAGAN to Chinese forces in 1284 CE has been translated by Pe Maung Tin and Gordon Luce as The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma.

Hŭngch'onsa. (興天寺). In Korean, "Flourishing Heaven Monastery"; the head monastery of the school of Doctrine (KYO) during the Choson dynasty, located in Songbuk-ku in the capital of Seoul. When Queen Sindok (d. 1395) died, King Taejo (r. 1392-1398) ordered in 1396 that this monastery be constructed to the east of the queen's royal tomb. At the king's command, a Sarigak (a three-story reliquary pavilion) and a Sarit'ap (a reliquary STuPA) were erected at the north side of the monastery. Ceremonies to guide the spirit of the deceased queen, including the Uranbun ritual (see ULLAMBANA), were held during the seventh and eighth months. In 1408, Hŭngch'onsa was officially affiliated with the Hwaom school (C. HUAYAN ZONG), but was designated a generic Kyo monastery in 1424, when the seven schools of Choson-dynasty Buddhism were amalgamated into the two schools of Kyo (Doctrine) and SoN (Meditation). The Buddhist canon (taejanggyong; C. DAZANGJING; see KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG) was enshrined at the monastery in the ninth month of 1440. The monastery burned to the ground in 1510, and its large bronze monastery bell was moved to Toksu Palace. At King Sonjo's (r. 1567-1608) command, the monastery was reconstructed in 1569 at the old location of the Hamch'wi kiosk. The monastery's name was changed to Sinhŭngsa in 1794, but then changed back to Hŭngch'onsa in 1865. The monastery is known for its Kŭngnak pojon (SUKHĀVATĪ Hall) and MYoNGBU CHoN (Hall of Judgment), both of which are Seoul municipal cultural properties.

Hwangnyongsa. (皇/龍寺). In Korean, "royal," or "Yellow Dragon Monastery" ("royal" and "yellow" are homophonous in Korean); an important Korean monastery located in the Silla-dynasty capital of Kyongju. The monastery was constructed between 553 and 569, during the reign of the Silla king Chinhŭng (r. 540-576) and was especially renowned for its sixteen-foot high image of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha (completed in 574) and its massive, nine-story pagoda (STuPA), which was built in 645 during the reign of Queen Sondok (r. 632-647). In the winter of 1238, during the succeeding Koryo dynasty (918-1392), the entire monastery, including the buddha image and the pagoda, was totally destroyed by invading Mongol troops, and only the foundation stones currently remain. The site of the monastery was excavated by the Kyongju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage between 1976 and 1983. Royal Dragon monastery flourished due to the support of the Silla royal family, which sought to use Buddhism as an unifying political ideology; The stories told concerning the foundation of the monastery, the image, and the pagoda all reflect this fact. The construction of the monastery is thus often cited as an example of "state-protection Buddhism" hoguk Pulgyo; C. HUGUO FOJIAO) in Korea. According to the SAMGUK YUSA ("Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms"), in the second month of 553, King Chinhŭng was building a new palace to the south of his Dragon Palace and east of Wolsong palace, when a yellow dragon (hwangnyong) appeared at the site. Yellow dragons were popular autochthonous deities in Silla; hence, given the auspicious nature of this apparition, the king changed plans and instead built a Buddhist monastery on the site, which is called both Yellow Dragon and Royal Dragon monastery in the literature. When the Silla monk CHAJANG (d.u.; fl. c. 590-658) was training at WUTAISHAN in China, an emanation of the bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ told him that Hwangnyongsa was constructed on the site of the dispensation of the previous buddha KĀsYAPA. Not long after the monastery's completion, a ship with 57,000 pounds of iron and 30,000 ounces of gold aboard appeared at Sap'o Harbor in Hagok County (currently Kokp'o near Ulsan, on the southeast coast of the peninsula). The ship also carried an inscription, which said that the Indian king AsOKA, having tried and failed three times to forge a sākyamuni triad from these metals, had finally decided to load the materials aboard ship, along with models of the images, and send them off in search of a land with the requisite metallurgical skill to craft such a statue. King Chinŭng ordered his metallurgists to forge this sixteen-foot statue of the Buddha, and they succeeded on the first attempt in the third month of 574. Chajang also was told by MANJUSRĪ that the queen belonged to the Indian KsATRIYA caste. He was later told by a divine being that if a nine-story pagoda were constructed within the precincts of Royal Dragon monastery, the kingdoms bordering Silla would surrender and submit to Silla hegemony. Hearing Chajang's prediction, in 645, the queen built the pagoda, which was 224 feet tall and made entirely of wood. Chajang placed within its columns some of the relics (sARĪRA) of the Buddha that he had received at Wutaishan. (Another portion was enshrined at T'ONGDOSA, where they remain still today.) It was said that the nine stories of the pagoda symbolized the nine kingdoms and tribal leagues surrounding Silla. During the time when Hwangnyongsa was constructed, the unification wars between the three Korean kingdoms of Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche were raging. The Silla monarchs at this time tried to justify their royal authority by relying on Buddhism, particularly by comparing the Silla rulers to the imported Buddhist notion of the ideal Buddhist ruler, or CAKRAVARTIN (wheel-turning emperor) and by positing that the royal family was genealogically related to the ksatriya clan of the Buddha. These associations are also obvious in the personal names of Silla kings, queens, and other royal family members. For example, the names of the King Chinhŭng's two princes were Tongnyun (Copper Wheel) and Kŭmnyun (Gold Wheel), both specific types of cakravartins; additionally, King Chinp'yong's personal name was Paekchong and his queen's was Maya, the Sino-Korean translation and transcription, respectively, of the names of sākyamuni Buddha's father and mother, sUDDHODANA and MĀYĀ. The foundation of Hwangnyongsa was intimately associated with these attempts by the royal family to employ Buddhism as a tool for justifying and reinforcing its authority. The monastery sponsored the Inwang Paekkojwa hoe (Humane Kings Assembly of One-Hundred Seats), a state-protection (hoguk) rite based on the RENWANGJING ("Scripture for Humane Kings"), in the hopes that the power of the buddhadharma would protect and promote the royal family and the kingdom. According to both the Samguk yusa and the Samguk Sagi ("Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms"), such a ceremony was held at Hwangnyongsa in 613 and 636, before the unification of the three kingdoms, as well as several times subsequently. Monks who resided at Hwangnyongsa also played important roles in Silla politics and religion. WoN'GWANG (532-630), who composed the five codes of conduct for the "flower boys" (hwarang), an elite group of male aristocratic youths, may have written there a letter to ask Emperor Yangdi (r. 604-618) of the Sui dynasty to attack Koguryo on Silla's behalf. Another resident, Chajang, encouraged the royal family to adopt Chinese official attire and the Chinese chronological era at the Silla court and was appointed kukt'ong (state superintendent), to supervise the entire Silla Buddhist ecclesia. Several other Hwangnyongsa monks, including Hyehun (fl. c. 640), Kangmyong (fl. 655), and Hunp'il (fl. 879), were appointed to kukt'ong and other important Silla ecclesiastical positions. Finally, several important Silla scholar-monks resided at Hwangnyongsa, including WoNHYO (617-686), who delivered his first public teaching of the KŬMGANG SAMMAEGYoNG NON ("Exposition of the Vajrasamādhisutra") at the monastery.

Indrajāla. (Indra's Net) (T. Dbang po'i dra ba; C. Yintuoluo wang/Di-Shi wang; J. Indaramo/Taishakumo; K. Indara mang/Che-Sok mang 因陀羅網/帝釋網). In Sanskrit, "Indra's net"; a metaphor used widely in the HUAYAN ZONG of East Asian Buddhism to describe the multivalent web of interconnections in which all beings are enmeshed. As depicted in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, the central scripture of the Huayan school, above the palace of INDRA, the king of the gods, is spread an infinitely vast, bejeweled net. At each of the infinite numbers of knots in the net is tied a jewel that itself has an infinite number of facets. A person looking at any single one of the jewels on this net would thus see reflected in its infinite facets not only everything in the cosmos but also an infinite number of other jewels, themselves also reflecting everything in the cosmos; thus, every jewel in this vast net is simultaneously reflecting, and being reflected by, an infinite number of other jewels. This metaphor of infinite, mutually reflecting jewels is employed to help convey how all things in existence are defined by their interconnection with all other things, but without losing their own independent identity in the process. The metaphor of Indra's net thus offers a profound vision of the universe, in which all things are mutually interrelated to all other things, in simultaneous mutual identity and mutual intercausality. The meditation on Indra's net (C. Diwang guan; J. Taimo kan; K. Chemang kwan) is the last of the six contemplations outlined by Fazang in his Xiu Huayan aozhi wangjin huanyuan guan ("Cultivation of the Inner Meaning of Huayan: The Contemplations That End Delusion and Return to the Source"), which helps the student to visualize the DHARMADHĀTU of the unimpeded interpretation between phenomenon and phenomena (SHISHI WU'AI FAJIE).

Indra. (P. Inda; T. Dbang po; C. Yintuoluo/Di-Shi; J. Indara/Taishaku; K. Indara/Che-Sok 因陀羅/帝釋). In Sanskrit, Indra is an abbreviation for sAKRO DEVĀNĀM INDRAḤ ("sAKRA, the king of the gods"). Indra is the Vedic king of the gods of the atmosphere or sky, who eventually becomes the chief of all divinities in Indian popular religion. Indra is incorporated into the Buddhist pantheon as a guardian of the DHARMA and the king of the DEVA realm. Indra is always depicted in Indian Buddhist iconography as subservient to the Buddha: he worships the Buddha, holds an umbrella over him to shield him from the sun, or carries his alms bowl for him. Indra presides over the heaven of the thirty-three divinities (TRĀYASTRIMsA), the second of the six heavenly realms that exist within the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU), located on the summit of MOUNT SUMERU. In the middle of this heaven is found Indra's royal city, Sudarsana, at the center of which is his royal palace, Vaijayanta. See also INDRAJĀLA; sAKRA.

In each case, the name of the realm indicates the object of meditation of the beings reborn there. Hence, in the first, for example, the beings perceive only infinite space. Rebirth in these different spheres is based on mastery of the corresponding four immaterial meditative absorptions (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA; ārupyasamāpatti) in the previous life. While the devas of the sensuous realm and the realm of subtle materiality come to have larger and ever more splendid bodies at the more advanced levels of their heavens, the devas of the immaterial realm do not have even the subtlest foundation in materiality; their existence is so refined that it is not even possible to posit exactly where they dwell spatially. In some schools, such as the Sarvāstivāda, the immaterial realm does not even exist as a discrete place: rather, when a being who has mastered the immaterial absorptions dies, he is reborn at the very same location where he passed away, except now he is "immaterial" or "formless" and thus invisible to coarser beings. According to the Theravāda, even a mind-made body (MANOMAYAKĀYA) is excluded from this realm, for the devas here possess only the mind base (MANĀYATANA), mental objects (P. dhammāyatana), the elements of mental consciousness (P. manoviNNānadhātu), and the element of mental objects (P. dhammadhātu), needing only three nutriments (ĀHĀRA) to survive-contact (P. phassa), mental cognition (P. manosaNcetana), and consciousness (P. viNNāna). The Buddha claims to have lived among the devas of the immaterial realm in certain of his previous lives, but without offering any detailed description of those existences. ¶ In all realms, devas are born apparitionally. In the sensuous realm, devas are born in their mother's lap, appearing as if they are already five to ten years old at birth; by contrast, devas of the subtle-materiality and immaterial realms appear not to need the aid of parents; those in the subtle-materiality realm appear fully grown, while those in the immaterial realm do not appear at all, because they have no form. It is also said that, when devas are reborn, they are aware of their prior existence and of the specific KARMAN that led to their rebirth in the heavenly realms. The different deva realms are also distinguished by differences in nutriment, sexuality, requisites, and life span. The devas of the lower heavens of the sensuous realm consume ordinary food; those in the upper spheres of the sensuous realm and the lower levels of the realm of subtle materiality feed only on sensory contact; the devas of the upper levels of the realm of subtle materiality feed only on contemplation; those in the immaterial realm feed on cognition alone. Sexual differentiation remains only in the sensuous realm: in the heaven of the four heavenly kings and the heaven of the thirty-three, the devas engage in physical copulation, the devas of the yāma heaven engage in sexual union by embracing one another, the devas of the tusita heaven by holding hands, those of the nirmānarati heaven by smiling at one another, and those of the paranirmitavasavartin heaven by exchanging a single glance. Clothes are said to be used in all deva worlds except in the immaterial realm. The life spans of devas in the sensuous realm range from five hundred years for the gods of the heaven of the four heavenly kings to one thousand years for the trāyastriMsa gods, two thousand years for the yāma gods, four thousand years for the tusita gods, eight thousand years for the nirmānarati gods, and sixteen thousand years for the paranirmitavasavartin gods. However, there is a range of opinion of what constitutes a year in these heavens. For example, it is said that in the tusita heaven, four hundred human years equal one day in the life of a god of that heaven. The life spans of devas in the realm of subtle materiality are measured in eons (KALPA). The life spans of devas in the immaterial realm may appear as essentially infinite, but even those divinities, like all devas, are subject to impermanence (ANITYA) and will eventually die and be subject to further rebirths once the salutary meditative deed that caused them to be reborn there has been exhausted. The sutras say that for a deva of the sensuous realm, there are five portents of his impending death: the garlands of flowers he wears begin to fade, his clothes become soiled and his palace dusty, he begins to perspire, his body becomes opaque and loses its luster, and his throne becomes uncomfortable. At that point, the deva experiences a vision of his next place of rebirth. This vision is said to be one of the most horrible sufferings in saMsāra, because of its marked contrast to the magnificence of his current life. There are also said to be four direct reasons why devas die: exhaustion of their life spans, their previous merit, their food, and the arising of anger. ¶ Rebirth as a deva is presumed to be the reward of virtuous karman performed in previous lives and is thus considered a salutary, if provisional, religious goal. In the "graduated discourse" (P. ANUPUBBIKATHĀ; S. ANUPuRVIKATHĀ) taught by the Buddha, for example, the Buddha uses the prospect of heavenly rebirth (svargakathā), and the pleasures accruing thereto, as a means of attracting laypersons to the religious life. Despite the many appealing attributes of these heavenly beings, such as their physical beauty, comfortable lives, and long life span, even heavenly existence is ultimately unsatisfactory because it does not offer a definitive escape from the continued cycle of birth and death (saMsāra). Since devas are merely enjoying the rewards of their previous good deeds rather than performing new wholesome karman, they are considered to be stagnating spiritually. This spiritual passivity explains why they must be reborn in lower levels of existence, and especially as human beings, in order to further their cultivation. For these reasons, Buddhist soteriological literature sometimes condemns religious practice performed solely for the goal of achieving rebirth as a deva. It is only certain higher level of devas, such as the devas belonging to the five pure abodes (suddhāvāsa), that are not subject to further rebirth, because they have already eliminated all the fetters (saMyojana) associated with that realm and are destined to achieve arhatship. Nevertheless, over the history of Buddhism, rebirth in heaven as a deva has been a more common goal for religious practice, especially among the laity, than the achievement of nirvāna. ¶ The sutras include frequent reference to "gods and men" (S. devamanusya; C. tianren) as the objects of the Buddha's teachings. Despite the fact that this is how most Buddhist traditions have chosen to translate the Sanskrit compound, "gods" here is probably meant to refer to the terrestrial divinities of "princes" or "kings," rather than heavenly beings; thus, the compound should be more properly (if, perhaps, pedantically) rendered "princes and peoples." Similarly, as the "divinities" of this world, buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats are also sometimes referred to as devas. See also DEVALOKA; DEVATĀ.

In later Persian literature, Jamshid has often been interchangeably taken for King Solomon, while some Islamic scholars consider him identical with Lamech in the Old Testament. Jamshid in Shah-Nameh is the Yima of the Avesta who, as a blessed king, ruled for 700 years over seven keshvars, created civilization, and categorized the people and their tasks into four groups. He built palaces and colossal monuments by channeling the savage powers of demons, discovered the secrets of nature, and cured all maladies. Such innovation and achievements called for festivities and celebration, called the New Age (Nou-Rouz). From then on, this day — which coincides with the entrance of the sun into the sign of Aries; also the day that Gayomarth, the first man, became king of earth — has been celebrated by the Iranians. For 300 years Jamshid gloriously ruled with justice, during which period death, pain, and evil disappeared, until vanity and narcissism blinded him and caused his downfall. Azi-Dahak, who takes over Jamshid’s throne, then appears on the scene by murdering his own father.

Jambupati. In Pāli, lit. "Lord of the Rose Apple"; a type of buddha image found most commonly in the art of Burma (Myanmar) and its Shan state, in which the Buddha is adorned in the royal attire of a "wheel-turning monarch" (CAKRAVARTIN), wearing a magnificent crown and jewels, and seated on a throne. This image derives from a Southeast Asian Buddhist legend (which is apparently unknown in India) about an arrogant king named Jambupati, who terrorized his people. In order to convince him to repent of his unwholesome actions and practice compassion toward his subjects, the Buddha had himself adorned with full royal regalia and seated in a magnificent palace; when Jambupati was brought before the crowned Buddha, he was so humbled by the Buddha's majesty that he repented of his arrogance and took the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA) of a Buddhist layman (UPĀSAKA). In this royal form, the Buddha's UsnĪsA is often extended into a pronounced spire, perhaps suggesting the form of a STuPA. Jambupati Buddha images are most commonly seated in the "earth-touching gesture" (BHuMISPARsAMUDRĀ), although sometimes standing images are also found. The famous ARAKAN BUDDHA, viz., the Mahāmuni image in Arakan (present-day Mandalay), is now crowned in the Jambupati style.

Janapadakalyānī Nandā. (S. Janapandakalyānī Rupanandā; T. Yul gyi bzang mo dga' mo). In Pāli, "Nandā, the Prettiest in the Land"; one of three prominent nuns named Nandā mentioned in the Pāli canon (the others being ABHIRuPĀ NANDĀ and SUNDARĪ NANDĀ), all of whom share similar stories. According to Pāli sources, Janapadakalyānī Nandā was a Sākiyan (S. sĀKYA) woman of great beauty, who was betrothed to the Buddha's half-brother NANDA. On their wedding day, the Buddha visited her fiancé Nanda's palace in Kapilavatthu (S. KAPILAVASTU) and extended his felicitations. He caused Nanda to accompany him on his return to the monastery where he was staying and there asked Nanda to enter the order; Nanda reluctantly assented, but only after the Buddha used his supernatural powers to show him his prospects for enjoying heavenly maidens far more beautiful than his betrothed if he practiced well. Later, Nanda became an arahant (S. ARHAT). Janapadakalyānī was overcome with grief at Nanda's ordination. Since she felt she had nothing else to live for, as soon as women were allowed to enter the order, she decided to become a nun under the leadership of Mahāpajāpatī (S. MAHĀPRAJĀPATĪ). Still attached to her own loveliness, for a long time Janapadakalyānī refused to visit the Buddha for fear that he would speak disparagingly of physical beauty. When finally one day she went together with her companions to hear the Buddha preach, the Buddha, knowing her state of mind, created an apparition of an extraordinarily beautiful woman fanning him. Janapadakalyānī was transfixed by the beauty of the maiden, whom the Buddha then caused to age, die, and decompose right before her very eyes. As the Buddha described the impermanence of physical beauty, Janapadakalyānī attained stream-entry (P. sotāpatti; see SROTAĀPANNA) and, shortly thereafter, arahanthip (see S. ARHAT). The source for the stories related to JANAPADAKALYĀnĪ NANDĀ are the DHAMMAPADAttHAKATHĀ and the Udāya, both texts known only to the Pāli tradition.

Jianfusi. (建福寺). In Chinese, "Establishing Blessings Monastery"; located in Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Jin dynasty (217-420 CE) and reputed to be the first Buddhist convent in China. Originally a residence of the Jin dynasty's minister of public works, he is said to have donated his residence out of respect toward Kang Minggan and Huizhan, two of the earliest Buddhist nuns appearing in Chinese records. According to the BIQIUNI ZHUAN ("Lives of the Nuns"), Kang Minggan was also responsible for naming the convent. "Blessings" in the convent's name refers first to the fact that she considered the establishment of the convent to be a blessing for all Buddhist practitioners in China, both monastic and lay; secondly, the convent itself was a physical symbol of the act of bestowing blessings. Several nuns whose biographies are contained in the "Lives of the Nuns" resided there, including Fasheng (368-439 CE) of the Liu-Song dynasty (420-479 CE) who became a nun at age seventy. Another Liu-Song resident, Dao Qiong, was said to have displayed such exemplary skill in practice that an empress personally solicited her advice in religious matters. Dao Qiong later commissioned an image of a reclining buddha to be enshrined in the convent. Zhisheng (427-492 CE) of the Southern Qi dynasty (479-502 CE) also is said to have inspired royalty, the Qi heir-apparent Wenhui (458-493 CE), who often summoned her to the imperial palace to seek her guidance on religious matters.

Kailasa (Sanskrit) Kailāsa A lofty mountain in the Himalayas; in mythology Siva’s paradise is placed upon Kailasa, north of Lake Manasasarovara. The god of wealth, Kuvera, also is said to have his palace there. Because of the occult history attached to Mount Kailasa, Hindu metaphysics not infrequently uses Kailasa for heaven or the abode of the gods.

Kālodāyin. (P. Kāludāyin; T. 'Char byed nag po; C. Jialiutuoyi; J. Karudai; K. Karyut'ai 迦留陀夷). An ARHAT elder, whom the Buddha declared to be foremost among his ordained disciples in gladdening clans. According to the Pāli tradition, he was the son of one of King sUDDHODANA's ministers (purohita) at KAPILAVASTU and a playmate of the young BODHISATTVA SIDDHĀRTHA. After his son renounced the world, suddhodana made Kālodāyin his most trusted councilor. When the king heard that his son had won enlightenment, he repeatedly sent delegations from his court to invite the Buddha to the palace; but on each occasion the delegates became arhats after hearing the Buddha preach and forgot their mission. Finally, the king sent Kālodāyin to invite the Buddha at a suitable time. Like his predecessors, Kālodāyin also was ordained and soon became an arhat, but he did not neglect his commitment to the king. Conveying the invitation when the countryside was in full bloom, he accompanied the Buddha on a sixty-day journey from RĀJAGṚHA to Kapilavastu, each day flying with his ṚDDHI powers to suddhodana's palace to keep the king and his people appraised of the Buddha's progress. By the time the Buddha reached his hometown, the entire city of Kapilavastu was anticipating the Buddha's arrival. It was for this accomplishment that Kālodāyin was honored by the Buddha as the foremost in gladdening clans or reconciling families. Different traditions describe Kālodāyin's ghastly end. According to the SARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA, Kālodāyin was beheaded by the jealous husband of one of his lay supporters, and the severed head was buried in horse manure. Another account states that Kālodāyin by chance learned of a brāhmana wife's affair; in order to keep the affair secret, she had her servant behead the monk.

Kānheri. The most extensive Buddhist monastic cave site in India, located six miles southeast of Borivili, a suburb of present-day Mumbai (Bombay), in the modern Indian state of Maharashtra. The name derives from the Sanskrit Kṛsnagiri, or "Black Mountain," probably because of the dark basalt from which many of the caves were excavated. Over 304 caves were excavated in the hills of the site between the first and tenth centuries CE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, older caves were modified and refurbished, while new caves were added, presumably initiated under the patronage of the Traikutakas (388-456 CE). While many of the new caves are architecturally rather plain, a number of important images were produced. The most extraordinary images are found in caves 90 and 41. The walls of cave 90 are abundantly, but haphazardly, carved with a myriad of images, suggesting that this hall was not intended for congregational purposes but rather as a place where believers could fund carvings as a way of making merit (PUnYA). On the left side wall of cave 90 is an especially complex iconographic arrangement. It shows VAIROCANA Buddha in the center, making the gesture of turning the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAMUDRĀ) and seated in the so-called European pose (PRALAMBAPĀDĀSANA); accompanying Vairocana are four smaller images at the four corners of the composition. Together, these comprise the five buddhas (PANCATATHĀGATA or PANCAJINA). At each side of the composition is a vertical row of four buddhas, who together represent the eight buddhas of the past. By the sixth century, female images had emerged as a common part of Buddhist iconographic conceptions in South Asia, and Kānheri is no exception. Flanking the central Buddha in this same arrangement is a pair of BODHISATTVAs, each accompanied by a female consort. Depicted next to the stalk upon which rests the central Buddha's lotus pedestal are several subordinate figures: INDRA and BRAHMĀ, with female consorts, as well as male and female NĀGA. Kānheri was also a crucial site for both transoceanic and overland trade and pilgrimage networks, which probably accounts for the presence of images of AVALOKITEsVARA, a bodhisattva who could be called upon by seafarers and merchants who were in distress. Avalokitesvara's image in cave 90 shows him in the center, flanked by his attendants, and surrounded by scenes of the eight dangers, including shipwreck. In the bottom right-hand corner, seafarers are depicted praying to him. In cave 41, the unusual form of an Eleven-Headed Avalokitesvara (EKĀDAsAMUKHĀVALOKITEsVARA), which is dated to the late fifth or early sixth century, indicates advanced and esoteric Buddhist practices at Kānheri. While frequently found in later Buddhist art in Tibet, Nepal, and East Asia, this image is the only extant artistic evidence that this iconographic type is of Indian provenance. A sixteenth-century Portuguese traveler reported that the Kānheri caves were the palace built by Prince Josaphat's father to shield him from knowledge of the sufferings of the world. (cf. BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT). See also AJAntĀ.

Kanthaka. [alt. Kanthaka] (T. Bsngags ldan; C. Jianzhi; J. Kenjoku; K. Konch'ok 犍陟). In Sanskrit and Pāli, the name of the horse that GAUTAMA rode when he departed from his father's palace in KAPILAVASTU and renounced the world (PRAVRAJITA). Kanthaka was born on the same day as Gautama, as was his groom CHANDAKA. Kanthaka was destined from birth to carry the future buddha from the household life into homelessness and was suitably magnificent in stature for that honor. Eighteen cubits in length, he was white, the color of a conch shell, and the sound of his neighing and gallop resounded throughout the kingdom of Kapilavastu. When he was saddled to carry his master into the wilderness, Kanthaka realized the significance of the event and neighed in exultation. Lest Gautama's father be forewarned and attempt to prevent his departure, the divinities muffled his neighing and the sound of his hoofs. The prince rode on Kanthaka's back, while Chandaka held onto his tail. Outside the city gates, Gautama turned to take a final look at his capital; a shrine (CAITYA) was later erected on the spot in commemoration. Between midnight and dawn, they traveled thirty leagues to the river Anomā. Kanthaka crossed the river in one jump and Gautama and Chandaka dismounted on the other side. There, the BODHISATTVA gave Chandaka his ornaments and directed him to take Kanthaka back to the palace; a shrine commemorating the event was later erected on the spot as well. Kanthaka continued to look at his master as he departed, and when he disappeared from view, Kanthaka died of a broken heart. He was immediately reborn in TRAYASTRIMsA heaven as a deity named Kanthakadevaputra and dwelled in a magnificent palace made of gems, where the ARHAT MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA later visited him.

Karma Pakshi. (1203-1283). A Tibetan Buddhist master recognized as the second KARMA PA, renowned for his virtuosity in meditation, thaumaturgy, and his activities at the Mongol court. The name "Pakshi" is derived from the Mongolian word for "teacher" or "master," and the second Karma pa is also frequently known by the epithet grub chen, or MAHĀSIDDHA. In his youth, Karma Pakshi was recognized as a child of great intellectual ability and skill in meditation. He conducted his early training under the BKA' BRGYUD teacher Spom brag pa Bsod rnams rdo rje (Pomdrakpa Sonam Dorje, 1170-1249) and spent a great period of his time in meditation retreat near the monastery of MTSHUR PHU in central Tibet. Traveling to eastern Tibet, he founded a monastery at Spungs ri (Pungri) and renovated the Bka' brgyud institution of KARMA DGON established by his predecessor DUS GSUM MKHYEN PA. Karma Pakshi's fame spread throughout the Tibetan border regions to the north and east. In about 1251, the Mongol prince Qubilai (later Khan, r. 1260-1294) sent an invitation to Karma Pakshi, who was residing at Mtshur phu. He arrived at the Mongol court several years later. Karma Pakshi was one of numerous religious figures present at court, including the SA SKYA hierarch 'PHAGS PA BLO GROS RGYAL MTSHAN. Karma Pakshi quickly impressed Qubilai with a display of magical powers, and the Mongol prince requested him to remain permanently at court. The relationship soured, however, when Karma Pakshi refused the offer. On his return to Tibet, he formed a relationship with Qubilai's elder brother and political rival Mongke (1209-1259) and consented to visit Mongke's palace in Liangzhou. He taught the Mongol ruler and his court Buddhist doctrine, especially TANTRA based on the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA. For ten years, Karma Pakshi traveled across China, Mongolia, and Tibet and is also said to have debated with numerous Daoist practitioners. Qubilai assumed the role of high Khan after Mongke's death in 1259. Angered at Karma Pakshi's support of his rival brother, and still smarting from his refusal to remain at court, Qubilai ordered Karma Pakshi's capture and exile. Qubilai eventually relented and allowed the Karma pa to return to Tibet. Upon his return to Mtshur phu, he constructed a massive statue of sĀKYAMUNI called the "ornament of the world" ('dzam gling rgyan). The completed statue, however, was slightly tilted. In a famous account, Karma Pakshi is said to have straightened the statue by first assuming the same tilted posture and then righting himself, simultaneously moving the statue. Among his principal disciples was O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (Orgyenpa Rinchenpal), who would become the guru of the third Karma pa, RANG 'BYUNG RDO RJE.

Khri srong lde btsan. (Trisong Detsen) (r. 754-799). A Tibetan ruler considered the second of three great religious kings (chos rgyal) during the Imperial Period, the other two being SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO and RAL PA CAN, and as a human incarnation of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA. Inheriting the throne in 754 as the thirty-eighth monarch of the Yar klungs dynasty, Khri srong lde btsan directed several events that are considered milestones in Tibetan history. During the early years of his reign, he extended the boundaries of the Tibetan empire forged under his predecessors. In 763, the king's army occupied the imperial capital of Tang China at Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), an action commemorated on a stele that was erected in front of the PO TA LA Palace. However, Khri srong lde btsan is best remembered for his patronage of Buddhism and support in founding Tibet's first Buddhist monastery of BSAM YAS. Later chronicles record that he actively suppressed the native BON religion, as well as the aristocratic clans who were its benefactors, although he never entirely proscribed early Bon rituals. Khri srong lde btsan invited the renowned Indian Buddhist preceptor sĀNTARAKsITA to oversee the project of building Bsam yas and to establish the first monastic order in Tibet. According to traditional accounts, local spirits inimical to Buddhism created obstacles that hindered the project, which prompted the Indian abbot to request Khri srong lde btsan to invite the powerful tantric master PADMASAMBHAVA to Tibet in order to aid in their subjugation, after which the establishment of the monastery was able to proceed. Khri srong lde btsan is said to have become a devotee of Padmasambhava, with one of his queens, YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, becoming the yogin's consort and serving as scribe for many of his GTER MA teachings. Padmasambhava also revived the king's eight-year-old daughter PADMA GSAL after her death in order to bestow a special teaching. According to tradition, at the time of his death, sĀNTARAKsITA warned in his final testament that a mistaken philosophical view would become established in Tibet and advised the king to invite KAMALAsĪLA to come to Tibet in order to dispel it. The view was apparently that of the Northen Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang Moheyan, who had developed a following at the Tibetan court. Kamalasīla was invited and a debate was held between the Indian monk and the Chinese monk, with the king serving as judge. It is unclear whether a face-to-face debate took place or rather an exchange of documents. According to Tibetan sources, the king declared Kamalasīla the winner, named MADHYAMAKA as the official philosophical school of his realm, and banished the Chinese party from his kingdom. (Chinese records describe a different outcome.) This event, variously known as the BSAM YAS DEBATE, the Council of Bsam yas, and the Council of Lhasa, is regarded as one of the key moments in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.

Klu khang. (Lukang). In Tibetan, the "NĀGA Temple"; a small temple located in the middle of an artificial lake behind the PO TA LA Palace in LHA SA, Tibet, reached by a stone bridge. Its full name is Rdzong rgyab klu khang, the "Nāga Temple Behind the Fortress [i.e., the Po ta la]." According to legend, the regent of the fifth DALAI LAMA, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, negotiated an agreement with the king of the nāgas at the time of construction of the Po ta la, receiving the king's permission to dig up the soil in return for building a temple in honor of the nāga king in the center of the lake that formed in the pit from groundwater. The temple was constructed around 1700 during the reign of the sixth Dalai Lama, who is said to have used the upper chamber for romantic assignations. The temple is a small three-storied pavilion in the shape of a MAndALA, with doors in each of the cardinal directions. The temple was rebuilt by the eighth Dalai Lama in 1791 and restored by the thirteenth Dalai Lama, who used it as a retreat. The temple is renowned for a magnificent set of murals on the second and third floors. The murals depict the eighty-four MAHĀSIDDHAs, PADMASAMBHAVA and his chief disciples, illustrations of the human body drawn from Tibetan medicine, a wide arrary of RDZOGS CHEN practices, scenes from the life of the renowned treasure revealer (GTER STON) PADMA GLING PA, and the peaceful and wrathful deities of the BAR DO.

Knights Templars A religio-military order, a brotherhood in arms, founded in the 12th century by Hugh de Payens and Geoffrey de St. Omer (Godfrey de St. Aldemar), and seven other knights for the purpose of protecting the Holy Sepulcher of the Christians, taking its name from the palace of the Latin kings in Jerusalem, which was called Solomon’s Temple. The Order being partly monastic, the knights took the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The Order spread rapidly throughout Europe and the Near East, the Order being under the governance of an elected Grand Master, the first being Hugh de Payens elected in 1118, and the last, the 22nd, being Jacques de Molay, elected in 1297.

kremlin ::: n. --> The citadel of a town or city; especially, the citadel of Moscow, a large inclosure which contains imperial palaces, cathedrals, churches, an arsenal, etc.

Kubjottarā. (P. Khujjuttarā; T. Rgur 'jog; C. Jiushouduoluo; J. Kujutara; K. Kusudara 久壽多羅). In Sanskrit, "Hunchbacked"; an eminent lay disciple best known from Pāli sources, whom the Buddha declared to be foremost among laywomen of wide learning (P. bahussuta; S. bahusruta); she was the slave of Sāmāvatī (S. sYĀMĀVATĪ), the wife of Udena and queen of Kosambī (S. Kausambī). Kubjottarā was hunchbacked, which was said to have been retribution for having once, in a previous existence, mocked a solitary buddha (paccekabuddha; S. PRATYEKABUDDHA) for having this same disfigurement. In another lifetime, she had made a nun do chores for her, which led to her rebirth as a slave. As the servant of Sāmāvatī, Kubjottarā was sent to the market every day with eight coins to purchase flowers, where she would spend four coins and pocket the rest. One day, she witnessed the Buddha preach and at once became a stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA). Returning to the palace, she confessed her previous wrongdoing to Sāmāvatī, who immediately forgave her; the slave then related the contents of the Buddha's sermon. Fascinated, Sāmāvatī requested Kubjottarā to listen to the Buddha's sermons every day and tell her and her harem attendants the Buddha's message upon returning to the palace. Through Kubjottarā's instructions, Sāmāvatī and her attendants also became stream-enterers. Kubjottarā suggested that they pierce a hole in the walls of the harem so that they could watch as the Buddha passed in the street below and worship him. After her mistress's death, Kubjottarā spent her time in religious works, teaching and preaching the DHARMA. She was said to be extremely intelligent and to have memorized the entire canon (tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA).

Kukai. (空海) (774-835). In Japanese, "Sea of Emptiness"; monk who is considered the founder of the tradition, often referred to as the SHINGONSHu, Tomitsu, or simply MIKKYo. He is often known by his posthumous title KoBo DAISHI, or "Great Master Who Spread the Dharma," which was granted to him by Emperor Daigo in 921. A native of Sanuki province on the island of Shikoku, Kukai came from a prominent local family. At the age of fifteen, he was sent to Nara, where he studied the Chinese classics and was preparing to become a government official. However, he seems to have grown disillusioned with this life. At the age of twenty, Kukai was ordained, perhaps by the priest Gonso, and the following year he took the full precepts at ToDAIJI. He is claimed to have experienced an awakening while performing the Kokuzo gumonjiho, a ritual dedicated to the mantra of the BODHISATTVA ĀKĀsAGARBHA. While studying Buddhist texts on his own, Kukai is said to have encountered the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA and, unable to find a master who could teach him to read its MANTRAs, decided to travel to China to learn from masters there. In 804, he was selected as a member of a delegation to China that set sail in four ships; SAICHo was aboard another of the ships. Kukai eventually traveled to the Tang capital of Chang'an, where he studied tantric MIJIAO Buddhist rituals and theory under HUIGUO and Sanskrit under the Indian monk PRAJNA. Under the direction of his Chinese master, Kukai was initiated into the two realm (ryobu) MAndALA lineages of YIXING, sUBHAKARASIMHA, VAJRABODHI, and AMOGHAVAJRA. In 806, Kukai returned to Japan; records of the texts and implements he brought with him are preserved in the Shorai mokuroku. Little is known about his activities until 809, when he moved to Mt. Takao by imperial request. Kukai described his new teachings as mikkyo, or "secret teachings," VAJRAYĀNA (J. kongojo), and MANTRAYĀNA (J. shingonjo). At the core of Kukai's doctrinal and ritual program was the belief that all acts of body, speech, and mind are rooted in, and expressions of, the cosmic buddha MAHĀVAIROCANA (see VAIROCANA), as the DHARMAKĀYA. Kukai argued that the dharmakāya itself teaches through the artistic and ritual forms that he brought to Japan. Once his teachings gained some renown, Kukai conducted several ABHIsEKA ceremonies, including one for the TENDAI patriarch SAICHo and his disciples. However, Kukai and Saicho's relationship soured when Kukai refused to transmit the highest level of initiation to Saicho. In 816, Emperor Saga granted Kukai rights to KoYASAN, to serve as a training center for his Shingon mikkyo tradition. In early 823, Kukai was granted the temple of ToJI in Kyoto, which became a second center for the Shingon tradition. In the summer of 825, Kukai built a lecture hall at Toji, and in 827 he was promoted to senior assistant high priest in the Bureau of Clergy. In 829, he built an abhiseka platform at Todaiji. In early 834, he received permission to establish a Shingon chapel within the imperial palace, where he constructed a mandala altar. Kukai passed into eternal SAMĀDHI (J. nyujo) in 835 on Mt. Koya, and it is said that he remains in his mausoleum in meditation waiting for the BODHISATTVA MAITREYA to appear. Kukai authored a number of important texts, including the BENKENMITSU NIKYoRON, a treatise outlining the inherent differences of kengyo (revealed) and mikkyo (inner) teachings; Sokushin jobutsugi, a treatise on the doctrine of attainment of buddhahood in "this very body" (J. SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU); Unjigi, a text describing the contemplation of Sanskrit syllables (S. BĪJA, J. shuji); Shojijissogi, a text outlining Kukai's theory of language in which all sounds and letters are themselves full embodiments of the dharmakāya's teachings; and his magnum opus, the HIMITSU MANDARA JuJuSHINRON, in which Kukai makes his case for recognizing Shingon mikkyo as the pinnacle of Buddhist wisdom. Kukai was an accomplished calligrapher, poet, engineer, and sculptor and is also said to have invented kana, the Japanese syllabary.

Kŭmgang sammaegyong non. (C. Jingang sanmei jing lun; J. Kongo sanmaikyoron 金剛三昧經論). In Korean, "Exposition of the KŬMGANG SAMMAE KYoNG" (*Vajrasamādhisutra); composed by the Korean monk WoNHYO (617-686). The circumstances of the commentary's composition are provided in Wonhyo's biography in ZANNING's SONG GAOSENG ZHUAN. According to that account, an unidentified Silla king sent an envoy on a voyage to China in search of medicine that would cure his queen. On his way to China, however, the envoy was waylaid and taken to the dragon king's palace in the sea, where he was told that the queen's illness was merely a pretext in order to reintroduce the Vajrasamādhi into the world. The dragon king informed the envoy that the scripture was to be collated by an otherwise unknown monk named Taean (d.u.) and interpreted by Wonhyo, the most eminent contemporary scholar of the Korean Buddhist tradition. The commentary that Wonhyo wrote later made its way into China, where it was elevated to the status of a sĀSTRA (lun; K. non), hence the title Kŭmgang sammaegyong non. Wonhyo's commentary is largely concerned with the issue of how to cultivate "original enlightenment" (BENJUE), that is, how it is that the original enlightenment motivates ordinary sentient beings to aspire to become enlightened buddhas. Wonhyo discerns in the Kŭmgang sammae kyong a map of six sequential types of meditative practice, which culminate in the "contemplation practice that has but a single taste" (ilmi kwanhaeng). In Wonhyo's account of this process, the ordinary sensory consciousnesses are transformed into an "immaculate consciousness" (AMALAVIJNĀNA), wherein both enlightenment and delusion are rendered ineluctable and all phenomena are perceived to have but the "single taste" of liberation. In Wonhyo's treatment, original enlightenment is thus transformed from an abstract soteriological concept into a practical tool of meditative training.

Kwangmyongsa. (廣明寺). In Korean, "Vast Radiance Monastery," a major SoN (CHAN) monastery during the Koryo dynasty; located on Songak Mountain in the Koryo capital of Kaesong. The monastery was established in 922, when the founder of the Koryo dynasty, Wang Kon (T'aejo, 877-943/r. 918-943), donated his residence to the Buddhist order. With King Kwangjong's (r. 925-975) launching of an ecclesiastical examination system (SŬNGKWA), Kwangmyongsa was designated as the site for the selection examination for monks in the Son (Meditation) school, with WANGNYUNSA (Royal Wheel Monastery) chosen to administer the Doctrinal (KYO) school examinations. During the military rule of the Ch'oe family during the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the monastery was also one of the major sites in the capital for the discussing Son dharma assembly (tamson pophoe), along with Pojesa (Universal Salvation Monastery) and Sopot'ongsa (Western Universal Penetration Monastery). A well located to the northeast of the monastery was associated with the legend of Chakchegon, the ancestor of the Koryo ruling family, who is said to have visited the Dragon King's palace. The monastery was the site of many Buddhist court ceremonies during the Koryo dynasty. King Ch'ungnyol (r. 1236-1308) visited the monastery in 1282 with his queen to meet the monk IRYoN (1206-1289), writer of the SAMGUK YUSA, and a ceremony to speed the king's recovery from illness was held there in the following year. King Ch'ungnyol later held an *ULLAMBANA (K. Uranbunje) rite (1296) and a yonghwahoe (dragon flower assembly; 1301, 1302) at the monastery. In 1371, King Kongmin (1330-1374/r. 1351-1374) commanded NAONG HYEGŬN (1320-1376) to administer there the monastic training examination (kongbuson, see sŭngkwa), an advanced test taken by the monks from the two meditative and five doctrinal schools. Kwangmyongsa's close relationship with the royal family continued into the early Choson dynasty, when, for example, King T'aejong (1367-1422/r. 1400-1418), granted grain and slaves to the monastery in 1405. The monastery was reassigned to the Kyo (Doctrinal) school after 1424 and subsequently drops from Korean Buddhist sources.

Kyunyo. (均如) (923-973). Korean monk, exegete, poet, and thaumaturge during the Koryo dynasty, also known as Wont'ong. According to legend, Kyunyo is said to have been so ugly that his parents briefly abandoned him at a young age. His parents died shortly thereafter, and Kyunyo sought refuge at the monastery of Puhŭngsa in 937. Kyunyo later continued his studies under the monk Ǔisun (d.u.) at the powerful monastery of Yongt'ongsa near the Koryo-dynasty capital of Kaesong. There, Kyunyo seems to have gained the support of King Kwangjong (r. 950-975), who summoned him to preach at the palace in 954. Kyunyo's successful performance of miracles for the king won him the title of great worthy (taedok) and wealth for his clan. Kyunyo became famous as an exegete of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. His approach to this scripture was purportedly catalyzed by the deep split between the exegetical traditions associated with the Korean exegete WoNHYO (617-686) and the Chinese-Sogdian exegete FAZANG (643-712). Kyunyo sought to bridge these two traditions of Hwaom (C. HUAYAN) exegesis in his numerous writings, which came to serve as the orthodox doctrinal standpoint for the clerical examinations (SŬNGKWA) in the Koryo-period KYO school, held at the royal monastery of WANGNYUNSA. In 963, Kyunyo was appointed the abbot of the new monastery of Kwibopsa, which the king established near the capital. Kyunyo's life and some examples of his poetry are recorded in the Kyunyo chon; the collection includes eleven "native songs," or hyangga, one of the largest surviving corpora of Silla-period vernacular poems, which used Sinographs to transcribe Korean. His Buddhist writings include the Sok Hwaom kyobun'gi wont'ong ch'o, Sok Hwaom chigwijang, Sipkujang wont'ong ki, and others.

lateran ::: n. --> The church and palace of St. John Lateran, the church being the cathedral church of Rome, and the highest in rank of all churches in the Catholic world.

Ldan kar ma. (Denkarma). One of the earliest known catalogues of Tibetan Buddhist texts translated during the imperial period of the early dissemination (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet; also spelled Ldan dkar ma or Lhan kar ma. The work, preserved in the BSTAN 'GYUR section of the Tibetan canon, was compiled in the early ninth century and catalogues more than seven hundred distinct texts. Its name is derived from the Ldan kar (Denkar) palace in which it was written. The work is an important aid for scholars in determining which Buddhist texts were known and available during this early period of Tibetan history. It also illustrates the development of early principles for categorizing Buddhist literature, prefiguring the formation of the modern canon with its BKA' 'GYUR and bstan 'gyur sections. MAHĀYĀNA sutras are listed first, followed by HĪNAYĀNA sutras, treatises (sĀSTRA), TANTRAs, DHĀRAnĪs, praises (STOTRA), prayers (PRAnIDHĀNA), auspicious verses (mangalagāthā), VINAYA texts, and works on logic (NYĀYA). The collection ends with a list of revisions and translations in progress. See also JINGLU.

Lha sa. In Tibetan, "place of the gods"; capital city of Tibet and location of some of the country's most important Buddhist institutions. According to traditional histories, the Tibetan king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO moved his capital from the Yar klungs Valley to its current location when he founded the original edifice underlying the PO TA LA Palace in 637, a structure completed in its present form only during the seventeenth century under the direction of the fifth DALAI LAMA, NGA DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, and his regent. At about the same time, Srong bstan sgam po began work on the central JO KHANG temple. As goats were used as work animals during the construction, the area became known as Ra sa (lit. "place of the goats"). Following the temple's consecration in 647, it is said that the city's name was then changed to Lha sa ("place of the gods"). These two structures, together with the RA MO CHE temple, form the core of Lha sa's religious and sacred architecture. Over the centuries, many other institutions were added, including the medical college of Lcags po ri (Chakpori), the Dalai Lama's summer palace at the NOR BU GLING KHA, and numerous small monasteries, temples, and shrines. Around the city's periphery, a number of important monasteries were established, including the three great DGE LUGS monasteries of DGA' LDAN, 'BRAS SPUNGS, and SE RA (known collectively as the GDAN SA GSUM, or "three seats"), as well as GNAS CHUNG monastery, the seat of Tibet's state oracle. A series of three ritual circumambulation routes around the city's sacred centers developed: (1) the nang bskor (nangkor, "inner circuit"), skirting the Jo khang temple's inner sanctum; (2) the BAR BSKOR (barkor, "middle circuit"), circling the outer walls of the Jo khang and its neighboring buildings; and (3) the gling bskor (lingkor, "sanctuary circuit") circumnavigating the entire city, including the Po ta la Palace and Lcag po ri. Lha sa has long been considered the spiritual center of Tibet, and chief pilgrimage destination. Some devotees would travel the immense distance from their homeland to Lha sa while performing full-length prostrations, literally covering the ground with their bodies the entire way. Although the far eastern and western provinces of Tibet traditionally maintained a large degree of regional independence, after the seventeenth century Tibet's central government, the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG, operated from Lha sa in the Po ta la Palace.

Lidai fabao ji. (J. Rekidai hoboki; K. Yoktae poppo ki 歴代法寶). In Chinese, "Record of the Dharma-Jewel throughout Successive Generations"; an influential genealogical history of the early CHAN tradition, composed by disciples of the Chan master BAOTANG WUZHU in the JINGZHONG ZONG. The history of the Chan school as related in the Lidai fabao ji begins with the arrival of Buddhism in China during the Han dynasty, which is followed by a brief discussion of the lineages of dharma transmission in the FU FAZANG YINYUAN ZHUAN and LENGQIE SHIZI JI. The Lidai fabao ji then provides the biographies of the six patriarchs (ZUSHI) of Chan in China: Bodhidharmatrāta [alt. BODHIDHARMA], Huike, Sengcan, Daoxin, Hongren, and Huineng. Each biography ends with a brief reference to the transmission of the purple monastic robe of Bodhidharma as a symbol of authority. The manner in which this robe came into the hands of Zhishen (609-702), a disciple of the fifth patriarch Hongren, is told following the biography of the sixth, and last, patriarch Huineng. According to the Lidai fabao ji's transmission story, Huineng entrusted the robe to Empress WU ZETIAN, who in turn gave it to Zhishen during his visit to the imperial palace. Zhishen is then said to have transmitted this robe to Chuji [alt. 648-734, 650-732, 669-736], who later passed it on to his disciple CHoNGJUNG MUSANG (C. Jingzhong Wuxiang). The robe finally came into the possession of Musang's disciple Baotang Wuzhu, whose teachings comprise the bulk of the Lidai fabao ji. After the Lidai fabao ji was translated into Tibetan, Wuzhu's teachings made their way to Tibetan plateau, where they seem to have exerted some influence over the early development of Tibetan Buddhism. The Lidai fabao ji was thought to have been lost until the modern discovery of several copies of the text in the manuscript cache at DUNHUANG. Cf. CHUANDENG LU; LENGQIE SHIZI JI.

Mahāprajāpatī. (P. Mahāpajāpatī; T. Skye dgu'i bdag mo chen mo; C. Mohebosheboti; J. Makahajahadai; K. Mahabasabaje 摩訶波闍波提). An eminent ARHAT, the Buddha's stepmother and aunt, and the first woman to be ordained a Buddhist nun (S. BHIKsUNĪ; P. bhikkhunī). Mahāprajāpatī and the Buddha's mother, MĀYĀ, were sisters and both married to the bodhisattva's father, sUDDHODANA. When the bodhisattva's mother died seven days after his birth, Mahāprajāpatī raised him as her own son. According to the Pāli accounts, she became a lay disciple of the Buddha when he returned to the palace of his father and preached the Mahādhammapāla-Jātaka, becoming at that time a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). Upon the death of her husband, she resolved to renounce the world and follow the Buddha as a nun, but because there was no nuns' order, she had to request the Buddha to institute it. When, at the city of KAPILAVASTU, five hundred men of the sĀKYA clan entered the monastic order, Mahāprajāpatī together with the five hundred former wives of these men approached the Buddha and requested that they also be allowed to ordain and follow the religious life. The Buddha refused, warning that the presence of women in the order would speed the inevitable decline and demise of the dispensation. Despite his refusal, she and the five hundred sākyan women shaved their heads and donned the yellow robes of Buddhist mendicants and followed the Buddha to the city of VAIsĀLĪ. Again Mahāprajāpatī requested the Buddha to permit them to enter the order and again he refused. Finally, ĀNANDA, the Buddha's cousin and chief attendant, interceded on her behalf, asking the Buddha if women were capable of achieving enlightenment. He conceded that they were. Finally, the Buddha, acknowledging the debt he owed to his stepmother, granted ordination to her on the condition that she accept eight "heavy rules" (S. GURUDHARMA; P. garudhamma) that would guarantee the nuns' order's dependence on the monks' order and place it in an inferior rank. Her acceptance of these eight special rules served as her ordination. Mahāprajāpatī soon attained arhatship, as did her five hundred companions when they heard the Nandakovādasutta that the monk NANDAKA preached to them at the Buddha's request. (On the first hearing, the nuns attained stream-entry; when the Buddha had Nandaka repeat the same sermon the next day, they all achieved arahantship. Other sources say, however, that Mahāprajāpatī and her followers attained arahantship only moments before her death.) As the first bhiksunī, Mahāprajāpatī is regarded as the mother of the nuns' order, and she was declared by the Buddha to be foremost among nuns in experience. She lived to be 120 years old, and when she died, her five hundred disciples passed into PARINIRVĀnA with her. The miracles attending Mahāprajāpatī's cremation, including the duplication of the physical body (MAHĀPRĀTIHĀRYA) that the Buddha himself had performed, were said to have been second only to those of the Buddha himself.

Mahāpratisarā. (C. Dasuiqiu; J. Daizuigu; K. Taesugu 大隨求). One of the five female protectors (RAKsĀ) of VAJRAYĀNA Buddhism, who remains important in the Newar Buddhism of Nepal. In the PaNcaraksāsutra, her DHĀRAnĪ is said to provide protection from a variety of dangers and to bestow rebirth in heaven. In some accounts of the life of the Buddha, his son RĀHULA was conceived on the night that the prince left the palace, but was not born until six years later when his father became the Buddha; during her protracted pregnancy, the Buddha's wife, YAsODHARĀ, is said to have been protected by Mahāpratisarā.

Mahāvastu. In Sanskrit, the "Great Chapter." Also known as the Mahāvastu AVADĀNA, this lengthy work is regarded as the earliest Sanskrit biography of the Buddha. The work describes itself as a book "of the VINAYAPItAKA according to the LOKOTTARAVĀDA, which is affiliated with the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA." The work thus provides important insights into how the Buddha was understood by the Lokottaravāda, or "Proponents of the Supramundane," a branch of the MahāsaMghika, or "Great Community," which some scholars regard as a possible antecedent of the Mahāyāna. The placement of the work in the vinayapitaka suggests that the genre of biographies of the Buddha began as introductions to the monastic code, before becoming independent works. Indeed, it corresponds roughly to the MAHĀVAGGA portion of the KHANDHAKA in the Pāli vinayapitaka. The Mahāvastu is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the previous lives of the being who would become the buddha sĀKYAMUNI, recounting the virtuous deeds he performed and the BODHISATTVA vow he made to the buddha DĪPAMKARA and other buddhas of the past. The second part begins in TUsITA, when the bodhisattva decides where to take his final birth. It goes on to recount his birth, childhood and youth; departure from the palace; and search for enlightenment. It concludes with his defeat of MĀRA. The third section describes the first conversions and the foundation of the SAMGHA. Like other early "biographies" of the Buddha, the narrative ends long before the Buddha's passage into PARINIRVĀnA. Also like these other works, the Mahāvastu does not provide a simple chronology, but is interrupted with numerous teachings, avadānas, and JĀTAKAs, some of which do not have analogues in the Pāli. There are also interpolations: for example, there are two versions of the BODHISATTVA's departure, the first rather simple and the second more elaborate, containing the famous story of the chariot rides during which the prince encounters aging, sickness, and death for the first time (cf. CATURNIMITTA). The so-called proto-Mahāyāna elements of the Mahāvastu have been the subject of much debate. For example, the text includes a lengthy description of the ten bodhisattva BHuMIs, often regarded as a standard Mahāyāna tenet, but their description differs in significant ways from that found in the Mahāyāna sutras. Although clearly a work with many interpolations, linguistic elements suggest that portions of the text may date to as early as the second century BCE.

Mallikā. [alt. Mālikā] (P. Mallikā; T. Ma li ka; C. Moli; J. Matsuri/Mari; K. Malli 末利). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "Jasmine"; a prominent disciple of the Buddha and the wife of King PRASENAJIT of KOsALA. She was the daughter of a lower-caste garland maker who one day offered the Buddha a basket of fermented rice, without knowing his identity. The Buddha predicted that day that she would become queen of Kosala, which indeed came true. Her faith in the Buddha led to her royal husband becoming a disciple of the Buddha, which occurred when she suggested that the king visit the Buddha to have him interpret some disturbing dreams he had had. Despite her lack of education, she gained extensive knowledge of the dharma from ĀNANDA, who visited the palace to teach. As queen, Mallikā was a generous supporter of the SAMGHA, sponsoring the construction of a hall, lined with ebony, that was used for sermons. In the Mallikāsutta, she asks the Buddha why some women are beautiful and some ugly, some rich and some poor, some powerful and some powerless. The Buddha explains that beauty is the result of gentleness and calmness, wealth is the result of generosity, and power is the result of a lack of envy. The commentary to the DHAMMAPADA (DHAMMAPADAttHAKATHĀ) relates a story in which Mallikā was mounted by her dog while drying herself after a bath. She allowed the dog to continue, not knowing that she was being observed by the king. When he accused her of bestiality, she lied, saying that the window in the bathhouse prevented one from seeing clearly. To prove her point, she told the king to go into the bathhouse. When he returned, she falsely accused him of having intercourse with a goat. As a result of these two misdeeds-the bestiality and the lie-after her death, she was reborn in the AVĪCI hell for seven days, a fact that the Buddha hid from her bereaved husband Prasenajit. After seven days, she was reborn in TUsITA, at which point the Buddha informed the king that his wife had been reborn in a divine realm. In the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, Queen srīmālā is the daughter of Mallikā and Prasenajit.

mandala. (T. dkyil 'khor; C. mantuluo; J. mandara; K. mandara 曼荼羅). In Sanskrit, lit. "circle"; a polysemous term, best known for its usage in tantric Buddhism as a type of "circular diagram." Employed widely throughout South, East, and Central Asia, mandala are highly flexible in form, function, and meaning. The core concept of mandala originates from the Sanskrit meaning "circle," where a boundary is demarcated and increasing significance is accorded to areas closer to the center; the Tibetan translation (dkyil 'khor) "center periphery" emphasizes this general scheme. In certain contexts, mandalas can have the broad sense of referring to circular objects ("mandala of the moon") or a complete collection of constituent parts ("mandala of the universe"). This latter denotation is found in Tibetan Buddhism, where a symbolic representation of the universe is offered to buddhas and bodhisattvas as a means of accumulating merit, especially as a preliminary practice (SNGON 'GRO). Mandalas may have begun as a simple circle drawn on the ground as part of a ritual ceremony, especially for consecration, initiation, or protection. In its developed forms, a mandala is viewed as the residential palace for a primary deity-located at the center-surrounded by an assembly of attendant deities. This portrayal may be considered either a symbolic representation or the actual residence; it may be mentally imagined or physically constructed. The latter constitutes a significant and highly developed contribution to the sacred arts of many Asian cultures. Mandalas are often depicted two dimensionally by a pattern of basic geometric shapes and are most commonly depicted in paint or colored powders. These are thought of almost as architectural floor plans, schematic representations viewed from above of elaborate three-dimensional structures, mapping an ideal cosmos where every element has a symbolic meaning dependent upon the ritual context. Mandalas are occasionally fashioned in three dimensions from bronze or wood, with statues of deities situated in the appropriate locations. When used in a private setting, such as in the Buddhist visualization meditation of deity yoga (DEVATĀYOGA), the practitioner imagines the entire universe as purified and transformed into the transcendent mandala-often identifying himself or herself with the form of the main deity at the center. In other practices, the mandala is visualized within the body, populated by deities at specific locations. In public rituals, including tantric initiations and consecration ceremonies, a central mandala can be used as a common basis for the participation of many individuals, who are said to enter the mandala. The mandala is also understood as a special locus of divine power, worthy of ritual worship and which may confer "blessings" upon devotees. Religious monuments (BOROBUDUR in Java), institutions (BSAM YAS monastery in Tibet), and even geographical locations (WUTAISHAN in China) are often understood as mandalas. Mandalas have also entered the popular vocabulary of the West. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung developed theories of cognition incorporating mandalas as an analytical model. The fourteenth DALAI LAMA has used the KĀLACAKRA mandala as a means of spreading a message of peace throughout the world. See also KONGoKAI; TAIZoKAI.

Mandalay. The last royal capital of the Burmese Konbaung kingdom, prior to the British conquest of Burma (Myanmar). The city is situated on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy River, twelve miles north of AVA (Inwa) and five miles north of AMARAPURA, both previous capitals of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885). Built in 1857 by MINDON MIN (r. 1853-1878) at the base of the eponymous Mandalay Hill, its construction was carried out at the place where the Buddha is said to have made a prophecy that a great Buddhist capital would arise on that spot in the 2,400th year after the parinibbāna. Very similar in plan to Amarapura, Mandalay is laid out in a grid pattern, at the center of which is a royal precinct in the shape of a perfect square surrounded by a wide moat and a brickwork defensive wall. The wall is pierced by twelve gates, three on each side, crowned with multistoried tiered pavilions (B. pyatthat), symbols of royal authority. Broad avenues run perpendicularly from the gates to the center of the royal compound where the palace and ancillary buildings are located. Destroyed during Allied bombing in World War II, these structures have recently been restored. The city's most famous shrine is the MAHĀMUNI pagoda, which houses the colossal bronze Mahāmuni image of Gotama Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA). Originally housed in the palladium of Arakan, the Mahāmuni was seized by King Bodawpaya (r. 1782-1819) when he conquered that kingdom in 1785. As had been the case with the founding of earlier capitals, the construction of Mandalay was regarded as inaugurating a golden age wherein the religion, culture, and political fortunes of the Burmese kingdom would flourish. In connection with the prophecy, in 1868, Mindon Min summoned 2,400 learned monks to the capital from throughout the kingdom to revise the Pāli TIPItAKA in what came to be regarded by the Burmese as the fifth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIFTH). In 1871, the revised Burmese canon was inscribed on 729 stone slabs that were erected, each in its own shrine, in concentric rings around the massive Kuthodaw pagoda (Pagoda of Great Merit). The entire complex occupies fourteen acres and is situated to the northeast of the fortified city at the base of Mandalay Hill. Nearby is the Sandamuni pagoda, constructed along a similar plan, which houses 1,171 slabs on which are inscribed the Pāli commentaries. Another monument constructed for the synod is the Kyauktawgyi pagoda modeled after the ANANDA TEMPLE at PAGAN, which contains a colossal seated statue of the Buddha. Commemorating Mandalay's foundation legend is the Shweyattaw temple, also built by Mindon Min and located halfway up a stairway leading to the top of Mandalay Hill. The structure houses a colossal standing image of the Buddha covered in gold leaf, whose outstretched arm points to the city center, marking the spot where the Buddha delivered his prophecy. In addition to its pagodas and temples, the city boasted numerous monasteries and colleges making it one of the major scholastic centers of the kingdom. Mandalay ceased to be the Burmese capital in 1885 when it fell to British troops at the conclusion of the Third Anglo-Burmese War.

Ma ni bka' 'bum. In Tibetan, "One Hundred Thousand Pronouncements [Regarding] Mani"; a heterogenious compilation of texts traditionally attributed to the Tibetan king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO. This large collection of works, usually published in two massive volumes, is generally understood as a treasure text (GTER MA), said to have been revealed by three individuals during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the SIDDHA Gngos grub (Ngodrup), the famed treasure revealer (GTER STON) NYANG RAL NYI MA 'OD ZER, and Shākya 'Od-a disciple in the Nyang ral lineage sometimes known as Shākya bzang po (Shākya Sangpo). The texts are organized into three parts or cycles (skor): (1) "The cycle of SuTRAs" (mdo skor), containing many legendary accounts of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA and Srong btsan sgam po; (2) "the cycle of sādhanas" (sgrub skor), containing various meditation manuals (SĀDHANA) based on different aspects of Avalokitesvara; and (3) "the cycle of precepts" (zhal gdams kyi skor), a miscellany of texts, many of which relate to the bodhisattva of great compassion. The remaining texts are sometimes referred to as "the cycle of the disclosure of the hidden" (gab pa mngon phyung gi skor). The title of the collection refers to the famed six-syllable MANTRA of Avalokitesvara, OM MAnI PADME HuM. The texts are an important early source for many of Tibet's key legends: the activities of Srong btsan sgam po, including the founding of the JO KHANG temple, and the status of Avalokitesvara as the special protector of Tibet and the Tibetan people, incarnated in the person of Srong btsan sgam po himself. The Ma ni bka' 'bum also includes an account of a set of four statues (three or five according to some sources) in a form of AVALOKITEsVARA (called the "Four Brother Statues of Avalokitesvara") said to have spontaneously arisen by miraculous means from the trunk of single sandalwood tree. According to the Tibetan text, the Tibetan king Srong bstan sgam po dispatched a monk named Akarasīla to southern Nepal, where he discovered the four images in the midst of a large sandalwood grove. Akarasīla then "invited" the statues to reside in various locations in order to dispel misery and strife and serve as the basis for religious practice. These statues are considered some of the most sacred Buddhist images in Nepal and Tibet. In their most common reckoning, the four brothers are: (1) the white MATSYENDRANĀTH in Jana Bāhāl, Kathmandu, Nepal; (2) the red Matsyendranāth in nearby Patan; (3) the Ārya Lokesvara in the PO TA LA Palace, LHA SA; (4) and the 'PHAGS PA WA TI in SKYID GRONG, southern Tibet (a part of which is now in possession of the Dalai Lama in exile). Sometimes a fifth image is included: the Minanāth in Patan.

marana. (T. 'chi ba; C. si; J. shi; K. sa 死). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "death." In ordinary parlance, death refers to the cessation of a living being's vital signs, marking the end of a single lifetime. This fact was apparently unknown to Prince SIDDHĀRTHA, such that his observation of a dead body during an excursion outside his palace served as one of the four signs or sights (CATURNIMITTA) that led him to renounce the world and seek a state beyond death. Death is common theme throughout Buddhist literature. Birth, aging, sickness, and death are often listed as four faults of SAMSĀRA. The gods MĀRA and YAMA are closely associated with death. Throughout the Buddhist world, all manner of rituals are performed to forestall death, and there are numerous instructions on how to face death. Because death is certain to come, but its precise time is unknown, there are constant reminders to be prepared for death at any moment. Because the friends and possessions accumulated in this life cannot be taken to the next life, it is said that nothing is of benefit at the time of death except the dharma. The signs portending death in various levels of existence and the physical and psychological process of dying are described in detail in Buddhist literature. After death has occurred, rituals are typically performed to guide the consciousness of the deceased to rebirth in an auspicious realm. Together with "old age" or "senescence" (JARĀ), death constitutes the twelfth and final link in the cycle of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). From a philosophical perspective, death is also viewed as occurring constantly with the passage of each momentary combination of mind and matter (NĀMARuPA) or the five aggregates (SKANDHA). Viewed from this perspective, an individual dies (and is reborn) moment after moment (see KsAnIKAVĀDA), physical death being merely the final specific instance thereof. The passing away of an enlightened person is described as a special kind of death, insofar as the conditions for future existence have been eliminated in that individual and as a consequence there will be no more rebirth for that person.

Mind Palace ::: A tertiary chakra along the Front Channel of the etheric body corresponding to the navel: the place where the soul was connected to physical form. This is the center of consciousness in some systems such as Taoism.

Moksha (Sanskrit) Mokṣa [from mokṣ to release, set free probably from the verbal root much] Freedom; freedom from sentient life for the reminder of a manvantara. Equivalent to nirvana, the absolute, mukti [from the verbal root much], the Palace of Love of the Zohar, the Gnostic Pleroma of Eternal Light, the Chinese nippang, and the Burmese neibban. “When a spirit, a monad, or a spiritual radical, has so grown in manifestation that it has first become a man, and is set free interiorly, inwardly, and from a man has become a planetary spirit or dhyan-chohan or lord of meditation, and has gone still higher to become interiorly a brahman, and from a brahman the Parabrahman for its hierarchy, then it is absolutely perfected, free, released: perfected for that great period of time which to us seems almost an eternity, so long is it, virtually incomputable by the human intellect. This is the Absolute: limited in comparison with things still more immense, still more sublime; but so far as we can think of it, ‘released’ or ‘freed’ from the chains or bonds of material existence” (Fund 183).

Muhak Chach'o. (無學自超) (1327-1405). A Korean SoN monk and pilgrim during the transition from the Koryo to the Choson dynasty; Muhak was a native of Samgi (present-day South Kyongsang province). After his ordination in 1344, Muhak traveled to different monasteries to study. In 1353, he went to China, where he met the Indian ĀCĀRYA ZHIKONG CHANXIAN (d. 1363; K. Chigong Sonhyon; S. *sunyadisya-Dhyānabhadra) and studied under his Korean student NAONG HYEGŬN at the Yuan-dynasty capital of Yanjing. Muhak returned to Korea in 1356. When Naong returned two years later, Muhak continued his studies under him at the hermitage of Wonhyoam on Mt. Ch'onsong. In 1392, shortly after the establishment of the Choson dynasty, Muhak was invited to the palace as the king's personal instructor (wangsa) and given the title Venerable Myoom (Subtle Adornment). He was also asked to reside at the royal monastery of Hoeamsa. In 1393, Muhak assisted the Choson-dynasty founder, King T'aejo (r. 1392-1398), in deciding on the location for the new capital in Hanyang (present-day Seoul). Among his writings, Muhak's history of the Korean Son tradition, Pulcho chongp'a chido, is still extant.

Mukan Fumon. (無關普門) (1212-1291). Japanese proper name of RINZAISHu monk and first abbot of NANZENJI; also known as Gengo. Mukan was born in Hoshina in Shinano province (present-day Nagano prefecture) and received the BODHISATTVA precepts around 1230 at a monastery affiliated with MYoAN EISAI's (1141-1215) lineage. He became versed at Japanese exoteric and esoteric Buddhist teachings, and traveled around the eastern part of Japan, especially the Kanto and Tohoku regions, to lecture. Between 1243 and 1249, Mukan studied under ENNI BEN'EN (1202-1280). Mukan traveled to China in 1251, where he received transmission from Duanqiao Miaolun (1201-1261), the tenth-generation master in the YANGQI PAI collateral lineage of the LINJI ZONG, before returning to Japan in 1263. Mukan became the third abbot of Tohukuji in 1281 and was later appointed in 1291 by the cloistered Emperor Kameyama (r. 1260-1274) to be the founding abbot (J. kaisan; C. KAISHAN) of Nanzenji. There is a well-known story about his appointment as the Nazenji abbot. The monastery was originally built as a royal palace, but soon after the emperor moved there, ghosts began to haunt it. After several other monks failed to exorcise the ghosts, the emperor finally invited Mukan to try. Mukan succeeded in removing the ghosts by conducting Zen meditation with his disciples. In gratitude, the emperor turned the palace into a Rinzai monastery and appointed Mukan its abbot.

Nāgārjuna. (T. Klu sgrub; C. Longshu; J. Ryuju; K. Yongsu 龍樹). Indian Buddhist philosopher traditionally regarded as the founder of the MADHYAMAKA [alt. Mādhyamika] school of MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist philosophy. Very little can be said concerning his life; scholars generally place him in South India during the second century CE. Traditional accounts state that he lived four hundred years after the Buddha's PARINIRVĀnA. Some traditional biographies also state that he lived for six hundred years, apparently attempting to identify him with a later Nāgārjuna known for his tantric writings. Two of the works attributed to Nāgārjuna, the RATNĀVALĪ and the SUHṚLLEKHA, are verses of advice to a king, suggesting that he may have achieved some fame during his lifetime. His birth is "prophesied" in a number of works, including the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA. Other sources indicate that he also served as abbot of a monastery. He appears to have been the teacher of ĀRYADEVA, and his works served as the subject of numerous commentaries in India, East Asia, and Tibet. Although Nāgārjuna is best known in the West for his writings on emptiness (suNYATĀ), especially as set forth in his most famous work, the "Verses on the Middle Way" (MuLAMADHYAMAKAKĀRIKĀ, also known as the MADHYAMAKAsĀSTRA), Nāgārjuna was the author of a number of works (even when questions of attribution are taken into account) on a range of topics, and it is through a broad assessment of these works that an understanding of his thought is best gained. He wrote as a Buddhist monk and as a proponent of the Mahāyāna; in several of his works he defends the Mahāyāna sutras as being BUDDHAVACANA. He compiled an anthology of passages from sixty-eight sutras entitled the "Compendium of Sutras" (SuTRASAMUCCAYA), the majority of which are Mahāyāna sutras; this work provides a useful index for scholars in determining which sutras were extant during his lifetime. Among the Mahāyāna sutras, Nāgārjuna is particularly associated with the "perfection of wisdom" (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ) corpus. According to legend, Nāgārjuna retrieved from the Dragon King's palace at the bottom of the sea the "Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines" (sATASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA), which the Buddha had entrusted to the undersea king of the NĀGAs for safekeeping. He also composed hymns of praise to the Buddha, such as the CATUḤSTAVA, and expositions of Buddhist ethical practice, such as the Ratnāvalī. (Later exegetes classify his works into a YUKTIKĀYA, or "logical corpus," and a STAVAKĀYA, or "devotional corpus.") Nāgārjuna's works are addressed to a variety of audiences. His philosophical texts are sometimes directed against logicians of non-Buddhist schools, but most often offer a critique of the doctrines and assumptions of Buddhist ABHIDHARMA schools, especially the SARVĀSTIVĀDA. Other works are more general expositions of Buddhist practice, directed sometimes to monastic audiences, sometimes to lay audiences. An overriding theme in his works is the bodhisattva's path to buddhahood, and the merit (PUnYA) and wisdom (PRAJNĀ) that the bodhisattva must accumulate over the course of that path in order to achieve enlightenment. By wisdom here, he means the perfection of wisdom (prajNāpāramitā), declared in the sutras to be the knowledge of emptiness (suNYATĀ). Nāgārjuna is credited with rendering the poetic and sometimes paradoxical declarations concerning emptiness that appear in these and other Mahāyāna sutras into a coherent philosophical system. In his first sermon, the DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA, the Buddha had prescribed a "middle way" between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. Nāgārjuna, citing an early sutra, spoke of a middle way between the extremes of existence and nonexistence, sometimes also referred to as the middle way between the extremes of permanence (sĀsVATĀNTA) and annihilation (UCCHEDĀNTA). For Nāgārjuna, the ignorance (AVIDYĀ) that is the source of all suffering is the belief in SVABHĀVA, a term that literally means "own being" and has been variously rendered as "intrinsic existence" and "self-nature." This belief is the mistaken view that things exist autonomously, independently, and permanently; to hold this belief is to fall into the extreme of permanence. It is equally mistaken, however, to hold that nothing exists; this is the extreme of annihilation. Emptiness, which for Nāgārjuna is the true nature of reality, is not the absence of existence, but the absence of self-existence, viz., the absence of svabhāva. Nāgārjuna devotes his Mulamadhyamakakārikā to a thoroughgoing analysis of a wide range of topics (in twenty-seven chapters and 448 verses), including the Buddha, the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, and NIRVĀnA, to demonstrate that each lacks the autonomy and independence that are mistakenly ascribed to it. His approach generally is to consider the various ways in which a given entity could exist, and then demonstrate that none of these is tenable because of the absurdities that would be entailed thereby, a form of reasoning often described in Western writings as reductio ad absurdum. In the case of something that is regarded to be the effect of a cause, he shows that the effect cannot be produced from itself (because an effect is the product of a cause), from something other than itself (because there must be a link between cause and effect), from something that is both the same as and different from itself (because the former two options are not possible), or from something that is neither the same as nor different from itself (because no such thing exists). This, in his view, is what is meant in the perfection of wisdom sutras when they state that all phenomena are "unproduced" (ANUTPĀDA). The purpose of such an analysis is to destroy misconceptions (VIKALPA) and encourage the abandonment of all views (DṚstI). Nāgārjuna defined emptiness in terms of the doctrine of PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA, or "dependent origination," understood in its more generic sense as the fact that things are not self-arisen, but are produced in dependence on causes and conditions. This definition allows Nāgārjuna to avoid the claim of nihilism, which he addresses directly in his writings and which his followers would confront over the centuries. Nāgārjuna employs the doctrine of the two truths (SATYADVAYA) of ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA) and conventional truth (SAMVṚTISATYA), explaining that everything that exists is ultimately empty of any intrinsic nature but does exist conventionally. The conventional is the necessary means for understanding the ultimate, and the ultimate makes the conventional possible. As Nāgārjuna wrote, "For whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible."

nāga. (T. klu; C. long; J. ryu; K. yong 龍). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "serpent" or "dragon" (as in the Chinese), autochthonous beings said to inhabit bodies of water and the roots of great trees, often guarding treasures hidden there. They are depicted iconographically with human heads and torsos but with the tail and hood of a cobra. They inhabit an underwater kingdom filled with magnificent palaces, and they possess a range of magical powers, including the ability to masquerade as humans. Nāgas appear frequently in Buddhist literature in both benevolent and malevolent forms. They are said to be under the command of VIRuPĀKsA, the god of the west, and are guards of the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven. They sometimes appear in the audience of Buddha, most famously in the twelfth chapter of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), where an eight-year-old nāga princess offers a gem to the Buddha. She instantaneously transforms into a male, traverses the ten bodhisattva stages (BHuMI), and achieves buddhahood. This scene is sometimes cited as evidence that women have the capacity to achieve buddhahood. In the story of the Buddha's enlightenment, the Buddha is protected during a rainstorm by the nāga MUCILINDA. The Buddha is said to have entrusted the sATASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ ("Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Lines") to the safekeeping of the nāgas at the bottom of the sea, from whom NĀGĀRJUNA recovered it. Digging the earth is said to displease nāgas, who must therefore be propitiated prior to the construction of a building.

NairaNjanā. (P. NeraNjarā; T. Ne ran dza na; C. Nilianchanhe; J. Nirenzenga; K. Niryonsonha 尼連禪河). Ancient name of the present-day Lilaja River, a tributary of the Ganges, located in the modern Indian state of Bihar; site of the Buddha's austerities and enlightenment. During a six-year period, from the time of his departure from the palace to his achievement of buddhahood, the BODHISATTVA Prince SIDDHĀRTHA practiced austerities at URUVILVĀ along the banks of this river. It was while bathing in this river during a period of intense self-mortification that the bodhisattva swooned from hunger, after which he concluded that extreme asceticism was not a viable path to liberation from suffering and continued rebirth. Sitting under a tree on the bank of the river, he accepted a bowl of milk porridge from a young woman named SUJĀTĀ, who mistook his gaunt visage for a YAKsA to whom the local village made offerings. He ate the meal and then cast the dish into the river, saying, "If I am to become a buddha today, may the dish float upstream." The plate floated upstream for some distance before disappearing into a whirlpool, descending down to the palace of a serpent king (NĀGA), where it landed on top of the bowls used by the previous buddhas, making a clicking sound. The bodhisattva spent the afternoon prior to the night of his enlightenment in a grove on the banks of the river. After his enlightenment, it was on the banks of this river that BRAHMĀ persuaded him to teach the dharma. The Buddha later converted the ascetic URUVILVĀ-KĀsYAPA, whose hermitage was located along this NairaNjanā River.

Nanyang Huizhong. (J. Nan'yo Echu; K. Namyang Hyech'ung 南陽慧忠) (675?-775). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty; a native of Yuezhou in present-day Zhejiang province. He is said to have studied under the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713) as a youth and to have eventually become one of his dharma successors. After Huineng's death, Nanyang led an itinerant life, traveling from one monastery to the next until he settled down on Mt. Baiya in Nanyang (present-day Henan province), whence he acquired his toponym. He is said to have remained in seclusion on the mountain for some forty years. In 761, he was invited to the palace by Emperor Suzong (r. 756-762), who honored Nanyang as his teacher. He took up residence at the monastery of Qianfusi, but later moved to Guangzhaisi at the request of Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779). Nanyang later established the monasteries of Yanchangsi and Changshousi and installed a copy of the Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING) at each site. Juizong lived during a period of great efflorescence in the Chan school, but he was not closely identified with any one school. He is, however, said to have been critical of the teachings of the Chan master MAZU DAOYI (709-788) and other HONGZHOU ZONG teachers in Sichuan in the south of China, who rejected the authority of the traditional Buddhist scriptures; he is also said to have criticized the Hongzhou interpretation of "mind is buddha" as being akin to the sREnIKA HERESY, in which the body is simply an impermanent vessel for an eternal mind or soul. The notion that "inanimate objects can preach the dharma" (wujing shuofa) is also attributed to Nanyang.

Naong Hyegŭn. (懶翁慧勤) (1320-1376). In Korean, "Old Lazybones, Earnest in Wisdom," an eminent Korean SoN master and pilgrim of the Koryo dynasty. Naong was a native of Yonghae in present-day North Kyongsang province and is said to have decided to become a monk after the traumatic death of a close friend in 1339. After his ordination by the monk Yoyon (d.u.) of the hermitage of Myojogam on Mt. Kongdok, Naong traveled from one monastery to the next until he settled down at the monastery of Hoeamsa in 1344. Four years later at Hoeamsa, Naong is said to have attained his first awakening. In 1347, he left for China where he met the Indian master ZHIKONG CHANXIAN (1289-1363; K. Chigong Sonhyon; S. *sunyadisya-Dhyānabhadra) at the monastery of Fayuansi in the Yuan-dynasty capital of Yanjing; later, Naong would receive dharma transmission from Zhikong. After studying under Zhikong, Naong visited the Chan master Pingshan Chulin (1279-1361) at Jingcisi in Hangzhou (present-day Zhejiang province). Naong is said to have later received Pingshan's chowrie (FUZI; VĀLAVYAJANA) as a sign of his spiritual attainment. Before his return to the Yuan capital of Yanjing in 1355, Naong made a pilgrimage to MT. PUTUOSHAN, where he made offerings to the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA (GUANYIN). Upon his arrival back in Yanjing, he was appointed abbot of the monastery of Guangjisi by Emperor Xundi (r. 1333-1368). In 1358, Naong returned to Korea and three years later was invited to the royal palace, where he taught the king and queen. In 1370, Naong was appointed the royal preceptor (wangsa) and abbot of the influential monastery of SONGGWANGSA. Naong was viewed as a living buddha and eventually became the object of cultic worship: in the apocryphal Ch'isong kwangmyong kyong ("Book of Blazing Light"), which was widely disseminated in Korea in the sixteenth century, Naong is said to have been an emanation of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha himself. He spent the next few years revitalizing the community at his old monastery of Hoeamsa. Among his many disciples, MUHAK CHACH'O (1327-1405) is most famous.

Narthex (Greek) [cf Latin ferula] A tall umbelliferous plant, with a jointed stem from which the pith could be extracted, making it hollow; one of its varieties is the giant fennel. It is said that Prometheus, when he took the fire from heaven to bring it to man, hid it in a hollow narthex. Also used for the wand of the initiator in the Dionysian Mysteries. Greek and Roman palaces and temples contained an arcaded passage called narthex, and this has passed into the early Christian basilicas and so into modern churches.

Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho. (Ngawang Losang Gyatso) (1617-1682). The fifth DALAI LAMA of Tibet, widely held to be one of the most dynamic and influential members of his lineage. He was the first Dalai Lama to formally wield both religious and secular power over the Tibetan state and is renowned for his diverse range of religious and political activities. Commonly referred to as "the great fifth" (lnga pa chen po), Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho established himself as a gifted teacher, accomplished tantric practitioner, prolific author, and skillful statesman. The fifth Dalai Lama was born to an aristocratic family in the region of 'Phyong rgyas (Chongye) near the burial grounds of the early Tibetan dynastic rulers. His family had close ties with the RNYING MA sect, although the Dalai Lama claimed in one of his autobiographies that his mother had been the tantric consort of the JO NANG master TĀRANĀTHA and that Tāranātha was his biological father. He was recognized as the fifth Dalai Lama in 1622 by BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, although there was a rival candidate, Grags pa rgyal mtshan. The fifth Dalai Lama mastered the DGE LUGS curriculum but also had a strong interest in Rnying ma, SA SKYA, and BKA' BRGYUD. During this period, the Dge lugs was being persecuted by the kings of Gtsang, who were patrons of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD. The fifth Dalai Lama cultivated a relationship with the Qoshot Mongols. This deepened a connection with the Mongols begun by the third Dalai Lama, BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO, and enhanced by the fourth Dalai Lama, YON TAN RGYA MTSHO. With the aid of the Qoshot Mongol ruler Gushri Khan (1582-1655), the fifth Dalai Lama and his Dge lugs sect prevailed after a period of bitter political rivalry against the Bka' brgyud and their supporters in the Gtsang court. In 1642, the Dalai Lama and his regent Bsod nams chos 'phel became the rulers of Tibet, although it took nearly a decade before their power was consolidated throughout the provinces of central Tibet and extended to parts of eastern and western Tibet. The relationship thus forged between the Dalai Lama and the Mongol ruler was based on the so-called priest-patron (YON MCHOD) model previously established between the Sa skya heirarch ' PHAGS PA BLO GROS RGYAL MTSHAN and Qubilai Khan. The Dalai Lama promoted the view that he and the previous Dalai Lamas were incarnations (SPRUL SKU) of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA and that he himself was linked to the three great religious kings (chos rgyal) SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO, KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN, and RAL PA CAN. In 1645, the fifth Dalai Lama began construction of the PO TA LA Palace on the site of Srong btsan sgam po's palace on Dmar po ri (Red Hill) in LHA SA. He named it after POTALAKA, the abode of Avalokitesvara. The palace included his residence quarters and space for the Tibetan government, the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG, both relocated from 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery. In 1652, at the invitation of the Qing emperor, the fifth Dalai Lama traveled to the Manchu imperial court in Beijing, where he was greeted with great ceremony, although he resented attempts by the Chinese to present him as a vassal of the Qing emperor rather than as an equal head of state. The Dalai Lama forced the conversion to Dge lugs of those monasteries he considered doctrinally heterodox or politically dangerous. These included numerous Bka' brgyud institutions and, famously, the monastery of Dga' ldan (formerly Rtag brtan) phun tshogs gling (see JO NANG PHUN TSHOGS GLING), whose Jo nang texts were ordered to be locked under state seal. The fifth Dalai Lama did, however, support the founding of new Rnying ma institutions, such as RDZOGS CHEN monastery and SMIN GROL GLING, and the renovation of RDO RJE BRAG. He himself was a "treasure revealer" (GTER STON), discovering several texts that are included in his collected works. His religious training was broad and eclectic; among teachers of the Dge lugs sect, he was particularly close to the first PAn CHEN LAMA, BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, who had also been the teacher of the fourth Dalai Lama, and from whom the fifth Dalai Lama received both his novice vows in 1625 and his monastic vows in 1638. After the Pan chen Lama's death, the Dalai Lama identified his next incarnation, continuing the alternating relation of teacher and student between the two foremost lamas of the Dge lugs. He died in 1682, but his death was kept secret by his regent, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, until 1697. He is entombed in a massize STuPA in the Po ta la. The fifth Dalai Lama was a prolific and talented author, with his collected works comprising twenty-five volumes on a wide range of topics. Of particular note are his extensive autobiographies. Among his more strictly "religious" works, his LAM RIM teachings entitled LAM RIM 'JAM DPAL ZHAL LUNG is well known.

Nigrodha. (C. Nijutuo; J. Nikuda; K. Niguda 尼瞿陀). According to Pāli accounts, the name of the Buddhist novice who converted the Mauryan king Asoka (AsOKA) to Buddhism. When Asoka ascended the throne, he is said to have continued his father's practice of each day feeding sixty thousand mendicants and brāhmanas at the palace, but was unsettled by their indecorous deportment. One day he saw the young novice Nigrodha, an ARHAT, and was pleased by the boy's dignity and calm demeanor. Nigrodha is said to have become an arhat upon his ordination at age seven. Nigrodha converted Asoka to Buddhism by preaching the Appamādasutta, whereupon the king ceased his benefactions to the sixty thousand mendicants and brāhmanas and gave undivided support instead to the Buddhist SAMGHA. Although Pāli sources claim that Asoka became a staunch and exclusive supporter of the STHAVIRANIKĀYA, Asoka's own inscriptions indicate that his allegiance to Buddhism was less rigid and that he continued to respect and support brāhmanas and non-Buddhist mendicants throughout his reign.

Nor bu gling kha. (Norbulingka). The summer residence of the DALAI LAMAs and the Tibetan government, located in the city of LHA SA, south of the PO TA LA Palace. The original foundations for the palace were laid by the seventh Dalai Lama, Skal bzang rgya mtsho, in 1755 at a medicinal spring, with the building completed in 1783 during the reign of the eighth Dalai Lama. Subsequent incarnations greatly expanded the grounds, adding numerous residential and administrative buildings as well an arboretum, gardens, and pools. Every Dalai Lama beginning with the eighth, together with his administration, would transfer to the Nor bu gling kha on the eighteenth day of the third lunar month, usually sometime in April. The palace grounds were also the site of the yearly grand Tibetan drama festival known as Zho ston (Shoton). On March 10, 1959, Tibetans numbering in the thousands held a mass demonstration against Chinese occupation outside the walls of the Nor bu gling kha, behind which the fourteenth Dalai Lama and his family were sequestered. On March 17, the Dalai Lama secretly escaped from the residence to go into exile in India.

  “nowhere shows Yama ‘as having anything to do with the punishment of the wicked.’ As king and judge of the dead, a Pluto in short, Yama is a far later creation. One has to study the true character of Yama-Yami throughout more than one hymn and epic poem, and collect the various accounts scattered in dozens of ancient works, and then he will obtain a consensus of allegorical statements which will be found to corroborate and justify the Esoteric teaching, that Yama-Yami is the symbol of the dual Manas, in one of its mystical meanings. For instance, Yama-Yami is always represented of a green colour and clothed with red, and as dwelling in a palace of copper and iron. Students of Occultism know to which of the human ‘principles’ the green and the red colours, and by correspondence the iron and copper, are to be applied. The ‘twofold-ruler’ — the epithet of Yama-Yami — is regarded in the exoteric teachings of the Chino-Buddhists as both judge and criminal, the restrainer of his own evil doings and the evil-doer himself. In the Hindu epic poems Yama-Yami is the twin-child of the Sun (the deity) by Sanjna (spiritual consciousness); but while Yama is the Aryan ‘lord of the day,’ appearing as the symbol of spirit in the East, Yami is the queen of the night (darkness, ignorance) ‘who opens to mortals the path to the West’ — the emblem of evil and matter. In the Puranas Yama has many wives (many Yamis) who force him to dwell in the lower world (Patala, Myalba, etc., etc.); and an allegory represents him with his foot lifted, to kick Chhaya, the handmaiden of his father (the astral body of his mother, Sanjna, a metaphysical aspect of Buddhi or Alaya). As stated in the Hindu Scriptures, a soul when it quits its mortal frame, repairs to its abode in the lower regions (Kamaloka or Hades). Once there, the Recorder, the Karmic messenger called Chitragupta (hidden or concealed brightness), reads out his account from the Great Register, wherein during the life of the human being, every deed and thought are indelibly impressed — and, according to the sentence pronounced, the ‘soul’ either ascends to the abode of the Pitris (Devachan), descends to a ‘hell’ (Kamaloka), or is reborn on earth in another human form” (TG 376).

of Sargon’s palace. A work of the 8th century b.c.e., now in the Louvre. 270

of the halls (palaces) of the 7 Heavens. Avial is

Palace ::: (virtual reality, chat) A proprietary multi-user virtual reality-like talk system.The Palace is distinguished from most other VR-like systems in that it is only two-dimensional rather than three; rooms, avatars, and props are made up of relatively small 2D bitmap images.Palace is a crude hack, or lightweight, depending on your point of view. . (1997-09-14)

Palace "virtual reality, chat" A proprietary multi-user {virtual reality}-like {talk} system. The Palace is distinguished from most other VR-like systems in that it is only two-dimensional rather than three; rooms, {avatars}, and "props" are made up of relatively small 2D {bitmap} images. Palace is a crude {hack}, or lightweight, depending on your point of view. {(http://thepalace.com/)}. (1997-09-14)

palatial ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a palace; suitable for a palace; resembling a palace; royal; magnificent; as, palatial structures.
Palatal; palatine. ::: n. --> A palatal letter.


palatine ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a palace, or to a high officer of a palace; hence, possessing royal privileges.
Of or pertaining to the palate. ::: n. --> One invested with royal privileges and rights within his domains; a count palatine. See Count palatine, under 4th Count.


Pātaliputra. (P. Pātaliputta; T. Pa ta la yi bu; C Huashi cheng; J. Keshijo; K. Hwassi song 華氏城). Capital of the kingdom of MAGADHA and later of the Mauryan empire, ruins of which are located near (and beneath) the modern city of Patna in Bihar. The place is described as having been a village named Pātaligāma at the time of the Buddha who, upon visiting the site, prophesied its future greatness. At that time Magadha's capital city was RĀJAGṚHA. It is not known when the capital was transferred to Pātaliputra, but it probably occurred sometime after the reign of the Buddha's junior contemporary, King AJĀTAsATRU. The city reached its greatest glory during the reign of the third Mauryan emperor, AsOKA, whose realm extended from Afghanistan in the west to Bengal in the east, and to the border of Tamil Nadu in the south. According to the Pāli chronicles DĪPAVAMSA and MAHĀVAMSA, it was in the royal palace of Pātaliputra that Asoka was converted to Buddhism by the seven-year-old novice Nigrodha. The same sources state that Pātaliputra was the site of the third Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, THIRD), whence Buddhist missions were dispatched to nine adjacent lands (paccantadesa). These reports are partially confirmed by Asoka's own inscriptions. in which he describes his adoption and promotion of Buddhism and his dispatch of what appear to be diplomatic missions to several neighboring states. The city was known to the Greeks as Pālibothra and was described by Megasthenes, who dwelled there for a time. It continued to be the capital of Magadha after the fall of the Mauryans and served again as an imperial capital between the fourth and sixth centuries under the Gupta dynasty. By the time the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG (600/602-664) visited India during the seventh century, Pātaliputra was mostly in ruins; what little remained was destroyed in the Muslim invasions of the twelfth century. See also MOGGALIPUTTATISSA.

pattidāna. [alt. patti] (cf. S. prāpti; C. de; J. toku; K. tŭk 得). In Pāli, lit. "assigned gift," referring to merit (P. puNNa, S. PUnYA) that has been obtained and then transferred (parivatta) to others; the term is thus often translated into English as the "transfer of merit." The "transfer of merit" is one of the most common practices in THERAVĀDA Buddhism, in which the merit from a particular virtuous deed can be directed toward another person specified by the agent. In doing so, the agent of the deed does not lose the karmic benefit of the virtuous deed and accumulates further virtue through the gift. In the Tirokuddasutta, a number of ghosts (P. peta, S. PRETA) cause a commotion in the palace of BIMBISĀRA after he serves a meal to the Buddha and his monks. The Buddha explains that they are former kinsmen of the king who have been reborn as ghosts, who can only be satiated by receiving merit. The king then offers alms to the Buddha and his monks the next day, verbally offering it to his relatives at the same time. The ghosts, who had been invisible, become visible and are seen receiving food and drink. When the king offers robes to the monks, they also receive robes. The transfer of merit is a practice found throughout the Buddhist world, based on the belief that the dead cannot directly receive offerings; instead, those offerings must be made to virtuous recipients, such as the Buddha or the members of the SAMGHA, with the merit of that deed then transferred to the departed. See also PARInĀMANĀ; PUnYĀNUMODANA.

penetralia ::: n. pl. --> The recesses, or innermost parts, of any thing or place, especially of a temple or palace.
Hidden things or secrets; privacy; sanctuary; as, the sacred penetralia of the home.


'Phags pa wa ti lha khang. (Pakpawati Lhakhang). A Nepalese pagoda-style temple located in the southwest Tibetan village of Skyid grong (Kyirong). It is named after its principal image, the famed 'Phags pa wa ti, said to be one of FOUR BROTHER STATUES OF AVALOKITEsVARA (alt. three or five according to some sources) miraculously formed from the trunk of a single sandalwood tree. The 'Phag pa wa ti of Skyid grong, also called the Skyid grong Jo bo (Kyirong Jowo), is a likeness of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara in the form known as Khasarpāni and is considered one of the most sacred Buddhist images in Tibet. Its praises have been sung by many of the country's leading masters. The image was secretly removed to India in 1959 by Tibetan guerilla fighters and currently resides in the private chapel of the present DALAI LAMA in DHARMAsĀLĀ. The other brother statues have been identified as the 'Phags pa Lokesvara of the PO TA LA palace and the white and red MATSYENDRANĀTH statues in the Kathmandu Valley.

phalayāna. (T. 'bras bu theg pa). In Sanskrit, "fruition vehicle"; one of the epithets of the VAJRAYĀNA. In this context, the "effect" or "fruition" (PHALA) refers to buddhahood, specifically the pure abode, body, resources, and deeds of a buddha. In tantric practice, one visualizes oneself as a buddha, in a MAndALA palace, with the possessions of a buddha such as the VAJRA and bell, performing the deeds of a buddha such as purifying environments and the beings who inhabit them. This practice is referred to as bringing the fruition to the path; as a means of proceeding quickly on the path to buddhahood, one imagines that the fruition of buddhahood has already been achieved.

Phra Kaew Morakot. In Thai, "The Emerald Buddha" (full name: Phra Phuttha Maha Mani Ratana Patimakorn; P. Buddhamahāmaniratnapatimā); this most sacred and venerated buddha image in Thailand is currently enshrined at Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), an ornate temple located on the grounds of the royal palace in the Thai capital of Bangkok. The image, which is in the seated meditation posture, is 29.5 inches (forty-five centimeters) tall; despite its name, it is in fact not made of emerald, but is carved from a single block of a green stone thought to be either jasper or jade. Kaew is an indigenous Thai word for "glass" or "translucence"; morakot derives from the Sanskrit word for emerald (S. morakata). According to legend, the Emerald Buddha was the first buddha image ever made and was carved five hundred years after the Buddha's death out of a sacred gem that came from INDRA's palace. The image is said to have been made by NĀGASENA (c. 150 BCE), the interlocutor of the MILINDAPANHA, in the north Indian city of PĀtALIPUTRA around 43 BCE. The image was then taken to Sri Lanka in the fourth century CE, and was on its way to Burma in 457, when the ship carrying it went off course and the image next appeared in Cambodia. The image eventually came into Thai hands and made its way to AYUTHAYA, Chiangrai, Chiangmai, and ultimately Bangkok. The image's actual provenance is a matter of debate. Some art historians argue that on stylistic grounds the Emerald Buddha appears to have been carved in northern Thailand around the fifteenth century, while others argue for a south Indian or Sri Lankan origin based on its meditative posture, which is uncommon in Thai buddha images. The Emerald Buddha first enters the historical record upon its discovery in 1434 CE, in the area that is now the northern Thai province of Chiangrai, when lightning struck a chedi (P. cetiya, S. CAITYA) and a buddha image made of stucco was found inside. As the stucco began to flake off, the image of the Emerald Buddha was revealed. At that time, Chiangrai was ruled by the Lānnā Thai kingdom, whose king attempted to bring the image back to his capital of Chiangmai. The chronicles relate that three times he sent an elephant to bring the Emerald Buddha to Chiangmai, but each time the elephant went to Lampang instead, so the king finally relented and allowed the image to remain there. In 1468, the new Chiangmai monarch, King Tiloka, finally succeeded in moving the image to Chiangmai and installed it in the eastern niche of a large STuPA at Wat Chedi Luang. The image remained there until 1552, when it was taken to LUANG PRABANG, then the capital of Laos, by the Lao ruler, who was also ruling Chiangmai at the time. In 1564, the king then took the image to Vientiane, where he set up a new capital after fleeing the Burmese. The Emerald Buddha remained in Vientiane for 214 years, until 1778 when the Siamese general Taksin captured the city and took the Emerald Buddha to Thonburi, then the Siamese capital. In 1784, when Bangkok was established as the capital, the image was installed there, in Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, as the palladium of the nation (then known as Siam). Because Wat Phra Kaew is located within the palace grounds, the temple is unique in Thai Buddhism for having no monastic residences; the grounds contain only sacred shrines, stupas, and the main ubosoth (UPOsADHA hall), where the Buddha resides. The image of the Emerald Buddha is always clothed in golden raiments, which are changed according to the seasons. King Rāma I (r. 1782-1809) had two seasonal costumes made for the statue: a ceremonial robe for the hot season and a monastic robe for the rainy season. King Rāma III (1824-1851) had another costume made for the cold season: a mantle of gold beads. The ruling monarch performs the ceremonial changing of the garments each season.

POAMAL palace 149

Popchusa. (法住寺). In Korean, "Monastery Where the Dharma Abides"; the fifth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located at the base of Songni (Leaving Behind the Mundane) Mountain in North Ch'ungch'ong province. Popchusa was founded in 553, during the reign of the Silla King Chinhŭng (r. 540-576), by the monk Ŭisin (d.u.) who, according to legend, returned from the "western regions" (viz. Central Asia and India) with scriptures and resided at the monastery; hence the monastery's name. In 1101, during the Koryo dynasty, ŬICH'oN (1055-1101) held an assembly to recite the RENWANG JING ("Scripture for Humane Kings") here for the protection of the state (see HUGUO FOJIAO), which is said to have been attended by thirty thousand monks. On entering the monastery, to the back and left of the front gate there are two granite pillars that date from the eleventh century, which were used to support the hanging paintings (KWAEBUL) that were unfurled on such important ceremonial occasions as the Buddha's birthday. A pavilion on the right houses a huge iron pot dated to 720 CE, which was purportedly once used to prepare meals for monks and pilgrims; off to the side is a water tank made of stone that would have held about 2,200 gallons (ten cubic meters) of water. There is also a lotus-shaped basin dating from the eighth century and a lion-supported stone lantern sponsored by the Silla monarch Songdok (r. 702-737) in 720. The main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) houses images of VAIROCANA, sĀKYAMUNI, and Rocana buddhas. Behind these three statues are three paintings of the same buddhas, accompanied by BODHISATTVAs, a young ĀNANDA, and the elderly MAHĀKĀsYAPA. In the paintings sākyamuni and Rocana are surrounded by rainbows and Vairocana by a white halo. Popchusa is especially renowned for its five-story high wooden pagoda, which dates from the foundation of the monastery in 553; it may have been the model for the similar pagoda at HoRYuJI in Nara, Japan. The current pagoda was reconstructed in 1624 and is the oldest extant wooden pagoda in Korea. The pagoda is painted with pictures of the eight stereotypical episodes in the life of the Buddha (see BAXIANG). Inside are four images of sākyamuni: the east-facing statue is in the gesture of fearlessness (ABHAYAMUDRĀ); the west, in the teaching pose (DHARMACAKRAMUDRĀ); the south, in the touching-the-earth gesture (BHuMISPARsAMUDRĀ); and the north, in a reclining buddha posture, a rare Korean depiction of the Buddha's PARINIRVĀnA. Around the four buddha images sit 340 smaller white buddhas, representing the myriad buddhas of other world systems. The ceiling inside is three stories high, and the beams, walls, and ceiling are painted with various images, including bodhisattvas and lotus flowers. Outside the pagoda is Popchusa's most striking image, the thirty-three-meter (108-foot), 160-ton bronze statue of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. The original image is said to have been constructed by the Silla VINAYA master CHINP'YO (fl. eighth century), but was removed by the Taewon'gun in 1872 and melted down to be used in the reconstruction of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul. A replacement image was begun in 1939 but was never completed; another temporary statue was crafted from cement and installed in 1964. The current bronze image was finally erected in 1989. Near the base is a statue of a woman with a bowl of food, representing the laywoman SUJĀTĀ, who offered GAUTAMA a meal of milk porridge before his enlightenment.

porte ::: n. --> The Ottoman court; the government of the Turkish empire, officially called the Sublime Porte, from the gate (port) of the sultan&

Potalaka. (T. Po ta la; C. Butuoluoshan; J. Fudarakusen; K. Pot'araksan 補陀落山). According to the GAndAVYuHASuTRA, a mountain that is the abode of the bodhisattva of compassion, AVALOKITEsVARA. The precise location of the mountain is the subject of considerable speculation. According to XUANZANG, it is located in southern India to the east of the Malaya Mountains. He describes it as a perilous mountain with a lake and a heavenly stone palace at the summit. A river flows from the summit, encircling the mountain twenty times before flowing into the South Sea. Those who seek to meet the bodhisattva scale the mountain, but few succeed. Xuanzang says that the bodhisattva appears to his devotees at the base the mountain in the form of Mahesvara (siva) or an ascetic sadhu covered in ashes. Modern scholarship has speculated that Xuanzang was describing the mountain called Potikai or Potiyil in Tamil Nadu. Other sources place the mountain on an island in the Indian Ocean. In East Asian Buddhism, it is called PUTUOSHAN and is identified as a mountainous island in the Zhoushan Archipelago, about sixty-two miles off the eastern coast of Zhejiang province. When the fifth DALAI LAMA constructed his palace in LHA SA, he named it PO TA LA, after this mountain identified with Avalokitesvara, of whom he is considered the human incarnation.

Po ta la. The most famous building in Tibet and one of the great achievements of Tibetan architecture. Located in the Tibetan capital of LHA SA, it served as the winter residence of the DALAI LAMAs and seat of the Tibetan government from the seventeenth century until the fourteenth Dalai Lama's flight into exile in 1959. It takes its name from Mount POTALAKA, the abode of AVALOKITEsVARA, the bodhisattva of compassion, of whom the three Tibetan dharma kings (chos rgyal) and the Dalai Lamas are said to be human incarnations. The full name of the Potala is "Palace of Potala Peak" (Rtse po ta la'i pho brang), and it is commonly referred to by Tibetans simply as the Red Palace (Pho brang dmar po), because the edifice is located on Mar po ri (Red Hill) on the northwestern edge of Lha sa and because of the red palace at the summit of the white structure. In the early seventh century, the Tibetan king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO is said to have meditated in a cave located on the hill; the cave is preserved within the present structure. The earliest structure to have been constructed there was an elevenstoried palace that he had built in 637 when he moved his capital to Lha sa. In 1645, three years after his installation as temporal ruler of Tibet, the fifth Dalai Lama NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO began renovations of what remained of this original structure, with the new structure serving as his own residence, as well as the site of his government (known as the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG), which he moved from the DGE LUGS PA monastery of 'BRAS SPUNGS, located some five miles outside the city. The exterior of the White Palace (Pho brang dkar po), which includes the apartments of the Dalai Lama, was completed in 1648 and the Dalai Lama took up residence in 1649. The portion of the Po ta la known as the Red Palace was added by the regent SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO in honor of the fifth Dalai Lama after his death in 1682. Fearing that the project would cease if news of his death became known, Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho was able successfully to conceal the Dalai Lama's death for some twelve years (making use of a double who physically resembled the Dalai Lama to meet foreign dignitaries) until construction could be completed in 1694. The current structure is thirteen stories (approximately 384 feet) tall and is said to have over a thousand rooms, including the private apartments of the Dalai Lama, reception and assembly halls, temples, chapels containing the stupas of the fifth and seventh through thirteenth Dalai Lamas, the Rnam rgyal monastery that performed state rituals, and government offices. From the time of the eighth Dalai Lama, the Po ta la served as the winter residence for the Dalai Lamas, who moved each summer to the smaller NOR BU GLING KHA. The first Europeans to see the Po ta la were likely the Jesuit missionaries Albert Dorville and Johannes Grueber, who visited Lha sa in 1661 and made sketches of the palace, which was still under construction at the time. During the Tibetan uprising against the People's Liberation Army in March 1959, the Po ta la was shelled by Chinese artillery. It is said to have survived the Chinese Cultural Revolution through the intervention of the Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai, although many of its texts and works of art were looted or destroyed. In old Lha sa, the Po ta la stood outside the central city, with the small village of Zhol located at its foot. This was the site of a prison, a printing house, and residences of some of the lovers of the sixth Dalai Lama. In modern Lha sa, the Po ta la is now encompassed by the city, and much of Zhol has been destroyed. The Po ta la still forms the northern boundary of the large circumambulation route around Lha sa, called the gling bskor (ling khor). Since the Chinese opened Tibet to foreign access in the 1980s, the Po ta la has been visited by millions of Tibetan pilgrims and foreign tourists. The stress of tourist traffic has required frequent restoration projects. In 1994, the Po ta la was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. See also PUTUOSHAN.

pullman car ::: --> A kind of sleeping car; also, a palace car; -- often shortened to Pullman.

Purna. (P. Punna; T. Gang po; C. Fulouna; J. Furuna; K. Puruna 富樓那). In Sanskrit, "Fulfilled," a famous ARHAT and disciple of the Buddha, often known as Purna the Great (MAHĀPuRnA). There are various stories of his origins and encounter with Buddha, leading some scholars to believe that there were two important monks with this name. In some cases, he is referred to as Purna Maitrāyanīputra (P. Punna Mantānīputta) and appears in lists of the Buddha's ten chief disciples, renowned for his skill in preaching the DHARMA. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), Purna is listed among the SRĀVAKAs who understand the parable in the seventh chapter on the conjured city; in the eighth chapter of that sutra, the Buddha predicts Purna's eventual attainment of buddhahood. According to Pāli accounts, where he is known as Punna, he was a brāhmana from Kapilavatthu (S. KAPILAVASTU), the son of Mantānī, who was herself the sister of ANNā KondaNNa (ĀJNĀTAKAUndINYA), the first of five ascetics (P. paNcavaggiyā; S. PANCAVARGIKA) converted and ordained by the Buddha at the Isipatana (S. ṚsIPATANA) deer park (MṚGADĀVA) after his enlightenment. After preaching to the five ascetics, the Buddha traveled to Rājagaha (S. Rājagṛha); ANNā KondaNNa instead went to Kapilavatthu, where he proceeded to ordain his nephew Punna. ANNā KondaNNa retired to the forest while Punna remained in Kapilavatthu, devoting himself to the study of scripture and the practice of meditation, soon becoming an arahant (S. ARHAT). He gathered around him five hundred disciples, all of whom became monks, and taught them the ten bases of discourse he had learned. All of them became arahants. At Sāvatthi (sRĀVASTĪ), the Buddha taught the dhamma to Punna in his private chambers, a special honor. While Punna was dwelling at the Andhavana grove, Sāriputta (S. sĀRIPUTRA) visited him to question him on points of doctrine. Punna was able to answer all of Sāriputta's queries. It was while listening to Punna's explication of causality that Ānanda became a stream-enterer (P. sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA). ¶ Other stories, most famously the Purnāvadāna of the DIVYĀVADĀNA, tell of a different Purna, known as Punna Suppāraka in Pāli sources. His father was a wealthy merchant in the seaport of Surpāraka in western India. The merchant became ill and was cured by a slave girl, who eventually bore him a son, named Purna, who became in turn a skilled merchant. During a sea voyage with some merchants from sRĀVASTĪ, he heard his colleagues reciting prayers to the Buddha. Overcome with feelings of faith, he went to see the Buddha and was ordained. After receiving brief instructions from the Buddha, he asked permission to spread the dharma among the uncivilized people of sronāparāntaka, where he converted many and became an arhat in his own right. He later returned to his home city of Surpāraka, where he built a palace of sandalwood and invited the Buddha and his monks for a meal. Events from the story of Purna are depicted in cave paintings at AJAntĀ in India and KIZIL in Central Asia along the SILK ROAD. A similar story of Purna's life as a merchant from a border region is recounted in still other Pāli accounts. After the Buddha preached the Punnovādasutta to him, he is said to have joined the saMgha and became an arahant. Punna won many disciples in his native land, who then wished to build a sandalwood monastery for the Buddha. The Buddha flew in celestial palanquins to Sunāparanta in the company of Punna and five hundred arahants in order to accept the gift. Along the way, the Buddha converted a hermit dwelling atop Mount Saccabandha and left a footprint (BUDDHAPĀDA) in the nearby Narmada River so that the NĀGA spirits might worship it. Sunāparanta of the Pāli legend is located in India, but the Burmese identify it with their homeland, which stretches from Middle to Upper Burma. They locate Mount Saccabandha near the ancient Pyu capital of Sirīkhettarā (Prome). The adoption of Punna as an ancient native son allowed Burmese chroniclers to claim that their Buddhism was established in Burma during the lifetime of the Buddha himself and therefore was older than that of their fellow Buddhists in Sri Lanka, who did not convert to Buddhism until the time of Asoka (S. AsOKA) two and half centuries later.

Rāhula. (T. Sgra gcan 'dzin; C. Luohouluo; J. Ragora; K. Rahura 羅睺羅). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "Fetter"; proper name of the ARHAT who was the Buddha's only child, born on the day his father renounced the world. According to the Pāli account, as soon as Prince SIDDHARTHA learned of the birth of his son, he immediately chose to become a mendicant, for he saw his son as a "fetter" binding him ever more tightly to the household life. In a famous scene, the prince looks at his sleeping wife and infant son before departing from the palace to seek enlightenment. He wishes to hold his son one last time but fears that he will awaken his wife and lose his resolve. In the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA version of the story, Rāhula was conceived on the night of his father's departure from the palace and remained in gestation for a full six years, being born on the night that his father achieved buddhahood. After his enlightenment, when the Buddha accepted an invitation to visit his father's palace, Rāhula's mother (RĀHULAMĀTĀ) YAsODHARĀ sent her son to her former husband to ask for his inheritance, whereupon the Buddha ordered sĀRIPUTRA to ordain the boy. Rāhula thus became the first novice (sRĀMAnERA) to enter the order. Knowing Yasodharā's grief at the loss of her son, the Buddha's father, King sUDDHODANA, requested that in the future no child should be ordained without the consent of his parents; the Buddha accepted his request and a question about parental consent was incorporated into the ordination procedure. Rāhula is described as dutiful and always in search of instruction. In one sermon to the young boy, the Buddha warns him never to lie, even in jest. Rāhula often accompanied the Buddha or sāriputra on their alms rounds (PIndAPĀTA). The meditation topic the Buddha assigned to Rāhula was intended to counter the novice's strong carnal nature. When his mind was ready, the Buddha taught him the Cula-Rāhulovādasutta, at the end of which Rāhula attained arhatship. Rāhula was meticulous in his observation of the monastic regulations, and the Buddha declared him foremost among his disciples in his eagerness for training. According to Chinese sources, Rāhula was also renowned for his patience. One day in sRĀVASTĪ, he was harshly beaten and was bleeding badly from a head wound, but he bore his injury with composure and equanimity, which led the Buddha to praise him. Rāhula was also foremost in "practicing with discretion" (C. mixing diyi), meaning that he applied himself at all times in religious practice but without making a display of it. Rāhula passed away before both sāriputra and the Buddha during a sojourn in TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven. In previous lives, Rāhula had many times been the son of the bodhisattva. He was called "lucky Rāhula" by his friends and Rāhula himself acknowledged his good fortune both for being the Buddha's son and for attaining arhatship. In the MAHĀYĀNA, Rāhula appears in a number of sutras, such as the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, where his father predicts that he will become a buddha. Rāhula is also traditionally listed as eleventh of the sixteen ARHAT elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. He is said to reside in Biliyangqu zhou (a Sanskrit transcription that supposedly means "land of chestnuts and grains") with 1,100 disciples. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Rāhula is portrayed sitting on a rock in wide-eyed meditation, with his right finger held above his chest, pointing outward, and his left hand resting on his left knee.

Rathavinītasutta. (C. Qiche jing; J. Shichishakyo; K. Ch'ilch'a kyong 七車經). In Pāli, the "Discourse on the Relay Chariots," the twenty-fourth scripture of the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA version appears as the ninth sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA, as well as a recension of uncertain affilation in the EKOTTARĀGAMA). This discourse recounts a dialogue between Sāriputta (S. sĀRIPUTRA) and Punna Mantāniputta (see PuRnA) concerning the seven stages of purification (see VISUDDHI) that must be traversed in order to attain final liberation in nibbāna (NIRVĀnA), viz., the purification of (1) morality (SĪLAVISUDDHI); (2) mind (CITTAVISUDDHI); (3) views (DIttHIVISUDDHI); (4) overcoming doubt (KAnKHĀVITARAnAVISUDDHI); (5) the purity of knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path (MAGGĀMAGGANĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI); (6) knowledge and vision of progress along the path (PAtIPADĀNĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI); (7) knowledge and vision itself (NĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI). The seventh purification leads directly to final nibbāna. The seven stages are compared to a relay of seven chariots needed to transport the king of Kosala (KOsALA) from his palace in Sāvatthi (sRĀVASTĪ) to his palace in Sāketa.

Saddharmapundarīkasutra. (T. Dam pa'i chos padma dkar po'i mdo; C. Miaofa lianhua jing/Fahua jing; J. Myohorengekyo/Hokekyo; K. Myobop yonhwa kyong/Pophwa kyong 妙法蓮華經/法華經). In Sanskrit, "Sutra of the White Lotus of the True Dharma," and known in English simply as the "Lotus Sutra"; perhaps the most influential of all MAHĀYĀNA sutras. The earliest portions of the text were probably composed as early as the first or second centuries of the Common Era; the text gained sufficient renown in India that a number of chapters were later interpolated into it. The sutra was translated into Chinese six times and three of those translations are extant. The earliest of those is that made by DHARMARAKsA, completed in 286. The most popular is that of KUMĀRAJĪVA in twenty-eight chapters, completed in 406. The sutra was translated into Tibetan in the early ninth century. Its first translation into a European language was that of EUGÈNE BURNOUF into French in 1852. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra is perhaps most famous for its parables, which present, in various versions, two of the sutra's most significant doctrines: skill-in-means (UPĀYA) and the immortality of the Buddha. In the parable of the burning house, a father lures his children from a conflagration by promising them three different carts, but when they emerge they find instead a single, magnificent cart. The three carts symbolize the sRĀVAKA vehicle, the PRATYEKABUDDHA vehicle, and the BODHISATTVA vehicle, while the one cart is the "one vehicle" (EKAYĀNA), the buddha vehicle (BUDDHAYĀNA). This parable indicates that the Buddha's previous teaching of three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) was a case of upāya, an "expedient device" or "skillful method" designed to attract persons of differing capacities to the dharma. In fact, there is only one vehicle, the vehicle whereby all beings proceed to buddhahood. In the parable of the conjured city, a group of weary travelers take rest in a magnificent city, only to be told later that it is a magical creation. This conjured city symbolizes the NIRVĀnA of the ARHAT; there is in fact no such nirvāna as a final goal in Buddhism, since all will eventually follow the bodhisattva's path to buddhahood. The apparently universalistic doctrine articulated by the sutra must be understood within the context of the sectarian polemics in which the sutra seems to have been written. The doctrine of upāya is intended in part to explain the apparent contradiction between the teachings that appear in earlier sutras and those of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. The former are relegated to the category of mere expedients, with those who fail to accept the consummate teaching of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra as the authentic word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) repeatedly excoriated by the text itself. In a device common in Mahāyāna sutras, the sutra itself describes both the myriad benefits that accrue to those who recite, copy, and revere the sutra, as well as the misfortune that will befall those who fail to do so. The immortality of the Buddha is portrayed in the parable of the physician, in which a father feigns death in order to induce his sons to commit to memory an antidote to poison. The apparent death of the father is compared to the Buddha's entry into nirvāna, something which he only pretended to do in order to inspire his followers. Elsewhere in the sutra, the Buddha reveals that he did not achieve enlightenment as the prince Siddhārtha who left his palace, but in fact had achieved enlightenment eons before; the well-known version of his departure from the palace and successful quest for enlightenment were merely a display meant to inspire the world. The immortality of the Buddha (and other buddhas) is also demonstrated when a great STuPA emerges from the earth. When the door to the funerary reliquary is opened, ashes and bones are not found, as would be expected, but instead the living buddha PRABHuTARATNA, who appears in his stupa whenever the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is taught. sĀKYAMUNI joins him on his seat, demonstrating another central Mahāyāna doctrine, the simultaneous existence of multiple buddhas. Other famous events described in the sutra include the miraculous transformation of a NĀGA princess into a buddha after she presents a gem to sākyamuni and the tale of a bodhisattva who immolates himself in tribute to a previous buddha. The sutra contains several chapters that function as self-contained texts; the most popular of these is the chapter devoted to the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA, which details his ability to rescue the faithful from various dangers. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential in East Asia, inspiring both a range of devotional practices as well as the creation of new Buddhist schools that had no Indian analogues. The devotional practices include those extolled by the sutra itself: receiving and keeping the sutra, reading it, memorizing and reciting it, copying it, and explicating it. In East Asia, there are numerous tales of the miraculous benefits of each of these practices. The practice of copying the sutra (or having it copied) was a particularly popular form of merit-making either for oneself or for departed family members. Also important, especially in China, was the practice of burning either a finger or one's entire body as an offering to the Buddha, emulating the self-immolation of the bodhisattva BHAIsAJYARĀJA in the twenty-third chapter (see SHESHEN). In the domain of doctrinal developments, the Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential across East Asia, its doctrine of upāya providing the rationale for the systems of doctrinal taxonomies (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) that are pervasive in East Asian Buddhist schools. In China, the sutra was the central text of the TIANTAI ZONG, where it received detailed exegesis by a number of important figures. The school's founder, TIANTAI ZHIYI, divided the sutra into two equal parts. In the first fourteen chapters, which he called the "trace teaching" (C. jimen, J. SHAKUMON), sākyamuni appears as the historical buddha. In the remaining fourteen chapters, which Zhiyi called the "origin teaching" (C. benmen, J. HONMON), sākyamuni reveals his true nature as the primordial buddha who achieved enlightenment many eons ago. Zhiyi also drew on the Saddharmapundarīkasutra in elucidating two of his most famous doctrines: the three truths (SANDI, viz., emptiness, the provisional, and the mean) and the notion of YINIAN SANQIAN, or "the trichiliocosm in an instant of thought." In the TENDAISHu, the Japanese form of Tiantai, the sutra remained supremely important, providing the scriptural basis for the central doctrine of original enlightenment (HONGAKU) and the doctrine of "achieving buddhahood in this very body" (SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU); in TAIMITSU, the tantric form of Tendai, sākyamuni Buddha was identified with MAHĀVAIROCANA. For the NICHIREN schools (and their offshoots, including SoKA GAKKAI), the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is not only its central text but is also considered to be the only valid Buddhist sutra for the degenerate age (J. mappo; see C. MOFA); the recitation of the sutra's title is the central practice in Nichiren (see NAMU MYoHoRENGEKYo). See also SADĀPARIBHuTA.

sādhana. (T. sgrub thabs; C. chengjiu fa; J. jojuho; K. songch'wi pop 成就法). In Sanskrit, "method" or "technique," used especially in reference to a tantric ritual designed to receive attainments (SIDDHI) from a deity. Tantric sādhanas generally take one of two forms. In the first, the deity (which may be a buddha, BODHISATTVA, or another deity) is requested to appear before the meditator and is then worshipped in the expectation of receiving blessings. In the other type of tantric sādhana, the meditator imagines himself or herself to be the deity at this very moment, that is, to have the exalted body, speech, and mind of an enlightened being. Tantric sādhanas tend to follow a fairly set sequence, whether they are simple or detailed. More elaborate sādhanas may include the recitation of a lineage of GURUs; the creation of a protection wheel guarded by wrathful deities to subjugate enemies; the creation of a body MAndALA, in which a pantheon of deities take residence at various parts of the meditator's body, etc. Although there are a great many variations of content and sequence, in many sādhanas, the meditator is instructed to imagine light radiating from the body, thus beckoning buddhas and bodhisattvas from throughout the universe. Visualizing these deities arrayed in the space, the meditator then performs a series of standard preliminary practices called the sevenfold service (SAPTĀnGAVIDHI), a standard component of sādhanas. The seven elements are (1) obeisance, (2) offering (often concluding with a gift of the entire physical universe with all its marvels), (3) confession of misdeeds, (4) admiration of the virtuous deeds of others, (5) entreaty to the buddhas not to pass into NIRVĀnA, (6) supplication of the buddhas and bodhisattvas to teach the dharma, and (7) dedication of the merit of performing the preceding toward the enlightenment of all beings. The meditator then goes for refuge to the three jewels (RATNATRAYA), creates the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTA; BODHICITTOTPĀDA), the promise to achieve buddhahood in order to liberate all beings in the universe from suffering, and dedicates the merit from the foregoing and subsequent practices toward that end. The meditator next cultivates the four "boundless" attitudes (APRAMĀnA) of loving-kindness (MAITRĪ), compassion (KARUnĀ), empathetic joy (MUDITĀ), and equanimity or impartiality (UPEKsĀ), before meditating on emptiness (suNYATĀ) and reciting the purificatory mantra, oM svabhāvasuddhāḥ sarvadharmāḥ svabhāvasuddho 'haM ("OM, naturally pure are all phenomena, naturally pure am I"), understanding that emptiness is the primordial nature of everything, the unmoving world and the beings who move upon it. Out of this emptiness, the meditator next creates the mandala. The next step in the sādhana is for the meditator to animate the residents of the mandala by causing the actual buddhas and bodhisattvas, referred to as "wisdom beings" (JNĀNASATTVA), to descend and merge with their imagined doubles, the "pledge beings" (SAMAYASATTVA). Light radiates from the meditator's heart, drawing the wisdom beings to the mandala where, through offerings and the recitation of mantra, they are prompted to enter the residents of the mandala. With the preliminary visualization now complete, the stage is set for the central meditation of the sādhana, which varies depending upon the purpose of the sādhana. Generally, offerings and prayers are made to a sequence of deities and boons are requested from them, each time accompanied with the recitation of appropriate MANTRA. At the end of the session, the meditator makes mental offerings to the assembly before inviting them to leave, at which point the entire visualization, the palace and its residents, dissolve into emptiness. The sādhana ends with a dedication of the merit accrued to the welfare of all beings.

Sāgara. (T. Rgya mtsho; C. Suojieluo/Suoqieluo; J. Shakara [alt. Shakatsura]/Shagara; K. Sagalla/Sagara 娑竭羅/娑伽羅). In Sanskrit, "Ocean"; one of the eight dragon kings (NĀGA) who served as guardians of the BUDDHADHARMA. His name appears alongside those of the other seven dragon kings who were in the audience when the Buddha taught the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA. Sāgara is believed to be the dragon king of the ocean, who governs precipitation. He resides in a palace beneath the ocean that surrounds Mt. SUMERU. Sāgara occasionally appears as a flanking-attendant of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA. In his palace, Sāgara is said to store a MAnI jewel, which he sometimes offers to the bodhisattva. In the twelfth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, Sāgara also appears as the father of the eight-year-old nāga princess who, by offering a jewel to the Buddha, instantaneously turns into a male, traverses the ten bodhisattva stages (BHuMI), and achieves buddhahood, evidence to some exegetes in the tradition that women have the capacity to achieve buddhahood.

sākyamuni. (P. Sakkamuni; T. Shākya thub pa; C. Shijiamouni; J. Shakamuni; K. Sokkamoni 釋迦牟尼). In Sanskrit, "Sage of the sĀKYA Clan," one of the most common epithets of GAUTAMA Buddha, especially in the MAHĀYĀNA traditions, where the name sĀKYAMUNI is used to distinguish the historical buddha from the myriad other buddhas who appear in the SuTRAs. The sākyas were a tribe in northern India into which was born SIDDHĀRTHA GAUTAMA, the man who would become the historical buddha. According to the texts, the sākya clan was made up of KsATRIYAs, warriors or political administrators in the Indian caste system. The sākya clan flourished in the foothills of the Himālayas, near the border between present-day Nepal and India. Following the tradition's own model, which did not seek to provide a single and seamless biography of Gautama or sākyamuni until centuries after his death, this dictionary narrates the events of the life of the Buddha in separate entries about his previous lives, his teachings, his disciples, and the places he visited over the course of his forty-five years of preaching the dharma. In India, accounts of events in the life of the Buddha first appeared in VINAYA materials, such as the Pāli MAHĀVAGGA or the LOKOTTARAVĀDA school's MAHĀVASTU. Among the Pāli SUTTAs, one of the most detailed accounts of the Buddha's quest for enlightenment occurs in the ARIYAPARIYESANĀSUTTA. It is noteworthy that many of the most familiar events in the Buddha's life are absent in some of the early accounts: the miraculous conception and birth; the death of his mother, Queen MĀYĀ; his sheltered youth; the four chariot rides outside the palace where he beholds the four portents (CATURNIMITTA); his departure from the palace; and his abandonment of his wife, YAsODHARĀ, and his newborn son, RĀHULA. Those stories appear much later, in works like AsVAGHOsA's beloved verse narrative, the BUDDHACARITA, from the second century CE; the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school's third- or fourth-century CE LALITAVISTARA; and the NIDĀNAKATHĀ, the first biography of the Buddha in Pāli, attributed to BUDDHAGHOSA in the fifth century CE, some eight centuries after the Buddha's passing. Even in that later biography, however, the "life of the Buddha" ends with ANĀTHAPIndADA's gift of JETAVANA grove to the Buddha, twenty years after the Buddha's enlightenment and twenty-five years before his death. Other biographical accounts end even earlier, with the conversion of sĀRIPUTRA and MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. Indeed, Indian Buddhist literature devotes more attention to the lives of previous buddhas and to the former lives (JĀTAKA) of Gautama or sākyamuni than they do to biographies of his final lifetime (when biography is taken to refer to a chronological account from birth to death). And even there, the tradition takes pains to demonstrate the consistency of the events of his life with those of previous buddhas; in fact, all buddhas are said to perform the same eight or twelve deeds (see BAXIANG; TWELVE DEEDS OF A BUDDHA). The momentous events of his birth, renunciation, enlightenment under the BODHI TREE, and first turning of the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) are described in detail in a range of works, and particular attention is given to his death, in both the Pāli MAHĀPARINIBBANASUTTA and the Sanskrit MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. And all traditions, whether MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS or the Mahāyāna, are deeply concerned with the question of the location of the Buddha after his passage into PARINIRVĀnA.

sambhala. (T. bde 'byung). Often spelled Shambhala. In the texts associated with the KĀLACAKRATANTRA, the kingdom of sambhala is said to be located north of the Himālayan range. It is a land devoted to the practice of the Kālacakratantra, which the Buddha himself had entrusted to sambhala's king SUCANDRA, who had requested that the Buddha set forth the tantra. The kingdom of sambhala is shaped like a giant lotus and is filled with sandalwood forests and lotus lakes, all encircled by a massive range of snowy peaks. In the center of the kingdom is the capital, Kalapa, where the luster of the palaces, made from gold, silver, and jewels, outshines the moon; the walls of the palaces are plated with mirrors that reflect a light so bright that night is like day. In the very center of the city is the MAndALA of the buddha Kālacakra. The inhabitants of the 960 million villages of sambhala are ruled by a beneficent king, called the Kalkin. The laypeople are all beautiful and wealthy, free of sickness and poverty; the monks maintain their precepts without the slightest infraction. They are naturally intelligent and virtuous, devoted to the practice of the VAJRAYĀNA, although all authentic forms of Indian Buddhism are preserved. The majority of those reborn there attain buddhahood during their lifetime in sambhala. The Kālacakratantra also predicts an apocalyptic war. In the year 2425 CE, the barbarians (generally identified as Muslims) and demons who have destroyed Buddhism in India will set out to invade sambhala. The twenty-fifth Kalkin, Raudracakrin, will lead his armies out of his kingdom and into India, where they will meet the forces of evil in a great battle, from which the forces of Buddhism will emerge victorious. The victory will usher in a golden age in which human life span will increase, crops will grow without being cultivated, and the entire population of the earth will devote itself to the practice of Buddhism. Given the importance of the Kālacakratantra in Tibetan Buddhism, sambhala figures heavily in Tibetan Buddhist belief and practice; in the DGE LUGS sect, it is said that the PAn CHEN LAMAs are reborn as kings of sambhala. There is also a genre of guidebooks (lam yig) that provide the route to sambhala. The location of sambhala has long been a subject of fascination in the West. sambhala plays an important role in the Theosophy of HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY, and the Russian Theosophist Nicholas Roerich led two expeditions in search of sambhala. The name sambhala is considered the likely inspiration of "Shangri-La," described in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon.

Sandalphon (Hebrew) Sandalfōn Qabbalistic term alleged to be the name of the chief of angels: “the Kabbalistic Prince of Angels, emblematically represented by one of the Cherubim of the Ark” (TG 289). In the Zohar the name of the “supreme chief” of the seventh heaven who “introduces the prayer into the seven palaces, to wit, the Palaces of the King” (Sperling’s trans 4:185); again Sandalphon is described as the “angel in charge of the prayers of Israel,” who “takes up all those prayers and weaves out of them a crown for the Living One of the worlds” (ibid., 2:143).

Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho. (Desi Sangye Gyatso) (1653-1705). The third and final regent of the fifth DALAI LAMA NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, serving as regent of Tibet from 1679 until his death. He successfully concealed the death of the fifth Dalai Lama in 1682 for some fifteen years, in part to allow for the completion of the PO TA LA Palace. During this time, he served as ruler of Tibet, overseeing (and keeping secret) the discovery of the sixth Dalai Lama, TSHANGS DBYANGS RGYA MTSHO. In addition to being a skilled politician, Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho was one of the most learned and prolific authors in the history of Tibet, composing important treatises on all manner of subjects, including statecraft, ritual, astrology and calendrics, poetics, architecture, and court etiquette. He had a special interest in medicine, composing his famous treatise entitled BAIduRYA SNGON PO and founding a medical college on Lcag po ri near the Po ta la. His largest literary project was his seven-thousand page work on the life of the fifth Dalai Lama and his previous incarnations. More than any other author, he was responsible for solidifying the mythic identity of the Dalai Lama as an incarnation of the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA and establishing the line of incarnations over the centuries in India and Tibet, which culminated in the person of the fifth Dalai Lama. He was a staunch supporter and active promoter of the DGE LUGS sect, greatly increasing the number of its monasteries and the size of its monastic population. After the Mongol chieftain Lha bzang Khan claimed rulership over Tibet in 1700, Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho agreed to share power with him, but was soon deposed. Armed conflict occurred between the factions despite a series of truces. Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho was captured and beheaded by Mongol troops in 1705.

seraglio ::: n. --> An inclosure; a place of separation.
The palace of the Grand Seignior, or Turkish sultan, at Constantinople, inhabited by the sultan himself, and all the officers and dependents of his court. In it are also kept the females of the harem.
A harem; a place for keeping wives or concubines; sometimes, loosely, a place of licentious pleasure; a house of debauchery.


seraglios ::: the harem of a Muslim house or palace; a place in a Sultan"s palace where concubines and wives are secluded. Also fig.

serai ::: n. --> A palace; a seraglio; also, in the East, a place for the accommodation of travelers; a caravansary, or rest house.

sheliju. (J. sharigu; K. sarigu 舍利具). In Chinese, a "reliquary container" containing the relics (sARĪRA) of the Buddha or a sage; also written as SHELIQI. The relics were deposited in a set of nested caskets and were placed inside or buried below the foundation of a STuPA. A tiny glass bottle placed inside several layered caskets served as the innermost container for the crystalline relic-grains remaining after cremation. The shape of the caskets differed according to time and region, from a stupa shape to the shape of a bowl or tube, and the caskets were made of gold, silver, gilt bronze, lacquered wood, porcelain, or stone. The sides of the caskets were often incised with buddha images or guardian deities. In addition to the relic, the donors frequently deposited a multitude of objects of intrinsic or artistic value in the containers, including beads, pearls, jewelry, or coins. The earliest known reliquary is a steatite casket found in the stupa of Piprāwā (fifth-fourth centuries BCE) in India. In China, the reliquary chamber excavated at the FAMENSI pagoda is the most widely researched. In contrast to most Chinese reliquary chambers, which were only accessible prior to the construction of a pagoda, the Famensi relic was escorted to and from the imperial palace. Further outstanding examples of reliquaries have been excavated at Songnimsa and Kamŭnsa in Korea. Both reliquaries date from the Silla period and show the refined amalgamation of foreign influences and native Silla craftsmanship. The center of the Songnimsa reliquary is a small green glass bottle, placed in a green glass cup decorated with twelve rings of coiled glass, which derives from Persian or Syrian prototypes. The Kamŭnsa reliquary contains a vessel in the shape of a miniature pavilion and an outer container decorated on each side with the four heavenly kings, pointing to the LOKAPĀLA cult that thrived in Silla society at that time.

Shenxiu. (J. Jinshu; K. Sinsu 神秀) (606?-706). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty and putative founder of the "Northern school" (BEI ZONG) of early Chan Buddhism. Shenxiu was a native of Kaifeng in present-day Henan province. As an extraordinarily tall man with well-defined features, Shenxiu is said to have had a commanding presence. In 625, Shenxiu was ordained at the monastery of Tiangongsi in Luoyang, but little is known of his activities in the first two decades following his ordination. In 651, Shenxiu became a disciple of HONGREN (601-674), cofounder of the East Mountain Teachings (DONGSHAN FAMEN) and the monk later recognized as the fifth patriarch of the Chan school; indeed, by many early accounts, such as the CHUAN FABAO JI and LENGQIE SHIZI JI, Shenxiu became Hongren's legitimate successor. According to the famous story in the LIUZU TANJING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch"), however, Shenxiu lost a verse-writing contest to the unlettered HUINENG (638-713), whom Hongren then in secret sanctioned as the sixth patriarch. However, it is unclear how long Shenxiu studied with Hongren. One source states that it was for a period of six years, in which case he would have left Hongren's monastery long before Huineng's arrival, making the famous poetry contest impossible. Regardless of the date of his departure, Shenxiu eventually left Hongren's monastery for Mt. Dangyang in Jingzhou (present-day Hubei province), where he remained for over twenty years and attracted many disciples. Shenxiu and his disciples were the subjects of a polemical attack by HEZE SHENHUI (684-758), who disparaged Shenxiu as representing a mere collateral branch of BODHIDHARMA's lineage and for promoting what Shenhui called a "gradual" (jian) approach to enlightenment. Shenhui instead promoted a "sudden teaching" (DUNJIAO), which he claimed derived from a so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) founded by Huineng, another (and relatively obscure) disciple of Hongren, whom Shenhui claimed was Hongren's authentic successor and the true sixth patriarch (LIUZU). Later Chan historians such as GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841) began to use the designation "Northern school" (Bei zong) to describe the lineage of Shenxiu and his disciples YIFU (661-736), PUJI (651-739), and XIANGMO ZANG (d.u.). While Shenhui's characterization of Shenxiu and his supposed "gradualism" is now known to be misleading, subsequent histories of the Chan tradition (see CHUANDENG LU) more or less adopted Shenhui's vision of early Chan; thus Huineng, rather than Shenxiu, comes to be considered the bearer of the orthodox Chan transmission. As one mark of Shenxiu's high standing within the Chan tradition of his time, in 700, Shenxiu was invited to the imperial palace by Empress WU ZETIAN, where the empress prostrated herself before the nonagenarian monk. She was so impressed with the aged Chan master that she decided to build him a new monastery on Mt. Dangyang named Dumensi. She also gave him the title of state preceptor (GUOSHI). Upon his death, he was given a state funeral. He is one of only three Buddhist monks whose biography is included in the Tang shi ("Tang Annals"). This is clearly not the profile of an imposter within the Chan lineage. Shenxiu's teachings are known to have focused on the transcendence of thoughts (linian) and the five expedient means (fangbian; S. UPĀYA); these teachings appear in "Northern school" treatises discovered at Dunhuang, such as the YUANMING LUN, Guanxin lun, and DASHENG WUSHENG FANGBIAN MEN. Shenxiu was an expert on the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA, a text favored by Hongren and the early Chan tradition, and is also thought to have written a substantial commentary on the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. Despite the uncomplimentary portrayal of the "Northern school" in mainstream Chan materials, it is now recognized that Shenxiu and his disciples actually played a much more important role in the early growth and development of the Chan school than the mature tradition acknowledged.

Shin Upagot. A semi-immortal ARHAT who, according to Burmese (Myanmar) and Thai popular tradition, dwells in a gilded palace beneath the southern ocean. Shin Upagot (P. Upagutta, S. UPAGUPTA) is endowed with extraordinarily long life and is destined to survive until the coming of the future buddha, MAITREYA. According to Burmese legend, Shin Upagot was ordered by the Buddha not to pass into PARINIRVĀnA until Maitreya had appeared so that he might protect the Buddha's religion during times of crisis. Shin Upagot is renowned for assisting King AsOKA to construct eighty-four thousand STuPAs, and for vanquishing MĀRA and converting him to Buddhism. The earliest known record of the legend of Shin Upagot as it is known in Southeast Asia is found in the LokapaNNatti, a Pāli cosmological text said to have been written at Thaton in the twelfth century. That recension of the legend, in turn, is based on Sanskrit Buddhist antecedents found in such works as the AsOKĀVADĀNA, all of which recount the exploits of the Upagupta. The legend of Shin Upagot is celebrated in the Burmese royal chronicles (yazawin), Mahayazawin-gyi (c. 1730) and Hmannan Mahayazawin-daw-gyi (1829), while the story is omitted from all Burmese ecclesiastical chronicles (thathanawin), presumably because it is not attested in Pāli sources. Shin Upagot is regarded as a protector of sailors, and because of his powers to control the weather, he is propitiated to prevent rainfall at inopportune times. He is depicted iconographically as a monk seated cross-legged, looking skyward, with his right hand reaching into his alms bowl.

Sishi'er zhang jing. (J. Shijunishogyo; K. Sasibi chang kyong 四十二章經). In Chinese, "Scripture in Forty-two Sections," a short collection of aphorisms and pithy moralistic parables traditionally regarded as the first Indian Buddhist scripture to be translated into Chinese, but now generally presumed to be an indigenous scripture (see APOCRYPHA) that was compiled in either China or Central Asia. Most scholars believe that the "Scripture in Forty-Two Sections" began to circulate during the earliest period of Buddhism in China. According to tradition, the "Scripture in Forty-Two Sections" was translated at the behest of MINGDI of the Han dynasty (r. 58-75 CE). According to the earliest surviving account, Emperor Ming had a dream one evening in which he saw a spirit flying in front of his palace. The spirit had a golden body and the top of his head emitted rays of light. The following day the emperor asked his ministers to identify the spirit. One minister replied that he had heard of a sage in India called "Buddha" who had attained the way (dao) and was able to fly. The emperor presumed that this must have been the spirit he observed in his dream, so he dispatched a group of envoys led by Zhang Qian who journeyed to the Yuezhi region (Indo-Scythia) to search out this sage; he returned with a copy of the "Scripture in Forty-Two Sections." A fifth-century source reports that the envoys also managed to secure the famous image of the UDĀYANA BUDDHA, the first buddha-image. In fifth- and sixth-century materials, there is additionally mention of two Indian monks, KĀsYAPA MĀTAnGA (d. u.) and Dharmaratna (d. u.), who returned with the Chinese envoys. By the medieval period these monks are regularly cited as cotranslators of the scripture. According to a relatively late tradition, the Emperor Ming also built the first Chinese Buddhist temple-BAIMASI in Luoyang-as a residence for the two Indian translators. Early Buddhist catalogues refer to the text simply as "Forty-Two Sections from Buddhist Scriptures," or "The Forty-Two Sections of Emperor Xiao Ming." The text consists largely of snippets culled from longer Buddhist sutras included in the Buddhist canon; parallel sections are found in the ĀGAMAs and NIKĀYAs, as well as the MAHĀVAGGA. The text also bears a number of Chinese stylistic features. The most obvious is the phrase "The Buddha said" which is used to introduce most sections, rather than the more common Buddhist opening "Thus have I heard" (EVAM MAYĀ sRUTAM). This opening is reminiscent of Confucian classics such as the Xiaojing ("Book of Filial Piety") and the Lunyu ("Analects"), where maxims and illustrative anecdotes are often prefaced with the phrase, "The master said." The terminology of the Sishi'er zhang jing borrows heavily from Daoism and the philosophical tradition known as XUANXUE (Dark Learning).

Somdej Toh. [alt. Somdet Toh] (1788-1872). The popular name of Phra Buddhacharn Toh Phomarangsi, one of the most famous Thai monks of the nineteenth century. He was born in Kamphaeng Phet province and, according to some accounts, was the son of King Rāma II. After his ordination, he distinguished himself as a scholar of Pāli scriptures and was eventually appointed as preceptor to Prince Mongkut (later King RĀMA IV) when the prince was ordained as a novice. Somdej Toh retired to the forest shortly thereafter, returning to Bangkok when he was summoned by Mongkut after his coronation as king. He remained a mentor to the king throughout his life and many stories are told of their friendship. He served first as abbot of Wat Rakhang, across the river from the Thai royal palace. Somdej Toh was renowned for his eloquent sermons and his skills as a poet, as well as for being a meditation and VINAYA master. He also was famous as a maker of highly prized amulets. After his death, he became the object of a devotional cult, with mediums who claim to speak in his voice.

splendid ::: a. --> Possessing or displaying splendor; shining; very bright; as, a splendid sun.
Showy; magnificent; sumptuous; pompous; as, a splendid palace; a splendid procession or pageant.
Illustrious; heroic; brilliant; celebrated; famous; as, a splendid victory or reputation.


Srong btsan sgam po. (Songtsen Gampo) (r. c. 605-650). The thirty-third Tibetan religious king (chos kyi rgyal po) who reigned during the period of the Yar klungs dynasty; credited with establishing Buddhism as the predominant religion in Tibet. He is considered the first of three great religious kings, along with KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN and RAL PA CAN. Although the historical facts of his life are somewhat murky, stories of Srong btsan sgam po's activities pervade Tibetan culture. His rule forged a cohesive national center and brought Tibet to the zenith of it military expansion, shaping an empire that rivaled any in Asia. During Srong btsan sgam po's reign, Tibet was surrounded by Buddhist currents to the south and west, which appear to have had a particularly profound effect on Tibetan civilization. According to traditional sources, the king and his two wives, the Nepalese BHṚKUTI and the Chinese WENCHENG, were instrumental in the early promulgation of Buddhist practice in his kingdom. An important Tibetan text, the MAnI BKA' 'BUM ("One Hundred Thousand Instructions on the Mani"), describes the monarch as an earthly manifestation of AVALOKITEsVARA, the BODHISATTVA of compassion, and his wives as forms of the female bodhisattva TĀRĀ. These accounts are at the heart of Tibet's Buddhist myth of origin and play a central role in how most Tibetans understand the history of their country and religion. After ascending the throne, Srong btsan sgam po moved his capital from the heartland of the Yar klungs Valley in the south to its modern location in LHA SA. With the support of their monarch, each queen established an important Buddhist temple to house a statue she had carried to Tibet: Bhṛkuti founding the JO KHANG temple for an image of sĀKYAMUNI called JO BO MI BSKYOD RDO RJE, Wencheng founding what is now the RA MO CHE temple for her statue of sākyamuni called JO BO SHĀKYAMUNI or Jo bo rin po che. These images were later switched, and today the Jo bo sākyamuni statue sits in the Jo khang, where it is venerated as Tibet's holiest Buddhist relic. According to legend, the Tang princess Wencheng also imported Chinese systems of geomancy and divination through which the Tibetan landscape was viewed as a supine demoness requiring subjugation in order for Buddhism to take root and flourish. Srong btsan sgam po purportedly constructed a series of "taming temples" that acted as nails pinning down the limbs of the demoness (T. srin mo), rendering her powerless. The Jo khang was constructed over the position of the demoness' heart. In addition to the Jo khang, traditional sources count twelve main taming (T. 'dul) temples spread across the Himalayan landscape, each pinning down a point on the demoness's body. These structures appear to be in concentric circles radiating out from her heart at Lha sa. Out from the heart are the "edge-pinning temples" (MTHA' 'DUL GTSUG LAG KHANG) of KHRA 'BRUG, 'GRUM, BKA' TSHAL, and GRUM PA RGYANG, said to pin down her right and left shoulders and right and left hips, respectively; and beyond that four "extra-pinning temples" (YANG 'DUL GTSUG LAG KHANG) BU CHU, MKHO MTHING, DGE GYES, and PRA DUM RTSE that pin down her right and left elbows and right and left knees, respectively. In 637, Srong btsan sgam po established an eleven-storied palace on the hill of northeast Lha sa called Mar po ri. While this structure was later destroyed by fire, it served as the foundation for the PO TA LA palace constructed in the seventeenth century under the direction of the fifth DALAI LAMA NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO. The king is also said to have commissioned his minister Thon mi SaMbhota to create a new script (what is now known as Tibetan) in order to translate Buddhist texts from Sanskrit. He also established what is known as the "great legal code" (gtsug lag bka' khrims chen po). While contemporary scholars now question the portrait of Srong btsan sgam po as a pious convert to Buddhism (it is known, for example, that he maintained close ties to the early BON religion), many of Tibet's most important Buddhist institutions were established during his time.

suddhodana. (P. Suddhodana; T. Zas gtsang; C. Jingfan wang; J. Jobon o; K. Chongban wang 淨飯王). In Sanskrit, lit. "Pure Rice"; the royal father of GAUTAMA Buddha. suddhodana was the son of SiMhahanu (P. Sīhahanu), a king of the sĀKYA clan, and ruled in KAPILAVASTU (P. Kapilavatthu) in the foothills of the Himālayas, in present-day Nepal. suddhodana's wife was MAHĀMĀYĀ, who died seven days after giving birth to prince Gautama. According to some accounts of the Buddha's life, suddhodana was also already married to, or subsequently married, MAHĀPRAJĀPATĪ, Māyā's sister and thus Gautama's aunt, who raised the infant and eventually became the first woman to be ordained as a Buddhist nun (BHIKsUnĪ). At the time of the bodhisattva's birth, his father asked eight priests to examine the child and predict his future. There are several versions of this event, but in the Pāli NIDĀNAKATHĀ, seven predict that he will become either a CAKRAVARTIN or a buddha, while one, KondaNNa (S. KAUndINYA; see ĀJNĀTAKAUndINYA), predicts that it is certain that he will become a buddha, and will do so after seeing four portents (CATURNIMITTA)-viz., of a sick man, an old man, a corpse, and a religious mendicant. KondaNNa and the sons of four of the eight court priests would eventually become the group of five ascetics (S. PANCAVARGIKA, P. paNcavaggiyā) who would be the Buddha's first disciples. In order to prevent his son's exposure to the sufferings of life, the king built three palaces filled only with youth and beauty. His father paid homage to his young son on two occasions, first when the ascetic Asita bowed to the infant and second, when, during a ploughing festival, he saw his young son meditating under a tree; the sun had stopped its course across the sky in order that the child would remain in shadow of a jambu tree. Despite his attempts to distract his son with all manner of sensual pleasures in his three palaces, the king's efforts were ultimately in vain and the prince eventually determined to leave behind the household life (PRAVRAJITA) after witnessing each of the portents. His father sought unsuccessfully to dissuade him, saying that it was not the right time for the prince, now with a wife and child, to renounce the world. Years later, when Gautama returned to Kapilavastu as an enlightened buddha, suddhodana became a devoted follower of his son. However, he objected to the Buddha's ordination of his young son RĀHULA, causing the Buddha to promulgate a rule that in the future, parents must give permission before their son is ordained. The king became a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA) himself, his success at meditation initially hindered by his excessive joy that his son was the Buddha. Shortly before his death, the king became an ARHAT.

Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra. (T. Bde ba can gyi bkod pa'i mdo; C. Wuliangshou jing; J. Muryojukyo; K. Muryangsu kyong 無量壽經). Literally, the "Sutra Displaying [the Land of] Bliss," the title of the two most important Mahāyāna sutras of the "PURE LAND" tradition. The two sutras differ in length, and thus are often referred to in English as the "larger" and "smaller" (or "longer" and "shorter") Sukhāvatīvyuhasutras; the shorter one is commonly called the AMITĀBHASuTRA. Both sutras are believed to date from the third century CE. The longer and shorter sutras, together with the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING (*Amitāyurdhyānasutra), constitute the three main texts associated with the pure land tradition of East Asia (see JINGTU SANBUJING). There are multiple Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan versions of both the longer and shorter sutras, with significant differences among them. ¶ The longer Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra begins with ĀNANDA noticing that the Buddha is looking especially serene one day, and so asks him the reason. The Buddha responds that he was thinking back many millions of eons in the past to the time of the buddha LOKEsVARARĀJA. The Buddha then tells a story in the form of a flashback. In the audience of this buddha was a monk named DHARMĀKARA, who approached Lokesvararāja and proclaimed his aspiration to become a buddha. Dharmākara then requested the Buddha to describe all of the qualities of the buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). Lokesvararāja provided a discourse that lasted one million years, describing each of the qualities of the lands of trillions of buddhas. Dharmākara then retired to meditate for five eons, seeking to concentrate all of the marvelous qualities of the millions of buddha-fields that had been described to him into a single pure buddha-field. When he completed his meditation, he returned to describe this imagined land to Lokesvararāja, promising to create a place of birth for fortunate beings and vowing that he would follow the bodhisattva path and become the buddha of this new buddha-field. He described the land he would create in a series of vows, stating that if this or that marvel was not present in his pure land, may he not become a buddha: e.g., "If in my pure land there are animals, ghosts, or hell denizens, may I not become a buddha." He made forty-eight such vows. These included the vow that all the beings in his pure land will be the color of gold; that beings in his pure land will have no conception of private property; that no bodhisattva will have to wash, dry, or sew his own robes; that bodhisattvas in his pure land will be able to hear the dharma in whatever form they wish to hear it and whenever they wish to hear it; that any woman who hears his name, creates the aspiration to enlightenment (BODHICITTA), and feels disgust at the female form, will not be reborn as a woman again. Two of these vows would become the focus of particular attention. In the eighteenth vow (seventeenth in the East Asian versions), Dharmākara vows that when he has become a buddha, he will appear at the moment of death to anyone who creates the aspiration to enlightenment, hears his name, and remembers him with faith. In the nineteenth vow (eighteenth in the East Asian versions), he promises that anyone who hears his name, wishes to be reborn in his pure land, and dedicates their merit to that end, will be reborn there, even if they make such a resolution as few as ten times during the course of their life. Only those who have committed one of the five inexpiable transgressions bringing immediate retribution (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN, viz., patricide, matricide, killing an ARHAT, wounding a buddha, or causing schism in the SAMGHA) are excluded. The scene then returns to the present. Ānanda asks the Buddha whether Dharmākara was successful, whether he did in fact traverse the long path of the bodhisattva to become a buddha. The Buddha replies that he did indeed succeed and that he became the buddha Amitābha (Infinite Light). The pure land that he created is called sukhāvatī. Because Dharmākara became a buddha, all of the things that he promised to create in his pure land have come true, and the Buddha proceeds to describe sukhāvatī in great detail. It is carpeted with lotuses made of seven precious substances, some of which reach ten leagues (YOJANA) in diameter. Each lotus emits millions of rays of light and from each ray of light there emerge millions of buddhas who travel to world systems in all directions to teach the dharma. The pure land is level, like the palm of one's hand, without mountains or oceans. It has great rivers, the waters of which rise as high or sink as low as one pleases, from the shoulders to the ankles, and vary in temperature as one pleases. The sound of the river takes the form of whatever auspicious words one wishes to hear, such as "buddha," "emptiness," "cessation," and "great compassion." The words "hindrance," "misfortune," and "pain" are never heard, nor are the words "day" and "night" used, except as metaphors. The beings in the pure land do not need to consume food. When they are hungry, they simply visualize whatever food they wish and their hunger is satisfied without needing to eat. They dwell in bejeweled palaces of their own design. Some of the inhabitants sit cross-legged on lotus blossoms while others are enclosed within the calyx of a lotus. The latter do not feel imprisoned, because the calyx of the lotus is quite large, containing within it a palace similar to that inhabited by the gods. Those who dedicate their merit toward rebirth in the pure land yet who harbor doubts are reborn inside lotuses where they must remain for five hundred years, enjoying visions of the pure land but deprived of the opportunity to hear the dharma. Those who are free from doubt are reborn immediately on open lotuses, with unlimited access to the dharma. Such rebirth would become a common goal of Buddhist practice, for monks and laity alike, in India, Tibet, and throughout East Asia. ¶ The "shorter" Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra was translated into Chinese by such famous figures as KUMĀRAJĪVA and XUANZANG. It is devoted largely to describing this buddha's land and its many wonders, including the fact that even the names for the realms of animals and the realms of hell-denizens are not known; all of the beings born there will achieve enlightenment in their next lifetime. In order to be reborn there, one should dedicate one's merit to that goal and bear in mind the name of the buddha here known as AMITĀYUS (Infinite Life). Those who are successful in doing so will see Amitāyus and a host of bodhisattvas before them at the moment of death, ready to escort them to sukhāvatī, the land of bliss. In order to demonstrate the efficacy of this practice, the Buddha goes on to list the names of many other buddhas abiding in the four cardinal directions, the nadir, and the zenith, who also praise the buddha-field of Amitāyus. Furthermore, those who hear the names of the buddhas that he has just recited will be embraced by those buddhas. Perhaps to indicate how his own buddha-field (that is, our world) differs from that of Amitāyus, sākyamuni Buddha concludes by conceding that it has been difficult to teach the dharma in a world as degenerate as ours.

syāmāvatī. (P. Sāmāvatī; T. Sngo bsangs can; C. Ganrong; J. Kon'yo; K. Kamyong 紺容). Lay disciple whom the Buddha declared to be foremost among laywomen who live in kindness. She was the daughter of a wealthy man from the city of Bhadravatī. When plague broke out in the city, she and her parents fled to Kausāmbī (P. Kosambī) where her parents fell ill and died. She was adopted by two donors of alms to the poor, Mitra and Ghosaka, who noticed her virtue and intelligence. syāmāvatī was exceptionally beautiful and one festival day, Udāyana (P. Udena), the king of Kausāmbī, noticed her on her way to the river to bathe and fell in love with her. Initially rebuffed in his advances, Udāyana eventually wed syāmāvatī and made her his chief queen. syāmāvatī's slave girl was Ksudratārā (P. Khujjutarā) who each day was given eight coins to buy flowers from the market. Ksudratārā was dishonest and would spend four coins on flowers and pocket the rest. One day on her way to the market, Ksudratārā listened to the Buddha preach and at once became a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). She then confessed her thievery to syāmāvatī, who immediately forgave her, and she told her mistress about the Buddha's teachings. Enthralled, syāmāvatī asked Ksudratārā to listen to the Buddha's sermons daily and report his message to her and her attendants. In this way, under Ksudratārā's instruction, syāmāvatī and her attendants also became stream-enterers. On Ksudratārā's advice, syāmāvatī had holes made in the walls of the women's quarters so that she and her attendants could watch the Buddha as he passed through the lane below. syāmāvatī had a wicked co-wife, Māgandiyā, who, out of jealousy of her and a hatred for the Buddha, sought her destruction. syāmāvatī survived three plots, which were eventually revealed, winning in compensation the boon to have ĀNANDA preach daily to her and her companions. Finally Māgandiyā had the palace set afire and syāmāvatī along with her attendants burned to death. The Buddha declared, however, that none of the deceased had attained less than the state of stream-enterer, while some had even reached the state of once-returners (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN) and nonreturners (ANĀGĀMIN).

tanch'ong. (丹靑). In Korean, "red and blue," or more literally "cinnabar and azure-green"; a style of painting colors and patterns on the wooden beams, rafters, and pillars of Korean Buddhist monastery buildings, as well as on palaces and other traditional-style wooden buildings. The five colors used in tanch'ong painting are red, azure-green, yellow, black, and white. These colors are related to the five Chinese elements (metal, wood, fire, water, earth) and the five directions (the four cardinal directions plus the center). The paint, made from a thick coating of minerals mixed with glue, protects the wood from burrowing insects and water damage and sets the monasteries and palaces apart from the buildings of private citizens, who were prohibited by law from using the same decorative techniques. Tanch'ong painting may date from early in the inception of Buddhism in Korea during the fourth or fifth centuries, and there is evidence of the use of tanch'ong during both the Koguryo and Silla kingdoms. There are various types of tanch'ong, which range from applying a utilitarian base coat, usually in azure-green, to protect the wood, to much more elaborate styles that uses all five colors in geometric patterns, sometimes interspersed with stylized flowers, water lilies, pomegranates, and bubbles. Tanch'ong is usually painted using stencils made from perforated paper dusted with chalk to imprint the pattern on the surface to be painted. After the painting is done, an oil coat is spread over the paint to protect and brighten the colors. Some of the best-known examples of tanch'ong can be found at the monasteries of PUSoKSA and SUDoKSA.

templar ::: n. --> One of a religious and military order first established at Jerusalem, in the early part of the 12th century, for the protection of pilgrims and of the Holy Sepulcher. These Knights Templars, or Knights of the Temple, were so named because they occupied an apartment of the palace of Bladwin II. in Jerusalem, near the Temple.
A student of law, so called from having apartments in the Temple at London, the original buildings having belonged to the Knights Templars. See Inner Temple, and Middle Temple, under Temple.


temples and palaces must have been general in

The first Dalai Lama, DGE 'DUN GRUB, was known as a great scholar and religious practitioner. A direct disciple of TSONG KHA PA, he is remembered for founding BKRA SHIS LHUN PO monastery near the central Tibetan town of Shigatse. The second Dalai Lama, Dge 'dun rgya mtsho, was born the son of a RNYING MA YOGIN and became a renowned tantric master in his own right. ¶ It is with the third Dalai Lama, BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO, that the Dalai Lama lineage actually begins. Recognized at a young age as the reincarnation of Dge 'dun rgya mtsho, he was appointed abbot of 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery near LHA SA and soon rose to fame throughout central Asia as a Buddhist teacher. He served as a religious master for the Mongol ruler Altan Khan, who bestowed the title "Dalai Lama," and is credited with converting the Tümed Mongols to Buddhism. Later in life, he traveled extensively across eastern Tibet and western China, teaching and carrying out monastic construction projects. ¶ The fourth Dalai Lama, Yon tan rgya mtsho, was recognized in the person of the grandson of Altan Khan's successor, solidifying Mongol-Tibetan ties. ¶ While the first four Dalai Lamas served primarily as religious scholars and teachers, the fifth Dalai Lama, NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, combined religious and secular activities to become one of Tibet's preeminent statesmen. He was a dynamic political leader who, with the support of Gushi Khan, defeated his opponents and in 1642 was invested with temporal powers over the Tibetan state, in addition to his religious role, a position that succeeding Dalai Lamas held until 1959. A learned and prolific author, he and his regent, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, were largely responsible for the identification of the Dalai Lamas with the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. The construction of the PO TA LA palace began during his reign (and was completed after this death). He is popularly known as the "Great Fifth." ¶ The sixth Dalai Lama, TSHANGS DBYANGS RGYA MTSHO, was a controversial figure who chose to abandon the strict monasticism of his predecessors in favor of a life of society and culture, refusing to take the vows of a fully ordained monk (BHIKsU). He is said to have frequented the drinking halls below the Po ta la palace. He constructed pleasure gardens and the temple of the NAGAs, called the KLU KHANG, on the palace grounds. He is remembered especially for his poetry, which addresses themes such as love and the difficulty of spiritual practice. Tibetans generally interpret his behavior as exhibiting an underlying tantric wisdom, a skillful means for teaching the dharma. His death is shrouded in mystery. Official accounts state that he died while under arrest by Mongol troops. According to a prominent secret biography (GSANG BA'I RNAM THAR), however, he lived many more years, traveling across Tibet in disguise. ¶ The seventh Dalai Lama, SKAL BZANG RGYA MTSHO, was officially recognized only at the age of twelve, and due to political complications, did not participate actively in affairs of state. He was renowned for his writings on tantra and his poetry. ¶ The eighth Dalai Lama, 'Jam dpal rgya mtsho (Jampal Gyatso, 1758-1804), built the famous NOR BU GLING KHA summer palace. ¶ The ninth through twelfth Dalai Lamas each lived relatively short lives, due, according to some accounts, to political intrigue and the machinations of power-hungry regents. According to tradition, from the death of one Dalai Lama to the investiture of the next Dalai Lama as head of state (generally a period of some twenty years), the nation was ruled by a regent, who was responsible for discovering the new Dalai Lama and overseeing his education. If the Dalai Lama died before reaching his majority, the reign of the regent was extended. ¶ The thirteenth Dalai Lama, THUB BSTAN RGYA MTSHO, was an astute and forward-looking political leader who guided Tibet through a period of relative independence during a time of foreign entanglements with Britain, China, and Russia. In his last testament, he is said to have predicted Tibet's fall to Communist China. ¶ The fourteenth and present Dalai Lama, Bstan 'dzin rgya mtsho, assumed his position several years prior to reaching the age of majority as his country faced the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. In 1959, he escaped into exile, establishing a government-in-exile in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala (DHARMAsALA) in northwestern India. Since then, he has traveled and taught widely around the world, while also advocating a nonviolent solution to Tibet's occupation. He was born in the A mdo region of what is now Qinghai province in China to a farming family, although his older brother had already been recognized as an incarnation at a nearby important Dge lugs monastery (SKU 'BUM). On his becoming formally accepted as Dalai Lama, his family became aristocrats and moved to Lha sa. He was educated traditionally by private tutors (yongs 'dzin), under the direction first of the regent Stag brag rin po che (in office 1941-1950), and later Gling rin po che Thub bstan lung rtogs rnam rgyal (1903-1983) and Khri byang rin po che Blo bzang ye shes (1901-1981). His modern education was informal, gained from conversations with travelers, such as the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer. When the Chinese army entered the Khams region of eastern Tibet in 1951, he formally took over from the regent and was enthroned as the head of the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG government. In the face of Tibetan unrest as the Chinese government brought Tibet firmly under central control, the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959; the Indian government accorded the Dalai Lama respect as a religious figure but did not accept his claim to be the head of a separate state. In 1989, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an event that increased his prominence around the world. He is the author of many books in English, most of them the written record of lectures and traditional teachings translated from Tibetan.

The first three successors to Tsong-kha-pa as leaders of the Gelukpa school were his foremost disciples Gyel-tshab-je (Rgyal tshab rje), Khe-dub-je (Mkhas grub rje), and his nephew Gen-dun-dub (Dge ’dun grub). Gendundub, who founded the monastery of Tashi-Lhunpo and built up the Gelukpa order, was subsequently recognized as the first Dalai Lama. He was succeeded by Gen-dun Gya-tsho (Dge ’dun rgya mtsho), who was recognized as the reincarnation of Gendundub. Gendun Gyatsho was, in turn, succeeded by his reincarnation, Sonam Gyatsho (Bsod nams Rgya mstho). In 1578 Sonam Gyatsho received the patronage of Altan Khan, leader of the Tumed Mongols, who conferred on him the honorific title of Ta-le Lama, which was posthumously conferred on Sonam Gyatsho’s predecessors. From this time on the Gelukpas received Mongol patronage and spread their school among the Mongols — in fact, the fourth Dalai Lama was a great-grandson of Altan Khan. It was the fifth Dalai Lama who commissioned the building of the Potala palace and, with the aid of the Mongol leader Gushri Khan, established the Gelukpa order as the dominant power in Tibet and the Dalai Lama in Lhasa as the temporal ruler of the country.

the guardian of the gate of Sargon’s palace. A

the halls or palaces of the 1st Heaven. According

throne, throne of God; a place of abiding; palace, citadel; buttress, support.

Tiryns A city in Argolis, belonging to the Achaean age, said to have been founded by Proetus, brother of Acrisius, who was succeeded by Perseus; and the scene of the early life of Heracles. The site was excavated by Schliemann and Dorpfeld, and an ancient palace discovered. The walls, together with cyclopean masonry in other places, were constructed under the guidance of very late Atlantean initiates, who colonized parts of Europe when it had begun to arise from under the waters of the Atlantic, and when their own vast continental system had largely disappeared. Actually, it may be that the builders of the so-called cyclopean stonework or masonry structures in Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor, and perhaps elsewhere, were immigrants from Plato’s Atlantis or Poseidonis, as related in the Timaeus, and referred to by other Greek and Roman writers.

to palaces or temples as guardian spirits. In early

Toshodaiji. (唐招提寺). In Japanese, "Monastery for a Tang Wanderer"; located in the ancient Japanese capital of Nara and the head monastery of the VINAYA school (J. Risshu). Toshodaiji was originally a residence for Prince Niitabe, who donated it to the Tang-Chinese monk GANJIN (C. Jianzhen; 688-763), the founder of the vinaya school (RISSHu) in Japan. Ganjin came to Japan in 759 at the invitation of two Japanese monks who had studied with him in China at his home monastery of Damingsi (J. Daimyoji) in present-day Yangzhou. Ganjin tried to reach Japan five times before finally succeeding; then sixty-six and blind, he established an ordination platform at ToDAIJI before moving to Toshodaiji, where he passed away in 763. The monastery's name thus refers to Ganjin, a "wandering monk from Tang." The kondo, the golden hall that is the monastery's main shrine, was erected after Ganjin's death and finished around 781, followed three decades later by the monastery's five-story pagoda, which was finished in 810. The kondo is one of the few Nara-period temple structures that has survived and is one of the reasons why the monastery is so prized. It was built in the Yosemune style, with a colonnade with eight pillars, and enshrines three main images: the cosmic buddha VAIROCANA at the center, flanked by BHAIsAJYAGURU, and a thousand-armed AVALOKITEsVARA (see SĀHASRABHUJASĀHASRANETRĀVALOKITEsVARA), only 953 of which remain today, with images of BRAHMĀ and INDRA at the sides and statues of the four heavenly king protectors of Buddhism standing in each corner. The kodo, or lecture hall, was moved to the monastery from Heijo Palace and is the only extant structure that captures the style of a Tenpyo palace; it houses a statue of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. A kyozo, or SuTRA repository, holds the old library. The monastery also includes a treasure repository, a bell tower, and an ordination platform in the lotus pond. In 763, as Ganjin's death neared, he had a memorial statue of himself made and installed in his quarters at Toshodaiji. This dry-lacquer statue of a meditating Ganjin is enshrined today in the mieido (image hall), but is brought out for display only on his memorial days of June 5-7 each year; it is the oldest example in Japan of such a memorial statue. Toshodaiji was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998.

trāyastriMsa. (P. tāvatiMsa; T. sum cu rtsa gsum pa; C. sanshisan tian/daoli tian; J. sanjusanten/toriten; K. samsipsam ch'on/tori ch'on 三十三天/忉利天). In Sanskrit, lit. "thirty-three"; the heaven of the thirty-three, the second lowest of the six heavens of the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU), just above the heaven of the four heavenly kings (CĀTURMAHĀRĀJAKĀYIKA) and below the YĀMA heaven. Like all Buddhist heavens, it is a place of rebirth and not a permanent post-mortem abode. The heaven is situated on the flat summit of Mount SUMERU and is inhabited by thirty-three male divinities and their attendants, presided over by the divinity sAKRA, the king of the gods (sAKRO DEVĀNĀM INDRAḤ). The divinities live in palaces of gold among beautiful parks and have life spans of thirty million years. The heaven is commonly mentioned in Buddhist texts. In the seventh year after his enlightenment, after performing the sRĀVASTĪ MIRACLES, the Buddha magically traveled to the heaven of the thirty-three, where he spent the three months of the rains retreat (VARsĀ) teaching the ABHIDHARMA to his mother MĀYĀ. (She had descended to meet him there from her abode in the TUsITA heaven, where she had been reborn as a male deity after her death as Queen Māyā.) At the conclusion of his teaching, the Buddha made his celebrated return to earth from the heaven on a bejeweled ladder provided by sakra, descending at the city of SĀMKĀsYA. MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA also made numerous visits to the heaven to learn from its inhabitants about the virtuous deeds they performed in the past that resulted in their rebirth there. It was said that when a human performed a particularly virtuous deed, a mansion for that person would appear in trāyastriMsa for that person to inhabit upon being reborn there. When Prince SIDDHĀRTHA renounced the world, he cut off his hair with his sword and cast it into the sky; the hair was caught by sakra in trāyastriMsa, who enshrined it in a CAITYA that is worshipped by the gods. Scholars have noted the correspondence between the number of divinities in this heaven and the traditional number of thirty-three gods of the Ṛgveda, suggesting that this heaven represents an attempt by Buddhists to absorb the pre-Buddhistic Indian pantheon.

Tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho. (Tsangyang Gyatso) (1683-1706). The sixth DALAI LAMA, and among the most famous and beloved of the Dalai Lamas, but not for the same qualities of sanctity and scholarship for which several other members of the lineage are known. He was born into a RNYING MA family near the border with Bhutan. The fifth Dalai Lama had died in 1682 but his death was concealed until 1697 by his minister, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, so that the construction of the PO TA LA palace could continue unabated. The sixth Dalai Lama was identified at the age of two, but his identification was kept secret; he and his family lived in seclusion in Mtsho na (Tsona) for twelve years. The death of the fifth Dalai Lama and the identity of the sixth were finally disclosed in 1697. In that year, the sixth Dalai Lama was brought to LHA SA, where he received the vows of a novice from the PAn CHEN LAMA. He received instructions in Buddhist doctrine and practice from the Pan chen Lama and other scholars for the next four years. In 1701, he was urged to take the percepts of a fully ordained monk (BHIKsU). However, he refused to do so and also asked to give up his novice vows (which included the vow of celibacy), threatening to commit suicide if he were not permitted to do so. He gave up his vows and lived as a layman, with long hair, although he still remained in the position of Dalai Lama. He had liaisons with women in Lha sa; the houses he visited were said to have been painted yellow in his honor. He is credited with a series of famous love songs, some of which contain Buddhist references. In 1705, the Qoshot Mongol leader Lha bzang Khan declared himself king of Tibet and executed Sde srid Sang rgyas rgya mtsho. In 1706, Lha bzang Khan declared, with the support of the Manchu Kangxi emperor, that Tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho was not the true Dalai Lama and sent him into exile in Beijing. He died en route, although a legend developed that he escaped death and lived in disguise for another forty years.

valhalla ::: n. --> The palace of immortality, inhabited by the souls of heroes slain in battle.
Fig.: A hall or temple adorned with statues and memorials of a nation&


vatican ::: n. --> A magnificent assemblage of buildings at Rome, near the church of St. Peter, including the pope&

verge ::: n. --> A rod or staff, carried as an emblem of authority; as, the verge, carried before a dean.
The stick or wand with which persons were formerly admitted tenants, they holding it in the hand, and swearing fealty to the lord. Such tenants were called tenants by the verge.
The compass of the court of Marshalsea and the Palace court, within which the lord steward and the marshal of the king&


Vessantara. (S. Visvantara/VisvaMtara; T. Thams cad sgrol; C. Xudana; J. Shudainu/Shudaina; K. Sudaena 須大拏). Pāli name of a prince who is the subject of the most famous of all JĀTAKA tales; he was the BODHISATTVA's final existence before he took rebirth in TUsITA heaven, where he awaited the moment when he would descend into Queen MĀYĀ's womb to be born as Prince SIDDHĀRTHA and eventually become GAUTAMA Buddha. During his lifetime as Prince Vessantara, the bodhisattva (P. bodhisatta) fulfilled the perfection (P. pāramī; S. PĀRAMITĀ) of generosity (DĀNA; see also DĀNAPĀRAMITĀ). The story is found in Sanskrit in Āryasura's JĀTAKAMĀLĀ and Ksemendra's Avadānakalpalatā, with the same main features as in the Pāli version. The story enjoys its greatest popularity in Southeast Asia, so the Pāli version is described here. ¶ The bodhisattva was born as the crown prince of Sivirattha, the son of King SaNjaya and Queen Phusatī of the kingdom of Jetuttara. On the day of his birth, a white elephant named Paccaya was also born, who had the power to make rain. When Vessantara was sixteen, he married a maiden named Maddī, with whom he had a son and a daughter, Jāli and Kanhajinā. Once, when Kalinga was suffering a severe drought, brāhmanas from that kingdom requested that Vessantara give them his white elephant to alleviate their plight. Vessantara complied, handing over to them his elephant along with its accessories. The citizens of Jetuttara were outraged that he should deprive his own kingdom of such a treasure and demanded his banishment to the distant mountain of Vankagiri. His father, King SaNjaya, consented and ordered Vessantara to leave via the road frequented by highwaymen. Before his departure, Vessantara held a great almsgiving, in which he distributed seven hundred of every type of thing. Maddī insisted that she and her children accompany the prince, and they were transported out of the city on a grand carriage pulled by four horses. Four brāhmanas begged for his horses, which he gave. Gods then pulled his carriage until a brāhmana begged for his carriage. Thereafter, they traveled on foot. Along the way crowds gathered, some even offering their kingdoms for him to rule, so famous was he for his generosity. At Vankagiri, they lived in two hermitages, one for Vessantara and the other for his wife and children. These had been constructed for them by Vissakamma, architect of the gods. There, they passed four months until one day an old brāhmana named Jujaka arrived and asked for Jāli and Kanhajinā as slaves. Vessantara expected this to occur, so he sent his wife on an errand so that she would not be distressed at the sight of him giving their children away. Jujaka was cruel, and the children ran away to their father, only to be returned so that Vessantara's generosity could be perfected. When Maddī returned, she fainted at the news. Then, Sakka (sAKRA), king of the gods, assumed the form of a brāhmana and asked for Maddī; Vessantara gave his wife to the brāhmana. The earth quaked at the gift. Sakka immediately revealed his identity and returned Maddī, granting Vessantara eight boons. In the meantime, Jujaka, the cruel brāhmana, traveled to Jetuttara, where King SaNjaya bought the children for a great amount of treasure, including a seven-storied palace. Jujaka, however, died of overeating and left no heirs, so the treasure was returned to the king. Meanwhile, the white elephant was returned because the kingdom of Kalinga could not maintain him. A grand entourage was sent to Vankagiri to fetch Vessantara and Maddī, and when they returned amid great celebration they were crowned king and queen of Sivirattha. In order that Vessantara would be able to satisfy all who came for gifts, Sakka rained down jewels waist deep on the palace. When Vessantara died, he was born as a god in tusita heaven, where he awaited his last rebirth as Siddhattha Gotama, when he would become a buddha. ¶ As a depiction of the virtue of dāna, the story of Vessantara is one of the most important Buddhist tales in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia and is depicted on murals throughout the region. Thai retellings of the Vessantara-Jātaka, known also as the Mahāchat, or "Great Jātaka," are found in the many Thai dialects and consist of thirteen chapters. The story is popular in Thailand's north and especially in the northeast, where virtually every monastery (excluding forest monasteries) holds a festival known as the Bun Phra Wet, usually in February or March, at which the entire story is recited in one day and one night. Laypeople assist in decorating their local monastery with trunks and branches of banana trees to represent the forest to which Vessantara was banished after giving away his kingdom's auspicious elephant. They also present offerings of flowers, hanging decorations, balls of glutinous rice, and money. The festival includes, among other things, a procession to the monastery that includes local women carrying long horizontal cloth banners on which the Vessantara story is painted. The merit earned by participating in the festival is linked to two beliefs: (1) that the participant will be reborn at the time of the future buddha, MAITREYA, known in Thai as Phra Si Ariya Mettrai (P. Ariya Metteyya), and (2) that the community, which remains primarily agricultural, will be blessed with sufficient rainfall.

Vimalakīrtinirdesa. (T. Dri med grags pas bstan pa'i mdo; C. Weimo jing; J. Yuimagyo; K. Yuma kyong 維摩經). In Sanskrit, "Vimalakīrti's Instructions"; one of the most beloved Indian Mahāyāna sutras, renowned especially for having a layman, the eponymous VIMALAKĪRTI, as its protagonist. The text probably dates from around the second century CE. Among the seven translations of the sutra into Chinese, the most famous is that made by KUMĀRAJĪVA in 406. His translation seems to have been adapted to appeal to Chinese mores, emphasizing the worldly elements of Vimalakīrti's teachings and introducing the term "filial piety" into the text. The sutra was also translated by XUANZANG in 650. The sutra was translated into Tibetan twice, the more famous being that of Chos nyid tshul khrims in the ninth century. It has also been rendered into Sogdian, Khotanese, and Uighur. The original Sanskrit of the text was lost for over a millennia until a Sanskrit manuscript was discovered in the PO TA LA palace in Tibet in 2001. The narrative of the sutra begins with the Buddha requesting that his leading sRĀVAKA disciples visit his lay disciple Vimalakīrti, who is ill. Each demurs, recounting a previous meeting with Vimalakīrti in which the layman had chastised the monk for his limited understanding of the dharma. The Buddha then instructs his leading bodhisattva disciples to visit Vimalakīrti. Each again demurs until MANJUsRĪ reluctantly agrees. Vimalakīrti explains that his sickness is the sickness of all sentient beings, and goes on to describe how a sick bodhisattva should understand his sickness, emphasizing the necessity of both wisdom (PRAJNĀ) and method (UPĀYA). A large audience of monks and bodhisattvas then comes to Vimalakīrti's house, where he delivers a sermon on "inconceivable liberation" (acintyavimoksa). Among the audience is sĀRIPUTRA, the wisest of the Buddha's srāvaka disciples. As in other Mahāyāna sutras, the eminent srāvaka is made to play the fool, repeatedly failing to understand how all dichotomies are overcome in emptiness (suNYATĀ), most famously when a goddess momentarily transforms him into a female. Later, a series of bodhisattvas take turns describing various forms of duality and how they are overcome in nonduality. Vimalakīrti is the last to be invited to speak. He remains silent and is praised for this teaching of the entrance into nonduality. The sutra is widely quoted in later literature, especially on the topics of emptiness, method, and nonduality. It became particularly famous in East Asia because the protagonist is a layman, who repeatedly demonstrates that his wisdom is superior to that of monks. Scenes from the sutra are often depicted in East Asian Buddhist art.

Vimānavatthu. In Pāli, "Accounts of the Celestial Abodes," the sixth book of the Pāli KHUDDAKANIKĀYA. The text contains accounts of the heavenly abodes (P. vimāna, lit. "mansion, palace") of various divinities (DEVA), which they acquired as rewards for meritorious deeds performed in previous lives. Its eighty-three stories were told to Moggallāna (MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA) and other saints during their sojourns in celestial realms, who in turn related them to the Buddha. The Vimānavatthu appears in the Pali Text Society's English translation series as Stories of the Mansions.

Vipasyin. (P. Vipassī; T. Rnam gzigs; C. Piposhi fo; J. Bibashi-butsu; K. Pibasi pul 毘婆尸佛). Sanskrit proper name of the sixth of the seven buddhas of antiquity (SAPTATATHĀGATA), who directly precede sĀKYAMUNI; Vipasyin is also listed as the nineteenth of twenty-five buddhas mentioned in the BUDDHAVAMSA. In the Pāli tradition, his story is first recounted in the MAHĀPADĀNASUTTA in the DĪGHANIKĀYA. There, it is said that Vipassī's father was Bandhumā and his mother was Bandhumatī. He was born in the Khema park and belonged to the KondaNNa clan. During his time, the human life span was eighty thousand years. He dwelt as a householder for eight thousand years and possessed three palaces named Nanda, Sunanda, and Sirmā, one for each of the three seasons. His wife's name was Sutanā, and he had a son named Samavattakkhandha. When he renounced the world, he left his house in a chariot, after which he practiced austerities for eight months. As with all BODHISATTVAs, Vipassī abandoned austerities as unprofitable when he realized that they did not lead to enlightenment. He attained buddhahood under a pātali (S. pātali) tree. In the description of his enlightenment, he is shown contemplating dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), but in a chain of ten rather than the standard twelve links. He preached his first sermon in the Khema Deer Park to his brother Khandha and to Tissa, the son of his family's priest. These two became his chief monk disciples. His chief nun disciples were Candā and Candamittā, and his attendant was named Asoka. His chief lay disciples were the laymen Punnabbasummitta and Nāga, and the laywomen Sirimā and Uttarā. He died at the age of eighty thousand in the Sumittārāma, and over his relics was erected a reliquary (STuPA) seven leagues high. The bodhisattva who was to become GAUTAMA Buddha was at that time a NĀGA king named Atula.

Wat Mahathat. In Thai, "Monastery of the Great Relic" (P. Mahādhātu); the abbreviated name of several important Thai monasteries. ¶ Wat Mahathat in the ancient Thai capital of AYUTHAYA was constructed in 1374 and served as the seat of the SAnGHARĀJA of the Kamavasi (P. Gāmavāsi, lit. "city-dweller") sect. The temple complex was expanded and restored several times before the city was sacked by the Burmese in 1767; it remains in ruins. Excavations in 1956 unearthed relics. ¶ Wat Phra Mahathat Woromaha Vihan (P. Mahādhātuvaramahāvihāra), located in Nakhon Si Thammarat and thus also known as WAT PHRA THAT NAKHON SI THAMMARAT, was founded c. 757 CE and was originally a sRĪVIJAYA MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist monastery. Its famous STuPA, modeled on the MAHĀTHuPA in Sri Lanka, was built in the early thirteenth century to house a tooth relic of the Buddha brought back from the island. ¶ The best-known of the contemporary wats with this name, Wat Mahathat Yuwaraja Rangsarit Raja Woramaha Wihan (P. Mahādhātuyuvarāja [Thai, Rangsarit] Rājavaramāhavihāra), dates from the Ayuthaya period (when it was called Wat Salak), and was named the relic temple for Bangkok in 1803. Because of its location near the palaces, it has often been used for royal ceremonies. Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya, Thailand's largest Buddhist university, was located on its grounds until 2008, when the main campus was moved to Wangnoi, Ayuthaya.

Wat Phra Kaew. [alt. Wat Phra Kaeo]. In Thai, "Temple of the Emerald Buddha," perhaps the most famous Buddhist temple in Thailand, located on the grounds of the royal palace in Bangkok. Much of the construction had been completed when Rāma I moved the Thai capital to Bangkok in 1785. It is a large-walled complex, containing dozens of golden pagodas, many shrines, and two libraries. Unlike most other Buddhist temples in Thailand, the complex does not include monastic quarters because of its location inside the palace grounds. The temple is best known as the site of the Emerald Buddha, or PHRA KAEW MORAKOT, the most sacred buddha image in Thailand; Kaew is an indigenous Thai word for "glass" or "translucent"; morakot derives from the Sanskrit word for emerald (S. marakata).

Wonhyo. (C. Yuanxiao; J. Gangyo 元曉) (617-686). In Korean, "Break of Dawn"; famous monk of the Silla dynasty and probably one of the two most important monks in all of Korean Buddhist history, who was renowned for both his scholastic achievements and his efforts to propagate Buddhism among the common people. He is reputed to have written over one hundred commentaries, of which some twenty are extant. According to the hagiographical accounts of Wonhyo in the SONG GAOSENG ZHUAN and the SAMGUK YUSA, Wonhyo tried, but failed, to travel to China with his friend ŬISANG in order to study with the Chinese translator and YOGĀCĀRA exegete XUANZANG. While on the road, Wonhyo is said to have attained enlightenment after a traumatic experience in which he discovered that the earthen sanctuary in which the two travelers had taken refuge one stormy night was in fact a tomb. This experience prompted his awakening that all things are created by mind, which led Wonhyo to realize that he did not need to continue on to China in order to understand Buddhism. (Ŭisang did travel to the mainland, where he studied with the early HUAYAN exegete ZHIYAN.) As the legends about Wonhyo's enlightenment experience evolve, this story becomes even more horrific: Wonhyo is said to have discovered that the sweet water he drank in the tomb to slake his thirst was actually offal rotting in a skull, a traumatic experience that immediately prompted his realization that the mind creates all things. Wonhyo spent much of his life writing commentaries to the many new translations of Buddhist scriptures then being introduced into the Korean peninsula. A brief affair with the widowed princess of Yosok palace led to the birth of a son, who would grow up to become the famous literatus, Sol Ch'ong (c. 660-730), the creator of Idu ("clerical writing"), the earliest Korean vernacular writing system. After the affair, Wonhyo changed into lay clothes and traveled among the peasantry, singing and dancing with a gourd he named Unhindered (Muae) and practicing "unconstrained conduct" (K. muae haeng; C. WU'AI XING). ¶ In Wonhyo's many treatises, he pioneered a hermeneutical technique he called "reconciling doctrinal controversies" (HWAJAENG), which seeks to demonstrate that various Buddhist doctrines, despite their apparent differences and inconsistencies, could be integrated into a single coherent whole. This "ecumenical" approach is pervasive throughout Wonhyo's works, although its basic principle is explained chiefly in his Simmun hwajaeng non ("Ten Approaches to the Reconciliation of Doctrinal Controversy," only fragments are extant), TAESŬNG KISILLON SO ("Commentary to the 'Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna'"), and KŬMGANG SAMMAEGYoNG NON ("Exposition of the VAJRASAMĀDHISuTRA"). Wonhyo was versed in the full range of Buddhist philosophical doctrines then accessible to him in Korea, including MADHYAMAKA, YOGĀCĀRA, Hwaom, and TATHĀGATAGARBHA thought, and hwajaeng was his attempt to demonstrate how all of these various teachings of the Buddha were part of a coherent heuristic plan within the religion. Since at least the twelfth century, Wonhyo's hwajaeng exegesis has come to be portrayed as characteristic of a distinctively Korean approach to Buddhist thought.

Wumen Huikai. (J. Mumon Ekai; K. Mumun Hyegae 無門慧開) (1183-1260). In Chinese, "Gateless, Opening of Wisdom"; CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG; author of the eponymous WUMEN GUAN ("Gateless Checkpoint"), one of the two most important collections of Chan GONG'AN (J. koan; K. kongan). A native of Hangzhou prefecture in present-day Zhejiang province, Huikai was ordained by the monk "One Finger" Tianlong (d.u.), who also hailed from Hangzhou (see also YIZHI CHAN). Wumen later went to the monastery of Wanshousi in Jiangsu province to study with Yuelin Shiguan (1143-1217), from whom Huikai received the WU GONG'AN of ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN; Huikai is said to have struggled with this gong'an for six years. In 1218, Huikai traveled to Baoyinsi on Mt. Anji, where he succeeded Yuelin as abbot. He subsequently served as abbot at such monasteries as TIANNINGSI, Pujisi, Kaiyuansi, and Baoningsi. In 1246, Huikai was appointed as abbot of Huguo Renwangsi in Hangzhou prefecture, and it is here that the Japanese ZEN monk SHINICHI KAKUSHIN studied under him. Emperor Lizong (r. 1224-1264) invited Huikai to provide a sermon at the Pavilion of Mysterious Virtue in the imperial palace and also to pray for rain. In honor of his achievements, the emperor bestowed upon him a golden robe and the title Chan master Foyan (Dharma Eye).

Wu Zetian. (J. Bu Sokuten; K. Mu Ch'ŭkch'on 武則天) (624-705). Chinese concubine and empress who was an important patron of Buddhism during the Tang dynasty and the short-lived Zhou-dynasty interregnum (684-704). Wu Zetian entered the palace as a concubine of Emperor Taizong (r. 626-649) while she was still in her teens. After the emperor's death, she became a Buddhist nun, but was summoned again to the palace as a concubine of Taizong's successor and son, the Gaozong emperor (r. 649-683). She bore Gaozong a son in 652 and began to exert much influence in court. Despite fierce opposition from court officials, Gaozong enthroned Wu Zetian as the new empress in 655. Wu Zetian quickly exiled all her foes in court and had the former empress Wang killed. In 657, she reinstated Luoyang as the cocapital of the empire and permanently moved the entire court there after Gaozong's death in 683. She subsequently exiled the Zhongzong emperor (r. 683-684, 705-710) and established her own dynasty named Zhou (684-704). Wu Zetian was an ardent supporter of Buddhism. She associated with such eminent monks as XUANZANG, SHENXIU, FAZANG, and YIJING. In an attempt to legitimize her reign, Wu Zetian also ordered the circulation of the MAHĀMEGHASuTRA ("Great Cloud Sutra"), which described a female reincarnation of MAITREYA and her rule over the whole world. She also arranged for the construction in every prefecture of the empire of monasteries all known as DAYUNSI (Great Cloud Monastery). In 705, she abdicated the throne to the restored Emperor Zhongzong.

Wuzhun Shifan. (J. Bujun Shihan/Bushun Shiban/Mujun Shihan; K. Mujun Sabom 無準師範) (1178-1249). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG. After his ordination in the winter of 1194, Wuzhun studied under a series of famed Chan masters, including FOZHAO DEGUANG and Po'an Zuxian. Wuzhun eventually attained awakening under Po'an and succeeded his lineage. During his illustrious career at such important monasteries as WANSHOUSI on Mt. Jing, Wuzhun also taught the Japanese pilgrims Hoshin (d.u.), Doyu (1201-1258), and the famed ENNI BEN'EN, who is now regarded as the first exponent of ZEN in Japan. Wuzhun was later summoned by Emperor Lizong (r. 1224-1264) to provide a public lecture at the Pavilion of Benevolent Illumination in the imperial palace. The emperor later bestowed upon him the title Chan master Fojian (Buddha Mirror). Wuzhun left many famous disciples such as WUXUE ZUYUAN and Mu'an Puning, both of whom went to Kamakura in Japan and served as abbots of the powerful monastery of KENCHoJI.

Xanadu ::: Kubla Khan's summer capital. Revived in modernity through Samuel Taylor Coleridge's entheogen-inspired poem Kubla Khan. Synonymous with a palace of pleasure and in which one can experience the ecstasies of flesh.

Xuanzang. (J. Genjo; K. Hyonjang 玄奘) (600/602-664). Chinese monk, pilgrim, and patriarch of the Chinese YOGĀCĀRA tradition (FAXIANG ZONG) and one of the two most influential and prolific translators of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese, along with KUMĀRAJĪVA (344-413); in English sources, his name is seen transcribed in a variety of ways (now all outmoded), including Hsüan-tsang, Hiuen Tsiang, Yuan Chwang, etc. Xuanzang was born into a literati family in Henan province in either 600 or 602 (although a consensus is building around the latter date). In 612, during a state-supported ordination ceremony, Xuanzang entered the monastery of Jingtusi in Luoyang where his older brother was residing as a monk. There, Xuanzang and his brother studied the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA and various MAHĀYĀNA texts. When the Sui dynasty collapsed in 618, they both fled the capital for the safety of the countryside. In 622, Xuanzang was given the complete monastic precepts and was fully ordained as a monk (BHIKsU). By this time Xuanzang had also studied earlier translations of the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA, JNĀNAPRASTHĀNA, and *TATTVASIDDHI under various teachers but came to doubt the accuracy of those translations and the veracity of their teachings. In order to resolve his doubts, Xuanzang embarked on an epic journey to India in 627, in flagrant disregard of the Taizong emperor's (r. 626-629) edict against traveling abroad. His trek across the SILK ROAD and India is well known, thanks to his travel record, the DA TANG XIYU JI, his official biography, and the famous Ming-dynasty comic novel based on Xuangzang's travels, XIYU JI ("Journey to the West"). (See "Routes of Chinese Pilgrims" map.) According to these sources, Xuanzang visited the various Buddhist pilgrimage sites of the subcontinent (see MAHĀSTHĀNA) and spent years at NĀLANDĀ monastery mastering Sanskrit, including fifteen months studying the texts of the Indian Yogācāra tradition under the tutelage of the 106-year-old sĪLABHADRA. In 645, Xuanzang returned to the Tang capital of Chang'an with over six hundred Sanskrit manuscripts that he had acquired in India, along with images, relics, and other artifacts. (These materials were stored in a five-story stone pagoda, named the DAYAN TA, or Great Wild Goose Pagoda, that Xuanzang later built on the grounds of the monastery of DA CI'ENSI; the pagoda is still a major tourist attraction in Xi'an.) The Taizong and Gaozong emperors (r. 649-683) honored Xuanzang with the title TREPItAKA (C. sanzang fashi; "master of the Buddhist canon") and established a translation bureau (yijing yuan) in the capital for the master, where Xuanzang supervised a legion of monks in charge of transcribing the texts, "rectifying" (viz., clarifying) their meaning, compiling the translations, polishing the renderings, and certifying both their meaning and syntax. Xuanzang and his team developed an etymologically precise set of Chinese equivalencies for Buddhist technical terminology, and his translations are known for their rigorous philological accuracy (although sometimes at the expense of their readability). While residing at such sites as HONGFUSI, Da ci'ensi, and the palace over an eighteen-year period, Xuanzang oversaw the translation of seventy-six sutras and sāstras in a total of 1,347 rolls, nearly four times the number of texts translated by Kumārajīva, probably the most influential of translators into Chinese. (Scholars have estimated that Xuanzang and his team completed one roll of translation every five days over those eighteen years of work.) Xuanzang's influence was so immense that he is often recognized as initiating the "new translation" period in the history of the Chinese translation of Buddhist texts, in distinction to the "old translation" period where Kumārajīva's renderings hold pride of place. Among the more important translations made by Xuanzang and his translation team are the foundational texts of the Yogācāra school, such as the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhi), ASAnGA's MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA, and the YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA, and many of the major works associated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school of ABHIDHARMA, including definitive translations of the JNānaprasthāna and the encyclopedic ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, as well as complete translations of VASUBANDHU's ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA and SAMGHABHADRA's *NYĀYĀNUSĀRA. He translated (and retranslated) many major Mahāyāna sutras and sāstras, including the massive MAHĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, in six hundred rolls; this translation is given a place of honor as the first scripture in the East Asian Buddhist canons (see DAZANGJING; KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG). Also attributed to Xuanzang is the Chinese translation of the famed PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA, or "Heart Sutra," probably the most widely read and recited text in East Asian Buddhism. Because Xuanzang himself experienced a palpable sense of the Buddha's absence while he was sojourning in India, he also translated the Nandimitrāvadāna (Da aluohan Nantimiduo luo suoshuo fazhu ji, abbr. Fazhu ji, "Record of the Duration of the Dharma Spoken by the Great Arhat NANDIMITRA"), the definitive text on the sixteen ARHAT protectors (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA) of Buddhism, which became the basis for the LOUHAN cult in East Asia.

Yasodharā. (P. Yasodharā; T. Grags 'dzin ma; C. Yeshutuoluo; J. Yashudara; K. Yasudara 耶輸陀羅). The Sanskrit proper name of wife of the prince and BODHISATTVA, SIDDHĀRTHA GAUTAMA, and mother of his son, RĀHULA (she is often known in Pāli sources as Rāhulamātā, Rāhula's Mother); she eventually became an ARHAT, who was declared by the Buddha to be foremost among nuns possessing the six superknowledges (ABHIJNĀ; P. abhiNNā). According to Pāli accounts, she was born on the same day as Prince Gautama and had skin the color of gold, hence another of her epithets, Bhaddā Kaccānā. She is also referred to in Pāli commentaries as Bimbā. Yasodharā married the prince when she was sixteen, after he had proved his superior skill in archery and other manly arts. She was chief consort in a harem of forty thousand women. On the day her son, Rāhula, was born, the prince renounced the world and abandoned his wife, child, and palace to become a mendicant. According to another version of the story, Rāhula was conceived on the night of the prince's departure and was not born until the night of the prince's enlightenment, six years later. Yasodharā was so heartbroken at her husband's departure that she took up his ascetic lifestyle, eating only one meal per day and wearing the yellow robes of a mendicant. When the Buddha returned to his former palace in KAPILAVASTU after his enlightenment, Yasodharā was allowed the honor of worshipping him in the manner she saw fit. After seven days, as the Buddha was about to depart, Yasodharā instructed her son Rāhula to ask for his inheritance. In response, the Buddha instructed sĀRIPUTRA to ordain his son. As Rāhula was the first child to be admitted to the order, he became the first Buddhist novice (sRĀMAnERA). Yasodharā and Rāhula's grandfather sUDDHODANA were greatly saddened at losing the child and heir to the order; hence, at suddhodana's request, the Buddha passed a rule that, thenceforth, no child should be ordained without the consent of its parents. When later the Buddha allowed women to enter the order, Yasodharā became a nun (BHIKsUnĪ) under MAHĀPRAJĀPATĪ, who was chief of the nuns' order and the Buddha's stepmother. Yasodharā cultivated insight and became an arhat with extraordinary supranormal powers. She could recall her past lives stretching back an immeasurable age and one hundred thousand eons without effort. The JĀTAKA records numerous occasions when Yasodharā had been the wife of the bodhisattva in earlier existences. Also mentioned as the wife of the Buddha is Gopā, although it is unclear whether this refers to another wife or is another name for Yasodharā.

Yixing. (J. Ichigyo; K. Irhaeng 一行) (683-727). In Chinese, "Single Practice"; a famous student of CHAN and master of esoteric Buddhism (MIJIAO), translator, and distinguished astronomer. Yixing was a native of Julu prefecture in present-day Hebei province. He became a monk under the eminent Chan master PUJI (651-739) in the Northern school (BEI ZONG) of the early Chan tradition and also studied the VINAYA under a monk by the name of Huizhen (d.u.). Having made a name for himself at the monastery of Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai, in 717, Yixing was invited by Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756) to the palace in Luoyang. While residing at the palace, Yixing became a disciple of the TREPItAKA sUBHAKARASIMHA and, together, they translated the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA. Based on subhakarasiMha's oral interpretations provided in the course of preparing their translation, Yixing also composed an important commentary on the sutra, the Darijing shu. In 727, Yixing's reputation in astronomy and calendrics prompted the emperor to have him devise a new calendar, which is known as the Dayan li. Yixing also devised an elaborate celestial globe, which used hydraulic power to portray the precise movements of the sun, moon, and constellations across the firmament. After his death, he was bestowed the posthumous title Chan master Dahui (Great Wisdom).

yondŭng hoe. (燃燈會). In Korean, "lantern-lighting ceremony"; a Korean Buddhist celebration that originated sometime during the Koryo dynasty. To celebrate the lunar New Year, lanterns were lit on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and kept lit for two nights. Although King Songjong (r. 982-997) banned the ceremony, the ban was lifted in the first year of King Hyonjong's (r. 1010-1031) reign and the ceremony was held again on the fifteenth day of the second lunar month and continued to be held on the second month from that point onward. In 1352, the celebration of the yondŭng hoe took place in the palace on the traditional East Asian date of the Buddha's birthday (the eighth day of the fourth lunar month) with one hundred monks in attendance, and the event was subsequently held on the Buddha's birthday throughout the remainder of the Choson dynasty. This custom of lighting lanterns to celebrate the Buddha's birthday continues today in Korea.

Yongningsi. (J. Eineiji; K. Yongnyongsa 永寧寺). In Chinese, "Eternal Peace monastery"; one of the most important monasteries in the Northern Wei capital of Luoyang. After the Wei rulers moved the Chinese capital to Luoyang, Empress Dowager Ling, the birth mother of Emperor Xiao Mingdi (r. 515-528), began construction of Yongningsi in 516. According to the LUOYANG QIELAN JI, Yongningsi was a grand complex that could house more than a thousand monks and was located to the west of the imperial highway and south of the Changhe gate. In the northern precinct of the monastery was a buddha hall, which housed various golden images, and to the south, a triple-gated tower more than two hundred feet in height. A nine-story pagoda that rose a thousand feet supported a tall golden pole with golden disks to collect the dew. Golden bells were also hung from the pagoda. Since it overlooked the palace, only Emperor Xiao Mingdi and the Empress Dowager were allowed to climb the pagoda to gaze at the entire capital. All the scriptures and paintings from foreign countries available at the time are said to have been stored at the monastery. The eminent translator BODHIRUCI also translated many scriptures while in residence at Yongningsi. The monastery was devastated by a fire and was left in ruins after the capital was moved again to Ye. Several restorations were made during the Sui and Tang dynasties, but the monastery remains in ruins today.

Yum bu bla sgang. (Yumbu Lagang). A palace and adjacent tower purported to be Tibet's oldest building, established according to legend by the first Tibetan king Gnya' khri btsan po (Nyatri Tsenpo) in central Tibet's Yar klungs (Yarlung) Valley. It may have served as the residence for the earliest Tibetan rulers and was likely renovated by the twenty-eighth king, Lha Tho tho ri gnyan btsan (Lha Tothori Nyentsen, b. 433) during the mid-fifth century. Legends state that this king received the first Buddhist scriptures while residing at the Yum bu bla sgang as they miraculously descended from the sky, heralding the eventual religious conversion of the country. According to one early Tibetan historian, however, the texts were actually transported by the Indian cleric Buddharaksita; the king, unable to read the Indic script, declared their miraculous descent in order to keep secret their foreign origins. The texts were therefore called the gnyan po gsang ba, "the sacred secret," and indeed remained a secret until the advent of king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO in the seventh century.

Yunmen Wenyan. ( J. Unmon Bun'en; K. Unmun Munon 雲門文偃) (864-949). Chinese CHAN monk and founder of the YUNMEN ZONG, one of the so-called five houses and seven schools (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the classical Chinese Chan tradition. Yunmen was a native of Jiaxing in present-day Zhejiang province. He was ordained at the age of sixteen by the VINAYA master Zhideng (d.u.) of the monastery Kongwangsi and two years later received the full monastic precepts at the precept platform in Piling (present-day Jiangsu province). After his full ordination, Yunmen returned to Kongwangsi and studied the DHARMAGUPTAKA vinaya (SIFEN LÜ) under Zhideng. Later, Yunmen visited Muzhou Daoming (d.u.), a prominent disciple of the eminent Chan master HUANGBO XIYUN, and continued his studies of Chan under XUEFENG YICUN. Yunmen eventually became Xuefeng's disciple and inherited his lineage. Taking his leave of Xuefeng, Yunmen continued to visit other Chan masters throughout the country, and in 911 he visited the funerary STuPA of the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG on CAOXISHAN. Yunmen then visited Lingshu Rumin (d. 918), a famed disciple of the Chan master Fuzhou Da'an (793-883), at his monastery of Lingshu Chanyuan in Shaozhou (present-day Guangdong province) and continued to study under Lingshu until his death in 918. Yunmen was then asked by the ruler of the newly established Nan Han state (917-971), Liu Yan (r. 917-942), to succeed Lingshu's place at Lingshu Chanyuan. In 923, he established a monastery on Mt. Yunmen in the region, whence he acquired his toponym. He continued to reside on Mt. Yunmen for thirty years and frequently visited the palace of the Nan Han state to preach. In 938, Liu Cheng (943-958), monarch of the Nan Han, bestowed on him the title Great Master Kuangzhen (Genuine Truth). According to his wishes, no funerary stupa was prepared for Yunmen and his body was left in his abbot's quarters (FANGZHANG). Yunmen was especially famous for his so-called one-word barriers (YIZI GUAN), in which he used a single utterance to respond to a student's question. For example, once a monk asked him, "When you kill your parents, you repent before the Buddha. But when you kill the buddhas and patriarchs, to whom do you repent?" Yunmen answered, "Lu" ("exposed"). Eighteen of Yunmen's most famous Chan cases (GONG'AN) are collected in the BIYAN LU ("Blue Cliff Record"); his extended teachings are recorded in the Yunmen Kuangzhen chanshi guanglu.

Zangs mdog dpal ri. (Sangdok Palri). In Tibetan, the "Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain"; the abode of PADMASAMBHAVA. It is located on the island of Cāmara, one of the two "subcontinents" flanking the island of JAMBUDVĪPA; Cāmara is sometimes identified as Sri Lanka. After leaving Tibet, Padmasambhava is said to have departed for the Copper-Colored Mountain. The island was inhabited by ogres (RAKsASA), whom he first had to subdue. He then constructed an octagonal palace, called "Lotus Light" (Padma 'od), at the summit of the mountain, where he will abide until the end of SAMSĀRA. In Tibetan Buddhism, Copper-Colored Mountain came to function as a PURE LAND, although it is located on earth, and is not flat as pure lands are supposed to be. There are numerous prayers for rebirth on the Copper-Colored Mountain and numerous accounts of devotees being transported there in dreams and visions. Among the most common depictions of Padmasambhava in Tibetan painting are those of him enthroned on the Copper-Colored Mountain.

Zenkoji. (善光寺). In Japanese, "Monastery of the Radiance of Goodness"; located in modern-day Nagano. According to the Zenkoji engi, the monastery was built at the beginning of the seventh century by a certain Honda Yoshimitsu to enshrine a famous Amida (AMITĀBHA) triad. In the ancient Indian kingdom of VAIsĀLĪ, a merchant by the name of Somachattra is said to have warded off epidemic demons and cured his daughter by invoking the name of the buddha Amitābha ten times. Somachattra was so moved by the appearance of Amitābha and his two attendants AVALOKITEsVARA and MAHĀSTHĀMAPRĀPTA in the sky that he asked the Buddha for an icon to be made in their likeness. The triad was then forged with special gold from the dragon king's palace and worshipped as a living manifestation of Amitābha and his attendants. Somachattra was later reborn as King Song (r. 523-553) of the Korean kingdom of Paekche. The triad first traveled to Paekche to aid King Song, after which it was taken to Japan. Honda Yoshimitsu is said to have discovered the triad in the Naniwa Canal and enshrined it in his house, which was later transformed into a magnificent buddha hall by Empress Kogyoku (r. 642-645). With support from the Hojo bakufu, a Zenkoji cult proliferated especially during the Kamakura period and onwards, and numerous replicas of the "original" (Shinano) Zenkoji triad were made and enshrined in Shin ("New") Zenkoji temples. For centuries, the (Shinano) Zenkoji in Nagano remained under the control of another powerful TENDAISHu monastery known as MIIDERA. Zenkoji was devastated by fire in 1179, but legendary accounts testify to the miraculous escape of the "original" triad, which now remains as a secret buddha (HIBUTSU) image largely unavailable for public viewing. After the Japanese monk IPPEN's visit to Zenkoji, several Shin Zenkoji temples also came to be associated with his tradition, the JISHu.

Zhikong Chanxian. (J. Shiku Zenken; K. Chigong Sonhyon; S. *sunyadisya-Dhyānabhadra 指空禪賢) (1289-1363). In Chinese, "Pointing to Emptiness, Meditative Worthy," an Indian monk who taught first in China, but later came to live and teach in Korea at the end of the Koryo dynasty, where his influence was especially important; his Chinese name is sometimes reconstructed into Sanskrit as *DHYĀNABHADRA, and this is how he is often known in the literature. According to his memorial stele written by the Korean literatus Yi Saek (1328-1396), Zhikong was born as the third son of the ruler of a small state in the MAGADHA region of northeastern India around 1235. He entered the monastic life at the age of eight and is said to have studied at the famous NĀLANDĀ monastic university under the guidance of Vinayabhadra (C. Lüxian). He claimed to have traveled to Sri Lanka at the age of nineteen to study under Samantaprabhāsa (C. Puming), the 107th patriarch in a putative "Chan" lineage starting from MAHĀKĀsYAPA, which probably means some sort of meditative lineage quite distinct from the East Asian CHAN lineages. After receiving transmission from Samantaprabhāsa, Zhikong became the 108th patriarch in that lineage. Around 1324, Zhikong traveled via Tibet to the Yuan dynasty and then went on to Koryo in 1326 at the invitation of King Ch'ungsuk (1294-1339; r. 1313-1330, 1332-1339), whom he had met in Beijing at the Mongol court. During his stay in Koryo, Zhikong went on pilgrimage to many important Buddhist sites, including the famous Diamond Mountains (KŬMGANGSAN). He also founded Hoeamsa (Fir Tree Cliff Monastery) in 1328 in what is now Kyonggi province, which is said to have been modeled after Nālandā monastery. He returned to the Yuan in 1328, where he was visited by many Korean students, including the late Koryo monks NAONG HYEGŬN (1320-1376) and MUHAK CHACH'O (1327-1405), on whom he had great influence. He died in 1363, and because of the reverence in which he was held by King Kongmin (r. 1351-1374), some of his relics were sent to Koryo. The relics were first housed in the royal palace and later enshrined in a reliquary at Hoeamsa. Zhikong was supposed to have been well versed in literature of PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, VINAYA, and TANTRA. In Korea, there survives a collection of his teachings, the Chigong hwasang Sonyo nok ("Master Zhigong's Essentials of Son Record"), and his putative sutra, the Munsusari posal ch'oesangsŭng musaenggye kyong ("Sutra on the Ultimate Nonproduction (ANUTPĀDA) Precepts of the Bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ"), which is supposed to have been translated from a Sanskrit original by his disciple Naong.



QUOTES [21 / 21 - 1500 / 1586]


KEYS (10k)

   3 Sri Aurobindo
   2 John Milton
   2 Jorge Luis Borges
   1 Saint Therese of Lisieux
   1 - Said Nursi
   1 John Donne
   1 Israel Regardie
   1 Henry David Thoreau
   1 Graham Greene
   1 C S Lewis
   1 Cicero
   1 Angelus Silesius
   1 Saint Teresa of Avila
   1 Kabir
   1 Jetsun Milarepa
   1 Angelus Silesius
   1 ?

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   30 Rick Riordan
   23 Marissa Meyer
   20 Brian Godawa
   19 Anonymous
   18 William Shakespeare
   15 Terry Pratchett
   15 Leigh Bardugo
   14 Mehmet Murat ildan
   12 Megan Whalen Turner
   10 Kiera Cass
   10 Henry David Thoreau
   10 Charles Baudelaire
   10 Anne Lamott
   9 Edward Gibbon
   8 Li Bai
   8 Horace
   7 Victoria Aveyard
   7 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   7 Charles Dickens
   7 Alexandre Dumas

1:Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. ~ John Donne,
2:You put the small thief in prison, but the big thief lives in a palace. ~ Graham Greene,
3:Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the Palace of Eternity. ~ John Milton,
4:Eternal wisdom builds: I shall be her palace when she finds repose in me and I in her. ~ Angelus Silesius,
5:Let Him choose for thee a king's palace or the bowl of the beggar.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,
6:The palace woke to its own emptiness;
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest,
7:So high is my Lord's palace, my heart trembles to mount its stairs: yet I must not be shy, if I would enjoy His love. ~ Kabir,
8:Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity. ~ John Milton, Comus,
9:Eternal wisdom builds: I shall be her palace when she finds repose in me and I in her. ~ Angelus Silesius, the Eternal Wisdom
10:The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
11:I learned from experience that joy does not reside in the things about us, but in the very depths of the soul, that one can have it in the gloom of a dungeon as well as in the palace of a king. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
12:Our body's subtle self is throned within
In its viewless palace of veridical dreams
That are bright shadows of the thoughts of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,
13:The Prince, travelling through his domains, noticed a man in the cheering crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. He beckoned him over and asked: Was your mother ever employed in my palace? ... No, Sire, the man replied. But my father was. ~ ?,
14:The magnificent cosmos is a palace that has the sun and the moon as its lamps and the stars as its candles; time is like a rope or ribbon hung within it, on to which the Glorious Creator each year threads a new world. ~ - Said Nursi, @Sufi_Path
15:8. Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle,
16:Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. ~ C S Lewis,
17:In Malkus, the lowest of the Sephiros, the sphere of the physical world of matter, wherein incarnate the exiled Neschamos from the Divine Palace, there abides the Shechinah, the spiritual Presence of Ain Soph as a heritage to mankind and an ever-present reminder of spiritual verities. That is why there is written " Keser is in Malkus, and Malkus is in Keser, though after another manner The Zohar would imply that the real Shechinah, the real Divine Presence, is allocated to Binah whence it never descends, but that the Shechinah in Malkus is an eidolon or Daughter of the Great Supernal Mother. Isaac Myer suggests that : " It is considered by Qabalists as the executive energy or power of Binah, the Holy Spirit or the Upper Mother." ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegrantes,
18:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear...
   ...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings,
19:When ye look at me I am an idle, idle man; when I look at myself I am a busy, busy man. Since upon the plain of uncreated infinity I am building, building the tower of ecstasy, I have no time for building houses. Since upon the steppe of the void of truth I am breaking, breaking the savage fetter of suffering, I have no time for ploughing family land. Since at the bourn of unity ineffable I am subduing, subduing the demon-foe of self, I have no time for subduing angry foe-men. Since in the palace of mind which transcends duality I am waiting, waiting for spiritual experience as my bride, I have no time for setting up house. Since in the circle of the Buddhas of my body I am fostering, fostering the child of wisdom, I have no time for fostering snivelling children. Since in the frame of the body, the seat of all delight, I am saving, saving precious instruction and reflection, I have no time for saving wordly wealth. ~ Jetsun Milarepa, Songs of Milarepa,
20:The Palace

The Palace is not infinite.

The walls, the ramparts, the gardens, the labyrinths, the staircases, the terraces, the parapets, the doors, the galleries, the circular or rectangular patios, the cloisters, the intersections, the cisterns, the anterooms, the chambers, the alcoves, the libraries, the attics, the dungeons, the sealed cells and the vaults, are not less in quantity than the grains of sand in the Ganges, but their number has a limit. From the roofs, towards sunset, many people can make out the forges, the workshops, the stables, the boatyards and the huts of the slaves.

It is granted to no one to traverse more than an infinitesimal part of the palace. Some know only the cellars. We can take in some faces, some voices, some words, but what we perceive is of the feeblest. Feeble and precious at the same time. The date which the chisel engraves in the tablet, and which is recorded in the parochial registers, is later than our own death; we are already dead when nothing touches us, neither a word nor a yearning nor a memory. I know that I am not dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand,
21:WHEN THE GREAT YOGIN Padmasambhava, called by Tibetans Guru Rinpoche, "the precious teacher," embarks on his spiritual journey, he travels from place to place requesting teachings from yogins and yoginls. Guided by visions and dreams, his journey takes him to desolate forests populated with ferocious wild animals, to poison lakes with fortified islands, and to cremation grounds. Wherever he goes he performs miracles, receives empowerments, and ripens his own abilities to benefit others.

   When he hears of the supreme queen of all dakinls, the greatly accomplished yogini called Secret Wisdom, he travels to the Sandal Grove cremation ground to the gates of her abode, the Palace of Skulls. He attempts to send a request to the queen with her maidservant Kumari. But the girl ignores him and continues to carry huge brass jugs of water suspended from a heavy yoke across her shoulders. When he presses his request, Kumari continues her labors, remaining silent. The great yogin becomes impatient and, through his yogic powers, magically nails the heavy jugs to the floor. No matter how hard Kumari struggles, she cannot lift them.

   Removing the yoke and ropes from her shoulders, she steps before Padmasambhava, exclaiming, "You have developed great yogic powers. What of my powers, great one?" And so saying, she draws a sparkling crystal knife from the girdle at her waist and slices open her heart center, revealing the vivid and vast interior space of her body. Inside she displays to Guru Rinpoche the mandala of deities from the inner tantras: forty-two peaceful deities manifested in her upper torso and head and fifty-eight wrathful deities resting in her lower torso. Abashed that he did not realize with whom he was dealing, Guru Rinpoche bows before her and humbly renews his request for teachings. In response, she offers him her respect as well, adding, "I am only a maidservant," and ushers him in to meet the queen Secret Wisdom. ~ Judith Simmer-Brown, Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism, Introduction: Encountering the Dakini,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:The dome of thought, the palace of the soul. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove
2:The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
3:The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
4:Why don’t you try wandering with me to the Palace of Not-Even-Anything ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove
5:I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove
6:Let us remember that within us there is a palace of immense magnificence. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove
7:Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
8:One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
9:Who loves the golden mean is safe from the poverty of a tenement, is free from the envy of a palace. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
10:Pale death approaches with equal step, and knocks indiscriminately at the door of teh cottage, and the portals of the palace. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
11:The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom... for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
12:The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom... for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
13:You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace. He intends to come & live in it Himself ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
14:You know, the streets are filled with vipers Who've lost all ray of hope You know, it ain't even safe no more In the palace of the Pope ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove
15:[On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove
16:Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace; take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil smelling-place. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
17:Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace; take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil smelling-place. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
18:kindle the fire of happiness ! Therein I shall see The door of friendliness, The room of greatness And the palace of godness. I shall see, I shall see. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
19:Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove
20:She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believed in doing something about them. When Prince Charming didn't come along, she went over to the palace and got him. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove
21:Each and all of us must summon to mind the words of Him whom we honor this Easter time: &
22:Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
23:I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove
24:There is a proper measure in all things, certain limits beyond which and short of which right is not to be found. Who so cultivates the golden mean avoids the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
25:If life's journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove
26:Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove
27:Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
28:I am convinced that there is no great distance between heaven and earth, that the distance lies in our finite minds. When the Beloved visits us in the night, He turns our chambers into the vestibules of His palace halls. Earth rises to heaven when heaven comes down to earth. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
29:I pray the gods will give me some relief and end this weary job. One long full year I've been lying here, on this rooftop, the palace of the sons of Atreus, resting on my arms, just like a dog. I've come to know the night sky, every star, the powers we see glittering in the sky, bringing winter and summer to us all, as the constellations rise and sink. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
30:I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove
31:If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the &
32:There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father's palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
33:Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said "No, not there. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
34:How I like claret!... It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarrelling with one's liver. No; 'tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:palace and the ~ Eugene H Peterson,
2:Even a palace can be a cage. ~ Dannika Dark,
3:I am a Palace", I said to them, smiling. ~ Various,
4:Today’s palace is tomorrow’s random rubble. ~ Sri M,
5:You cannot make a cheap palace. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
6:riding toward the palace with something ~ Jeff Wheeler,
7:Field is the palace of the peasant! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
8:Why not the Bahamas? Or the Corn Palace? ~ Richelle Mead,
9:Cottage is the palace of humble man! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
10:Ignorance is God's prison. Knowing is God's palace ~ Rumi,
11:The dome of thought, the palace of the soul. ~ Lord Byron,
12:Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. ~ John Donne,
13:Even in a palace hall, Law is the lord of all. ~ Cao Xueqin,
14:My soul is not a palace of the past. ~ James Russell Lowell,
15:Ignorance is God’s prison.
Knowing is God’s Palace ~ Rumi,
16:Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk, set in Cairo, a ~ Frances Mayes,
17:black gloom settled over the Palace Flophouse. ~ John Steinbeck,
18:The episcopal palace of D—— adjoins the hospital. ~ Victor Hugo,
19:of the palace to inform me that Lady Margaret ~ Philippa Gregory,
20:When the people change, the palace cannot hold. ~ Naomi Alderman,
21:The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. ~ William Blake,
22:You aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer. ~ Mark Twain,
23:Vatican Palace…because in Venturi’s words, ‘Less is ~ Emily Giffin,
24:The only indestructible palace is in the heart. ~ Michael D O Brien,
25:the road of knowledge leads to the palace of wisdom
~ Tom Wolfe,
26:Life in a palace rather resembles camping in a museum, ~ Kate Williams,
27:It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium, ~ Louis MacNeice,
28:Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity. ~ John Milton,
29:The Palace is a good theater, you can see from everywhere. ~ Andy Warhol,
30:Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone upon stone, a palace. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
31:that once-splendid cinema palace and watched movies. Now it’s ~ Tom Hanks,
32:The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
33:For serenity, always prefer the cottage to the palace! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
34:We can build a palace around us if everything is right between us. ~ Ana s Nin,
35:There's a palace in your head, boy. Learn to live in it always. ~ Grant Morrison,
36:I'm back, boys and girls! back from the pink padded couch palace! ~ Scott McCloud,
37:there was a bed left in the palace that hadn’t been stripped. “Mom! ~ Shannon Hale,
38:They were the gangster version of the guards at Buckingham Palace. ~ Craig Schaefer,
39:Keeping plenty of gold and jade in the palace makes no one able to defend it. ~ Laozi,
40:God's frown—and a palace—would be hell to a gracious spirit. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
41:Ive always believed the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. ~ Woody Harrelson,
42:You put the small thief in prison, but the big thief lives in a palace. ~ Graham Greene,
43:Don't expect ambiguities, hesitations or palace intrigues from me. ~ Anibal Cavaco Silva,
44:The feast I ate was rotten,
What I thought was a palace was a dungeon. ~ Stephen King,
45:The palace woke to its own emptiness;
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest,
46:You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. ~ Frank McCourt,
47:I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand. ~ Lord Byron,
48:It's harder for a leader to be born in a palace than to be born in a cabin. ~ Woodrow Wilson,
49:Our house was like sleeping beauties palace after the enchanted spell is cast ~ Karen Foxlee,
50:The big house did prove a Palace Beautiful, though it took some time for ~ Louisa May Alcott,
51:THE LAST DROP 1960 WHERE: The Leela Palace New Delhi PRICE: Rs 35,000 for 30 ml, ~ Anonymous,
52:One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge. ~ Mark Twain,
53:So how'd an academic end up walking a zombie through a palace on a heist job? ~ Patrick Weekes,
54:Because the palace walls have been bleeding for years, and no one else sees it. ~ Marissa Meyer,
55:Every girl thinks about growing up in a palace. Few ever ponder living in a cage. ~ Ally Carter,
56:Every library is a palace; every book is a king; every reading is a magic! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
57:My island was not wild, compared to this.
There are such monsters in a palace. ~ Foz Meadows,
58:Then the guests620 entered the palace, bringing lamb and wine that gives one confidence. ~ Homer,
59:[After viewing the Palace of Electricity at the 1900 Trocadero Exposition in Paris] ~ Henry Adams,
60:Let us remember that within us there is a palace of immense magnificence. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila,
61:The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” he said, and turned for the door. ~ Jim Butcher,
62:To see the smoke from his loved palace rise, While the dear isle in distant prospect lies, ~ Homer,
63:Then maybe I’ll sneak into Buckingham Palace and slit his chicken throat one night. ~ Charlie Higson,
64:What need have I for a palace? Rather to lie with you where the weeds grow thick. ~ Murasaki Shikibu,
65:I don't want to be a prisoner in a palace, living in such a constricted way - too tight! ~ Dalai Lama,
66:I'll do about 13 shows in Branson next year, and I'll be performing at the Grand Palace. ~ Mel Tillis,
67:Pity is a start, my friend, a foundation on which to build a palace — a palace of love. ~ J K Rowling,
68:I've nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time. ~ Seamus Heaney,
69:When the palace is magnificent, the fields are filled with weeds, and the granaries are empty. ~ Laozi,
70:Young men just don't drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
71:And maybe, just maybe, he’d come back one day, and burn that fucking palace to the ground. ~ E Lockhart,
72:For starters, you must understand the inherent difference between a castle and a palace. A ~ Max Brooks,
73:the palace of the Saggese family, once the great landowner of those parts. An archway ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
74:When freedom is in jeopardy, non-co-operation may be a duty and prison may be a palace. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
75:Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace. ~ Horace,
76:Behind him the holograms above the Palace faded in the early sun. In his mind, they burned. ~ Ken MacLeod,
77:Eternal wisdom builds: I shall be her palace when she finds repose in me and I in her. ~ Angelus Silesius,
78:I love you, and I would choose to be with you whether in a slum or a cave or a palace. ~ Jacqueline Carey,
79:Eternal wisdom builds: I shall be her palace when she finds repose in me and I in her. ~ Angelus Silesius,
80:I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in that palace at Washington. ~ Rachel Jackson,
81:One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams. ~ Victor Hugo,
82:Flowers have the greatest talent in converting an ordinary place into a magical palace! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
83:slipped past them to return to the palace to engage in pointless speculation with Zariya. ~ Jacqueline Carey,
84:Attila, my lord, and thy lord, commands thee to provide a palace for his immediate reception. ~ Edward Gibbon,
85:She trailed behind Baba and Jiji as they left the palace, nightingales singing a sad farewell. ~ Linda Gerber,
86:Who loves the golden mean is safe from the poverty of a tenement, is free from the envy of a palace. ~ Horace,
87:Her whole body was wound up tight. She was ready to storm the palace herself - an army of one. ~ Marissa Meyer,
88:Let Him choose for thee a king's palace or the bowl of the beggar.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,
89:The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished. ~ Jean de la Bruyere,
90:He offered to stop the tide for me once. He offered to build me a palace at the bottom of the sea. ~ Rick Riordan,
91:You've been away from home too long if you can get lost on the way from the harbor to the palace. ~ David Eddings,
92:I didn’t have to worry about her, which was why she couldn’t leave the palace one day. What about me? ~ Kiera Cass,
93:This man might be drawn to the pussy palace but fuck if its queen will hand out orders that I’ll obey. ~ K Bromberg,
94:Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was. ~ Charles Dickens,
95:One day, she ventured to the palace library and was delighted to find what good company books could be. ~ E Lockhart,
96:And there, among the ruined splendor of Skyline Palace, Adamat saw a god weep for the hero of Adro. ~ Brian McClellan,
97:But if you are unwilling to risk your place in the palace for your neighbors, the palace owns you. ~ Timothy J Keller,
98:A night of smoke and flames, the palace destroyed from the inside out by a girl with fire in her veins. ~ Natasha Ngan,
99:Her palace shimered with onyx, garnet, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. ~ Stacy Schiff,
100:I barged through the palace, dripping a trail of blood behind me as I held the dead bird by the neck. ~ Alwyn Hamilton,
101:One more patronizing comment and I will have you slice off and nail your own tongue to the palace gate. ~ Marissa Meyer,
102:But the palace of knowledge is different from the palace of discovery, in which I am, truly, a Copernicus. ~ Mary Oliver,
103:Pandemonium, the palace of Satan rises, suddenly built of the deep: the infernal peers there sit in council. ~ John Milton,
104:Perplexed and distressed, he fled the palace under the cover of night, leaving behind his wife and child, ~ Paul B Gilbert,
105:I need a plan. A plan to get inside the palace. A plan to cool the embers Aladdin's touch stirred to life. ~ Jessica Khoury,
106:I pretend I'm one of the royal family when I'm in a hotel and that the hotel belongs to me - it is a palace. ~ Martin Short,
107:Neither my life of luxury in the palace -nor- my life as ascetic in the forest were ways to enlightenment. ~ Gautama Buddha,
108:Trust me, darling, it is never a good idea to have too many queens in one place, let alone one palace.” “To ~ Gail Carriger,
109:Ghafoor came from a modest family in a nearby village and had been given to the palace in exchange for a cow. ~ Nadia Hashimi,
110:Honesty is a rare commodity in a palace, and that is why so many fairy-tale marriages end up on the rocks. ~ Garrison Keillor,
111:I’d be surrounded by scores of guards at the palace, but I couldn’t imagine a place safer than my father’s arms. ~ Kiera Cass,
112:I grew up wondering if I’d have food for supper; now I’m standing in a palace about to be eaten alive. Red ~ Victoria Aveyard,
113:So high is my Lord’s palace, my heart trembles to mount its stairs: yet I must not be shy, if I would enjoy His love. ~ Kabi,
114:So high is my Lord’s palace, my heart trembles to mount its stairs: yet I must not be shy, if I would enjoy His love. ~ Kabir,
115:But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland. ~ Anselm Kiefer,
116:I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
117:There’s a Heartrender at the Little Palace who can recite epic poetry for hours. Then you’d wish you had died. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
118:town is organized around a large central square. Facing the square is the Palazzo Marchesale, the palace of ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
119:If we’re going to be sneaking into New Beijing Palace while Levana is there, why don’t we just assassinate her? ~ Marissa Meyer,
120:In the papers this morning: 'Police closing in on Ian Holloway.' Sorry, it's 'Palace closing in on Ian Holloway.' ~ Alan Brazil,
121:It is easier to get lost within sight of the palace. [...] Hope makes all things near, and so can prove treacherous. ~ Ben Okri,
122:The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! ~ Danny Kaye,
123:She is too perfect to be known by fragments. No mean brick shall be a specimen of the building of my palace. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell,
124:Please let it be known that from this day forward my working title for the business is now 'Queen of the Fuck Palace! ~ T J Klune,
125:The court is like a palace built of marble; I mean that it is made up of very hard but very polished people. ~ Jean de la Bruyere,
126:All that shit they were fed about democracy and opportunity was just to keep them from burning down the palace. ~ Charles Bukowski,
127:But if there's one thing, palace life has taught me, it's how to follow orders. Even if you're raging against them. ~ Natasha Ngan,
128:He did not kiss her, for the hour was half-past twelve, and the car was passing by the stables of Buckingham Palace. ~ E M Forster,
129:I have a nice house. And when somebody says it's a palace, I always feel like we're digging a little or something. ~ Dennis Miller,
130:Which is how I come to be running through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, dressed only as Nature intended. ~ Mackenzi Lee,
131:You shut up. I'm older and I'm not going to stay at your palace of decadence and deviance."

--Brody to Erin. ~ Lauren Dane,
132:but I noticed she was parked on a bench near the back wall of the palace in the brutally hot sun, her closest companion ~ Kiera Cass,
133:Whose palace? And is Dalmatia where those Dalmatian dogs come from? That 101 Dalmatians movie—I still have nightmares ~ Rick Riordan,
134:Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of Eternity. ~ John Milton,
135:No kid was going to go to school in a place that looked like freaking Buckingham Palace and come out of it resilient. ~ Liane Moriarty,
136:Pale death approaches with equal step, and knocks indiscriminately at the door of teh cottage, and the portals of the palace. ~ Horace,
137:Good places for aphorisms: in fortune cookies, on bumper stickers, and on banners flying over the Palace of Free Advice. ~ Mason Cooley,
138:She screamed like a thousand birds were picking at her flesh. She screamed like the palace was burning down around her. ~ Marissa Meyer,
139:A palace cannot make you rich but a cottage in the woods can! We become rich only through simpleness and modestness! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
140:The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough. ~ William Blake,
141:Just a rat, she repeated to herself. After all, there were rats in the palace. Human and otherwise. Could be worse. ~ Cinda Williams Chima,
142:Somewhere on the world was the Emperor's palace, set amid one hundred square miles of natural soil, rainbowed with flowers. ~ Isaac Asimov,
143:The main hall of the palace was an intimidating place when empty, because it had been designed for exactly that purpose. ~ Terry Pratchett,
144:What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot. ~ Philip Yancey,
145:A lovely little wooden cottage in the depths of a forest is the most beautiful palace a king or any man can ever have! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
146:The Nazis had been one thing. The communists were another. But now there were academics crawling all over the palace. ~ Magnus Flyte,
147:This rose of pearl-coated infinity transforms
the diseased slums of a broken heart
into a palace made of psalms and gold. ~ Aberjhani,
148:I have served Almighty God as best as I can. I have failed at times, but "Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives. ~ Saladin Ahmed,
149:By reason of his elegance, he resembles an image painted in a palace, though he is as majestic as the palace itself. ~ Abdelkader El Djezairi,
150:I felt I'd used up most of my life's words in the palace, among folk who were never really mine, in a place that wasn't home. ~ Jackie French,
151:You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace. He intends to come & live in it Himself ~ C S Lewis,
152:I went to the entrance to the restroom, where the hallway did a sharp bend so nobody could peek into the girls' pee-palace. ~ Lilith Saintcrow,
153:I'll have to have a palace, of course. I may not be a princess, but I am a movie queen, and every queen should have a palace. ~ Jayne Mansfield,
154:Following this, I set up residence in the palace of silver parasols and spent my time pursuing study, reflection, and meditation. ~ Thupten Jinpa,
155:Haven’t you seen how many of them come to the palace each week, just to see us wave to them from the public balcony? ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,
156:...I have seen enough for two lifetimes. Maybe three, but I was very drunk at the time. -Marjorie Liu, The Tangleroot Palace ~ Laurell K Hamilton,
157:Palace Barracks, Holywood, a secure army base where British army families live during their tour of duty in the Province. The ~ Martin McGartland,
158:The closet is a closet, but it’s also a rocket or a tree house. Your mind is a palace, as long as you go in the right rooms. ~ Erin Entrada Kelly,
159:where a man can live, there he can also live well. But he must live in a palace;- well then, he can also live well in a palace. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
160:Beware!" Piper yelled at the crowd. "Every man in this palace is your enemy. Each one will stab you in the back at the first chance! ~ Rick Riordan,
161:I don't care if you danced naked on the roof of the Little Palace with him. I love you, Alina, even the part of you that loved him. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
162:The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
163:The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,’” Oscar says to me, still balancing on the back legs of his chair. “William Blake. ~ Jandy Nelson,
164:You know, the streets are filled with vipers Who've lost all ray of hope You know, it ain't even safe no more In the palace of the Pope ~ Bob Dylan,
165:Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,
166:It would be good to see what the Queen gets up to at Buckingham Palace. I bet she spends her whole time watching 'Coronation Street.' ~ Amelia Warner,
167:What women hate is when you turn cold to them. If you treat them like queens, they’ll let you have a concubine or two outside the palace. ~ Anne Rice,
168:I didna accomplish anything. The king wasn’t there. He prefers to rule Scotland from his palace in London. What has our country come to? ~ Donna Grant,
169:It is true that William Blake said that "The Road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom," but they didn't have angel dust back then. ~ Cynthia Heimel,
170:Never worry about the delay of your success compared to others, because construction of a palace takes more time than an ordinary building. ~ Anonymous,
171:A poor fisherman who knows the beauties of the misty mornings is much richer than a wealthy man who sleeps till noon in his palace! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
172:If the Palace doesn’t like my art, then I lose my work visa, and believe me, I do not want to go back to doing teen soaps in Wilmington. ~ Heather Cocks,
173:Second Fig

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! ~ Edna St Vincent Millay,
174:I have been to Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street but cannot get on the BBC. I am very disappointed because it boils down to snobbery. ~ Phil Taylor,
175:Look outside the window. Do you see the fence outside the palace? Do you see any guards? This is a country where everyone is safe. ~ Alexander Lukashenko,
176:I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang. ~ William Butler Yeats,
177:8. The Cat Who Lived in the Palace
The cat who lived in the Palace had been awarded the head-dress of nobility and was called Lady Myobu. ~ Sei Sh nagon,
178:You'll see! We're going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant. You mean the sledgehammer, sir? Yes. ~ Terry Pratchett,
179:The ladies who came to the palace tended to be less aggressive physically. But their words could probably start wars if said in the wrong tone. ~ Kiera Cass,
180:Her netlink fished for information, telling her that the palace had been built after World War IV, when the city was little more than rubble. ~ Marissa Meyer,
181:I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul. ~ James Joyce,
182:The day they came to tell me, I was in one of the gardens with Kiernan, trying to decipher a three-hundred-year-old map of the palace grounds. ~ Eilis O Neal,
183:Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible; life in a palace is possible; therefore even in a palace a right life is possible. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
184:As a splendid palace deserted by its inmates looks like a ruin, so does a man without character, all his material belongings notwithstanding. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
185:[On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie. ~ Dorothy Parker,
186:To someone who is sleeping, it doesn’t matter whether he’s in a prison or in a palace. One who is asleep doesn’t even feel the bondage. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
187:I tried to write something about Jesse but couldn't, as her face echoed her father's and the proud palace where the ghosts of our old life dwell. ~ Patti Smith,
188:Home. This magnificent palace had been her home since she was eleven. She’d came to it as a farmer’s daughter, and now she’d leave it as a soldier. ~ Elise Kova,
189:Throughout human history, palaces have taught us this: Those who live in palaces have always exploited those who do not live in the palace! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
190:We have to be focused on not just who is in [Donald's Trump] favor and who is in his good graces and who looks right or what the palace intrigue is. ~ Chuck Todd,
191:You'll see! We're going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant.
You mean the sledgehammer, sir?
Yes. ~ Terry Pratchett,
192:I was alone, with a stranger, inside the walls of a dark palace, in a strange snow-changed city, in the heart of the Ice Age of an alien world. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
193:Behind the Palace walls Mehmed indulged in an atypical pursuits of a tyrant: gardening, handicrafts and and a commissioning of the obscene frescos. ~ Roger Crowley,
194:Here stood the palace of Syennesis, the king of the country; and through the middle of the city flows a river called the Cydnus, two hundred feet broad. ~ Xenophon,
195:I used to write letters to the wounded in the Palace Hotel, and I used to drive a station wagon with blood in bottles to a battalion aid station. ~ Martha Gellhorn,
196:Tyrants never perish from tyranny, but always from folly,-when their fantasies have built up a palace for which the earth has no foundation. ~ Walter Savage Landor,
197:Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of Eternity.
To such my errand is ~ John Milton,
198:Each suburban housewife spends her time presiding over a power plant sufficient to have staffed the palace of a Roman emperor with a hundred slaves. ~ Margaret Mead,
199:Imagine a terrorist pointing a Buddy missile out of a bedroom window in a London suburb and blasting Her Majesty out of bed at Buckingham Palace. ~ Robert Muchamore,
200:If you're a Mexican citizen whether you live in a shanty shack or the big palace on the beach, when you turn 65, your property taxes are cut in half. ~ Jesse Ventura,
201:Someday soon, I fear the palace will be soaked through with blood and all of Artemisia Lake will be so red, even the Earthens will be able to see it. ~ Marissa Meyer,
202:I have a little gypsy palace here in New York. It's all mirrors, and I have my own garden. It's so secluded - the closest thing to a caravan I could find! ~ Neon Hitch,
203:My girlfriend: sophomore honors student, demigod, and—oh, yeah—head architect for redesigning the palace of the gods on Mount Olympus in her spare time. ~ Rick Riordan,
204:O kindle the fire of happiness ! Therein I shall see The door of friendliness, The room of greatness And the palace of godness. I shall see, I shall see. ~ Sri Chinmoy,
205:Then one day, it all changed. Somehow, I pulled the painting with the fruit into this new world created in my head—a place I like to call my mind palace. ~ Johan Twiss,
206:The vaults beneath the Lunar palace were carved from years of emptied lava tubes, their walls made of rough black stone and lit by sparse glowing orbs. ~ Marissa Meyer,
207:We do not want to be giving quality sides such as Southampton, Palace, Norwich and the rest eight or nine points start and expect to get back up with them. ~ Paul Ince,
208:Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was. ~ Charles Dickens,
209:My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard. ~ Iggy Pop,
210:palace with massive pillars and many courtyards, and his word was law. All the people of Egypt had to toil for him if he so decreed. And sometimes he did. ~ E H Gombrich,
211:The Little Palace had become a very lonely place. I was surrounded by people, but I almost felt like they couldn't see me, only what they needed from me. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
212:Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace; take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil smelling-place. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
213:It turns out that Buckingham Palace is big—so big that it almost defies description. It has 775 rooms and is fifteen times the size of the White House. In ~ Michelle Obama,
214:My girlfriend: sophomore honors student, demigod, and — oh, yeah — head architect for redesigning the palace of the gods on Mount Olympus in her spare time. ~ Rick Riordan,
215:Wage war against the weaker thoughts that have crept into the palace of your mind. They will see that they are unwanted and leave like unwelcome visitors. ~ Robin S Sharma,
216:But one day we shall be rich, and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we'll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin. ~ Katherine Mansfield,
217:Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
218:The brigand in the inner palace had led the guards on a lively chase, picking corridors and servants' hallways almost as if he had studied the palace layout. ~ Patrick Weekes,
219:The club shows are really intense and powerful, but for a shorter time, and the audiences are in close proximity than when I'm performing at The Palace Theatre. ~ Deborah Cox,
220:This haze of blood must subside, the palace must collapse under the weight of the riches it conceals, the orgy must finish and the time come to awaken.
~ Gustave Flaubert,
221:To be sure, the Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom, even when it takes you through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. Just watch out for parasites. ~ Samuel R Delany,
222:The caliph was marrying again at dusk. Despina had lost count of how many young girls had been brought to the palace to wed a king only to die the following day. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,
223:My good friend Paul Shaffer and I are going to continue in show business. Next month Paul and I will debut our new act at Caesar's Palace with our white tigers. ~ David Letterman,
224:The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building. ~ Raymond Chandler,
225:Thus we build on the ice, thus we write on the waves of the sea; the waves roaring pass away, the ice melts, and away goes our palace, like our thoughts. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder,
226:That which at twilight had appeared to be a silvery sea-god's palace, a structure of twisted sea-shapes, was now a temple built by the cunning genies of Fire. ~ Gabriele D Annunzio,
227:As marble was there lavish, to the vast
Of one fair palace, that far far surpass’d,
Even for common bulk, those olden three,
Memphis, and Babylon, and Nineveh. ~ John Keats,
228:Each and all of us must summon to mind the words of Him whom we honor this Easter time: 'When a strong man, armed, keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace'. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower,
229:Patterned after an Italian Renaissance palace, it is 88 times as large and one millionth as valuable to the continuation of man. that Pentagon of traveling salesmen. ~ Norman Mailer,
230:sight of Clarice Starling running through the falling leaves on the forest path was well established now in the memory palace of his mind. It is a source of pleasure ~ Thomas Harris,
231:She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believed in doing something about them. When Prince Charming didn't come along, she went over to the palace and got him. ~ Walt Disney,
232:So good and evil had to remain separate; good in the jungle, and evil in the palace. Whatever entertainment there was in that was about all we had to give the people. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
233:The journalist's job is to get the story by breaking into their offices, by bribing, by seducing people, by lying, by anything else to break through the palace guard. ~ Robert Scheer,
234:It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac, A palace of velvet With windows of mirrors. There one is safe, There are no family photographs, No rings through the nose, no cries. ~ Sylvia Plath,
235:I watch the springs, the summers, the autumns; And when comes the winter snow monotonous, I shut all the doors and shutters To build in the night my fairy palace. ~ Charles Baudelaire,
236:Kell had always been a fan of silence. He craved those too-rare moments when the world calmed and the chaos of life in the palace gave way to easy, comfortable stillness. ~ V E Schwab,
237:When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle. ~ Honore de Balzac,
238:You know what that place was ?" Ronan asked. "a castration palace. You date that girl, you should send her your nuts instead of flowers".
"You're a Neanderthal. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
239:look as if they had been plucked from the Palace of Versailles or a Jacobean mansion—that you were aboard a ship being propelled far into the bluest reaches of the ocean. ~ Erik Larson,
240:Paul got thrown out of Caesar’s Palace for counting cards, because he didn’t understand that casinos consider “mastering probability theory” the same thing as “cheating. ~ Claudia Gray,
241:Dvorets v Izmene,” said Dominika under her breath.
Benford looked over at Nate, one eyebrow raised.
“Palace of Treason,” Nate said.
“Works for me,” said Gable. ~ Jason Matthews,
242:The functionaries in the courtyard of the Palace threw open their wooden shutters and settled in for a long day of saying “fuck off in the name of the duke” to all comers. ~ Scott Lynch,
243:When we walked into the grand foyer, with a chandelier that would have been at home in Buckingham Palace, I gave him a strained smile. Did people really live this way? ~ Liv Constantine,
244:Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. ~ Herman Melville,
245:Foul-smelling water dripped inside from the moat circling the palace above. Large rats chased each other across the floor searching for food. This was no place for a queen. ~ Chris Colfer,
246:People look at us and see the poor and the mad, but they're looking at us through the bars of their cages. There's a palace in your head, boy. Learn to live in it always. ~ Grant Morrison,
247:lechery?" he asked with a wink, guessing from the hour that I had been with some palace kitchen-maid.
"Oh aye, most vile," I said cheerfully, and jumped into the boat. ~ Philippa Gregory,
248:Nice work,” I said, alluding to her nails. “Maura, at The Hair Palace, does them. She’s a genius with nails, and she’ll bikini wax you till you’re bald as a billiard ball. ~ Janet Evanovich,
249:service. [Exeunt.] SCENE 6. The same. The DUKE's palace. [Enter PROTEUS.] PROTEUS. To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn; To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn; To ~ William Shakespeare,
250:An “A” had fallen off the sign over the bar’s door, so it now said “Ple sure Palace,” but it didn’t make any difference, because everybody who was nobody called it Smackie’s. ~ John Sandford,
251:If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life. ~ Edward Gibbon,
252:She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believed in doing something about them. When Prince Charming didn't come along, she went over to the palace and got him. ~ Walt Disney Company,
253:Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. ~ Herman Melville,
254:In 1776, the Americans laid before Europe that noble Declaration, which ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and blazoned on the porch of every royal palace ~ Henry Thomas Buckle,
255:The palace of Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Euxine, became the seat of a new power, which was erected by Ardaric, king of the Gepid?. ~ Edward Gibbon,
256:The Queen's intelligence network is a hell of a lot better than anyone's in this palace. Bar none. She knows everything. I don't know how she does it. And she sees everything. ~ Prince Andrew,
257:Everyone says it's going to be Snapcase at the palace. He listens to the people."
"Yeah, right," said Vimes. And I listen to the thunder. But I don't do anything about it. ~ Terry Pratchett,
258:King George V had a set of six maxims displayed on the walls of his study at Buckingham Palace. One of these maxims said: ‘Teach me neither to proffer nor receive cheap praise. ~ Dale Carnegie,
259:Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
260:For a giddy moment Olivia wondered how that young man’s pay was entered into the palace housekeeping ledger. His Highness’s First Orderly of the Stool? Royal Stepping-stoolie? ~ Celeste Bradley,
261:...instead I find myself more and more outside; from one courtyard I move to another courtyard, as if in this palace all the doors served only for leaving and never for entering. ~ Italo Calvino,
262:Salmissra was alone and unguarded. The palace eunuchs were sworn to protect her, but evidently a eunuch's oath doesn't mean all that much to him if it's going to involve bleeding. ~ David Eddings,
263:The Art of the Romance, though warning us that it is providing fictions, opens a door into the Palace of Absurdity, and when we have lightly stepped inside, slams it shut behind us. ~ Umberto Eco,
264:Today I feel like Psyche on the cliff, cold and afraid. But if I can overcome this night and give in to the mystery and faith in life, I will awake in a palace. All I need is time. ~ Paulo Coelho,
265:For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door ~ Jonathan Swift,
266:I have been acquainted with the smell of death. The sickly, sugary smell that wafted in the wind towards the rooms in this palace. It is easy now for me to feel peaceful and content. ~ Colm T ib n,
267:For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door. ~ Jonathan Swift,
268:One trick, known as the journey method or 'memory palace,' is to conjure up a familiar space in the mind's eye, and then populate it with images of whatever it is you want to remember. ~ Joshua Foer,
269:As the weather improved, the bobms got worse. The newspapers said that the Kaiser was aiming to knock London down (although avoiding Buckingham Palace, so as not to hit his relations). ~ Kate Williams,
270:From all your herds, a cup or two of milk, From all your granaries, a loaf of bread, In all your palace, only half a bed: Can man use more? And do you own the rest? —ANCIENT SANSKRIT POEM ~ Rolf Potts,
271:As late as the seventeenth century, monarchs owned so little furniture that they had to travel from palace to palace with wagon-loads of plate and bedspreads, of carpets and tapestries. ~ Aldous Huxley,
272:You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. (Quoted by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity) ~ George MacDonald,
273:A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats's odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in a palace: one proceeds, with eager anticipation, from room to room. ~ James Fenton,
274:Each man or woman was a mansion in a condition between grandness and disrepair, and even in a grand palace, sometimes a room existed in which no one but the resident would ever be welcome. ~ Dean Koontz,
275:The palace of Ephebe is a labyrinth. I know. There are traps. No one gets in without a guide.” “How does the guide get in?” said Vorbis. “I assume he guides himself,” said the general. ~ Terry Pratchett,
276:This palace,' he had said, 'is a small city, past lying close to present like one shoe next to another. If you look at them in a mirror, left becomes right, present becomes past... ~ Patricia A McKillip,
277:Our body’s subtle self is throned within
In its viewless palace of veridical dreams
That are bright shadows of the thoughts of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,
278:Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
279:The experience of life is very bitter. it is sweet only in imagination. In its reality it is very bitter. He escaped from the palace and the women and the riches and the luxury and everything. ~ Rajneesh,
280:The more you are afflicted, the more you ought to rejoice, because in the fire of tribulation the soul will become pure gold, worthy to be placed and to shine in the heavenly palace. ~ Pio of Pietrelcina,
281:The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. ~ Joseph Conrad,
282:Now, he was free to go forth and make a name for himself in the wide, wide world.
And maybe,
just maybe,
he'd come back one day,
and burn that
fucking
palace
to the ground ~ E Lockhart,
283:Simply naming objectives isn't sufficient for a vision. If I say that I'm going to build a large palace, but I don't have any money to do so, then that is not a vision - it's an illusion. ~ Bashar al Assad,
284:The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield. The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening world into a palace of gems. ~ Kate Chopin,
285:Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty. ~ Marie von Ebner Eschenbach,
286:Everyone must have felt that a cheerful friend is like a sunny day, which sheds its brightness on all around; and most of us can, as we choose, make of this world either a palace or a prison. ~ John Lubbock,
287:Hand in hand, we climb the processional stair, rising in the celebratory uproar of a capricious court. As we enter the palace, we are blinded by the ascent from sunshine into darkness. ~ Katherine Longshore,
288:It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it…. High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
289:As governor general of the Philippines, Taft had welcomed every political group at Malacañan Palace, making it “a rule never to pay any attention to personal squabbles and differences. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin,
290:Just like that fateful day when she and her mother had been taken out of the winter palace, her father had no idea she was under attack. He wouldn’t know until he was notified of her death. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
291:My progress report
concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom
is discouraging.
I lack certain indispensable aptitudes.
Furthermore, it appears
that I packed the wrong things. ~ James Baldwin,
292:Aah, God help us, how sleazy is it, and how has it come to this? a rented palace, a denial of the passage of time, a mogul on the black-diamond slopes of the IT sector thinks he's a rock star. ~ Thomas Pynchon,
293:She screamed like an assassin was driving a knife into her stomach.
She screamed like a thousand birds were pecking at her flesh.
She screamed like the palace was burning down around her. ~ Marissa Meyer,
294:There's a difference between us and you," Ashe finally snaps. "We do what we have to in order to survive, to carve out a life. Not because we don't agree with the palace we end up living in. ~ Victoria Aveyard,
295:At first she was overjoyed that he would be with her, but then she recalled that human people could not live under the water, and he could only visit her father's palace as a dead man. ~ Hans Christian Andersen,
296:If I was not a remarkably modest man, I should probably brag a little, and say that I had done what no American ever before accomplished by visiting the queen at her palace twice within eight days. ~ P T Barnum,
297:The word defenestration, the act of throwing someone or something out of a window, was first coined after a Polish revolution in 1605 when they threw the royal family through the palace windows. ~ Joe Dunthorne,
298:Giacalone lived in a redbrick palace on Balfour Street in Grosse Pointe Park between East Jefferson and the Detroit River. Only the highest-ranking mobsters, of whom he was one, had homes there. ~ David Maraniss,
299:I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
300:There is a proper measure in all things, certain limits beyond which and short of which right is not to be found. Who so cultivates the golden mean avoids the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace. ~ Horace,
301:While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius. ~ Edward Gibbon,
302:In two days, we will march on the palace, and there will be no mercy for any of us. Remind yourself why you lead this army and steel your dark heart. There is more blood ahead than you could imagine. ~ Colleen Oakes,
303:The soul of one who serves God always swims in joy, always keeps holiday, is always in her palace of jubilation, ever singing with fresh ardor and fresh pleasure a new song of joy and love. ~ Saint John of the Cross,
304:The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
305:The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
306:When the High King was killed - first poisoned, several times, then shot with pistols, then his head cut off, then burned in the great palace fire ... no one really liked to talk about it ... ~ Heather Dixon Wallwork,
307:He knows the conspirators are waiting for a sign from the Sultana to light the fuse, but she has given orders never to disturb her while she is reading, not even if the palace were about to blow up.... ~ Italo Calvino,
308:Playing sports has always been my greatest pleasure. I don't smoke, I hardly drink alcohol. Sports helped get me into the presidential palace. My first position in the union was that of sports secretary. ~ Evo Morales,
309:She never had much in this life, but with the simplest things, she made her corner of the world as beautiful as any king's palace. We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts. ~ Dean Koontz,
310:What if we never 'get over' certain deaths, or our childhoods? What if the idea that we should have by now, or will, is a great palace lie? What if we're not supposed to? What if it takes a life time...? ~ Anne Lamott,
311:In the republic of poetry, poets rent a helicopter to bombard the national palace with poems on bookmarks, and everyone in the courtyard rushes to grab a poem fluttering from the sky, blinded by weeping. ~ Mart n Espada,
312:I went to Buckingham Palace and I wanted to take something from there, but there was nothing good to steal, although I did nick some serviettes with ER and Her Majesty on them from the Jubilee celebrations. ~ Konnie Huq,
313:Cinder cast a look toward the road that would take her away from the palace, back to the safety of being an invisible girl in a very big city. Releasing a slow breath, she turned and followed the android. ~ Marissa Meyer,
314:I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
315:There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun. ~ Patricia A McKillip,
316:Every wave is a watersprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water. ~ mile Zola,
317:Russians are easy to spot, even if you dress them like Buckingham Palace guards. They are “the white people who look seriously ticked off,” as Army Ranger vet Ellis Jones, RKC, has put it on our forum. ~ Pavel Tsatsouline,
318:the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. ~ Anne Lamott,
319:Every wave is a water sprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water. ~ Emile Zola,
320:The body of Saint Mark, supposedly preserved in the basilica was the central point of the configuration between the ducal palace, the market, and the Arsenal. This was the sacred geometry of Venetian power. ~ Peter Ackroyd,
321:The Queen was saying only the other day that London property prices are so high that she doesn’t know how she’d cope without Buckingham Palace,’ Princess Margaret explained to a sympathetic Peter Porlock. ~ Edward St Aubyn,
322:This Scarlet … you’re in love with her, aren’t you?” He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and he returned his gaze to the window. “She’s my alpha, ~ Marissa Meyer,
323:A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. If a palace rises besides the little house, the little house shrinks into a hut. ~ Karl Marx,
324:How we treat the least of our brethren, how we treat the peasant suffering with volvulus, that’s the measure of this country. Not our fighter planes or tanks, or how big the Emperor’s palace happens to be. ~ Abraham Verghese,
325:But I know she has eyes like the moon. I know the faded scar that nicks her eyebrow.

Once again the divîner's face floods my mind with such clarity it could be a painting hung on the palace wall. ~ Tomi Adeyemi,
326:People in England who do not like gardening are very few, and of the few there are, many do not own to it, knowing that they might just as well own to having been in prison, or got drunk at Buckingham Palace. ~ E M Delafield,
327:Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
328:At the eighth hour of the morning, when the functionaries in the courtyard of the Palace threw open their wooden shutters and settled in for a long day of saying “fuck off in the name of the duke” to all comers. ~ Scott Lynch,
329:He wanted to be all-powerful in Scarlet’s eyes. He wanted to be well able to provide for her. Hell, he might just buy her a palace of her own. Actually, no. He’d build the bitch with his bare hands. “Amazing. ~ Gena Showalter,
330:Since Aspar was the de facto head of the military, he was quite unfairly blamed for the entire debacle, and his reputation plummeted. Seeing his opportunity, Leo lured Aspar to the palace and had him quietly ~ Lars Brownworth,
331:The moment when one loses the illusions and passions of youth often leaves regrets, but sometimes we hate the spell that deceived us. So it is that Armida burns and razes the palace where she was enchanted. ~ Nicolas Chamfort,
332:The pirates left the boat in the Thames, next to the Palace of Westminster. They deliberately parked across two disabled spaces, because that kind of behaviour was pretty much the whole point of being a pirate. ~ Gideon Defoe,
333:I classify Sao Paolo this way: The Governor's Palace is the living room. The mayor's office is the dining room and the city is the garden. And the favela is the back yard where they throw the garbage. ~ Carolina Maria de Jesus,
334:And I would travel from asteroid to asteroid Trying to find the one that would be ours Building palace after palace until it feels like home From London to Paris, from New York to Rome The Little Prince, Alex Winslow ~ L J Shen,
335:Revolution does not mean torrents of blood, the taking of the Winter Palace, and so on. Revolution means a radical transformation of society's institutions. In this sense, I certainly am a revolutionary. ~ Cornelius Castoriadis,
336:Should misfortune visit the Court, that can only be the result of its continued abuses. If the palace is attacked, that can only be the result of misgovernment. I can hardly be held responsible for the outcome. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa,
337:The Revolution has grown cold; all its principles are weakened; there remains only red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has made crime blasé, as strong liquors made the palace blasé. ~ Louis Antoine de Saint Just,
338:“Human beings, having originated
in the Garden, require contact
with nature. Even a palace grows
unwholesome to one who is too
long confined within its walls.”


-THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE ~ Fiona Paul,
339:Mat felt sorry for this poor fool caught sneaking into the palace. Maybe the man was an assassin, but he could just be a beggar or other fool looking for excitement. Or he could be … … the Dragon Reborn. Mat groaned. ~ Anonymous,
340:She was there! At a palace! Trish strained to see through the heavily tinted windows but was unsuccessful. In a minute, she’d be outside. Then, a few minutes after that, she’d be inside the palace. A real palace. ~ Fern Michaels,
341:Indeed," Kym said. "The original palace of my father, Poseidon"
Percy snapped his fingers, which sounded like a muffled explosion. "That's why I recognized it. Dad's new crib in the Atlantic is kind of like this. ~ Rick Riordan,
342:Those who do not know satisfaction, even when living in a heavenly palace, are still not satisfied. Those who do not know satisfaction, even if rich, are poor. People who know satisfaction, even if poor, are rich. ~ Gautama Buddha,
343:The sun now radiated all around me and the magnificent palace that lay before me glittered invitingly. Which reminded me of another one of Mother’s sayings: if something appears too good to be true, it probably is. ~ Jessie Harrell,
344:A Song Of The Palace.
Her tears are spent, but no dreams come.
She can hear the others singing through the night.
She has lost his love. Alone with her beauty,
She leans till dawn on her incense-pillow.
~ Bai Juyi,
345:Education is the strongest weapon available for restricting the questions people ask, controlling what they think, and ensuring that they get their thoughts ‘from above’. ~ John Carroll, Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 34,
346:Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland , covered with rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan's palace. It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which outside ~ Anonymous,
347:They were prisoners, trapped by old ways of life, jailed within the imperial palace. He was no more free than she was. Yet only she could do what she would. If she said she would be Empress, then none could hold her back. ~ Pearl S Buck,
348:Anyway, this time I caught her in the slow stirring of biscuits, her mind on other things, but anyhow, she was distracted enough, I was determined enough,this time I got just what I wanted. Permission to play at the Palace. ~ Karen Hesse,
349:Before I dragged her by the legs back to The Memory Palace, I cut my unborn brother from her stomach with my bowie knife and flung his red-glistened body by the toe into the nearest garbage mountain, the nearest Hades. ~ Logan Ryan Smith,
350:You're dismissed, Lieutenant," the captain said evenly. "Go to your quarters."
"Yes,sir,thank you,sir," Tadark squeaked, glancing about miserably before sloshing into the palace, his dignity as waterlogged as his boots. ~ Cayla Kluver,
351:The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,
352:Eventually he made it to Buckingham Palace, where the king famously startled Lindbergh by asking him how he had peed during the flight. Lindbergh explained, a touch awkwardly, that he had brought along a pail for the purpose. ~ Bill Bryson,
353:Trouble was, they didn't have much faith to begin with. Their dreams had gone from the beaches of Arilland to the palace ballroom and no further. Faith was a thing sewn into the patchwork skirts of a girl on another shore. ~ Alethea Kontis,
354:[...] there was room only for the Bureau of Commerce, the Palace of Justice, the Prefecture of Police, the cathedral, the morgue - in other words, the means of being declared bankrupt, guilty, jailed, buried, and even rescued. ~ Jules Verne,
355:He thinks he is a flower to be looked at And when he pulls his frilly nylon pants right up tight He feels a dedicated follower of fashion. When a waiter at Buckingham Palace spilled soup on her dress: Never darken my Dior again! ~ Ray Davies,
356:They have our soul who have our bonds - and the world was more fortunate in who had London's bonds than America is seventy years later. Britain's eclipse by its wayward son was a changing of the guard, not a razing of the palace. ~ Mark Steyn,
357:As soon as he was gone, Levana whipped the veil off her head and threw it onto the settee. "The young emperor has been kidnapped, and from his own palace. Earthens are pathetic. It's amazing they haven't already become extinct. ~ Marissa Meyer,
358:I go out and I say and do what I want - even if people may find that shocking. One could, of course, decide to be suffocated by all the pomp here in Élysée Palace. But if you decide to resist it, then you won't be suffocated. ~ Emmanuel Macron,
359:In the center of the kingdom of God, you do not find a gargantuan palace inhabited by an unapproachable king. No, in the center of the kingdom of God is a bloody cross, on which hung a broken King, who welcomes us as we are. ~ Paul David Tripp,
360:On October 18, 1941, I suddenly received a mandate from His Majesty to form a new cabinet. This was completely unexpected, and when I was summoned to the Imperial Palace I thought I would be questioned on the army's point of view ~ Hideki Tojo,
361:So? They’re paid to be ogled at,” said Moist. “They are professional oglees. It’s an ogling establishment. For oglers. And you heard what’s going on in the palace. We could be at war in a day. Do you trust that lot? Trust me. ~ Terry Pratchett,
362:But sitting there with her brow furrowed and her feet tucked under her, she looked like what she truly was: a girl of seventeen, raised in the sheltered luxury of the Little Palace, far from home and barely getting by every day. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
363:I will see you again," Hades promised. "I will prepare a room for you at the palace in case you do not survive. Perhaps your chambers would look good decorated with the skulls of monks."

"Now I can't tell if you're joking. ~ Rick Riordan,
364:Ma che cosa posso raccontare a questa ragazza, ora, in questa fredda mattina ventosa al Gritti Palace Hotel?
“Che cosa vorresti sapere, Figlia?” le chiese
“Tutto quanto.”
“Va bene” disse il colonnello. “Incominciamo. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
365:We view the world very much as peasants in the countryside have for millennia. they've alsways said that the mountains are high and the emperor is far away, meaning palace intrigues and imperial threats have no impact on their lives. ~ Lisa See,
366:When you don't have any money, any things, any house - if you are unattached, what is the difficulty in it? But when you have everything and you remain unattached - a beggar in the palace - then something very deep has been attained. ~ Rajneesh,
367:My wife likes to say that the mind is a palace with room for many guests. Perhaps the butler takes care to install the delegates of Science in a different wing from the emissaries of Faith, lest they take up arguing in the passages. ~ Laini Taylor,
368:Encountering a corpse forced the man who would be Buddha to see life as a process of unpredictable and constant change. It was life without corpses, trapped behind the palace walls, that had prevented him from reaching enlightenment. ~ Caitlin Doughty,
369:report for the upcoming wedding. “If we’re going to be sneaking into New Beijing Palace while Levana is there, why don’t we just assassinate her? Not to be all cold-wired murderer about it, but wouldn’t that solve a lot of our problems? ~ Marissa Meyer,
370:Set wide the window. Let me drink the day. I loved light ever, light in eye and brain No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, But just the common dusty wind-blown day That roofs earth's millions. ~ Edith Wharton,
371:The civilised labourer who gives his best effort for a bit of bread, who builds a palace and sleeps in a stable, who weaves rich fabrics and dresses in rags, and who produces everything and does without everything, is not free. ~ Pierre Joseph Proudhon,
372:By The Purple Cliff
On a part of a spear still unrusted in the sand
I have burnished the symbol of an ancient kingdom....
Except for a wind aiding General Zhou Yu,
Spring would have sealed both Qiao girls in CopperBird Palace.
~ Du Mu,
373:... Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
374:The Prince, travelling through his domains, noticed a man in the cheering crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. He beckoned him over and asked: Was your mother ever employed in my palace? ... No, Sire, the man replied. But my father was. ~ ?,
375:Don't ever ask me again if I hate living anywhere with you and Jasmina. This Rock reminds me of the boy I was and being with you in the palace reminds me of the man I want to be.'

'Not just any man,' she whispered. 'A King. Mine. ~ Melina Marchetta,
376:Take what happened to me in Bali. I planned on going to Ubud, then met a man on an airplane who told me it was too touristy. He gave me an address on the other side of the island, which turned out to be a palace where I lived for four years. ~ Rita Gelman,
377:At the start of the trip, I took shots of the sights. The Colosseum. Belvedere Palace. Mozart Square. But I stopped. They never came out very well, and you could get postcards of these things.
But there are no postcards of this. Of life. ~ Gayle Forman,
378:Once upon a time there was an empress, trapped as a ghost in the ruins of a jewelled palace, cursed to find another soul to take her place. At least, that's what the empress heard. But, as it turned out, stories can have any ending you like. ~ Kirsty Logan,
379:On Meeting Li Guinian Again, South Of The River
I often saw you at the palace of the prince,
And twice at Cui’s I heard you sing for hours.
This southern scenery seems colorful indeed,
When you are here among the fallen flowers.
~ Du Fu,
380:The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. ~ Anne Lamott,
381:The woman who had been born in an imperial palace, and then, as Queen of France, had had hundreds of rooms in her dwelling house, was now imprisoned in a tiny basement cell, its walls streaming with damp, and its grated window half occluded. ~ Stefan Zweig,
382:Where is the palace?”
“Just over yonder.” Tiny waved to his left, causing a new low-pressure front. “Easy
two-minute walk.”
I tried to translate that from Giantese. I figured that meant the palace was about seven billion miles away. ~ Rick Riordan,
383:Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds it's way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory... ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
384:Among the heresies was the idea that nature follows laws, because this conflicts with God’s omnipotence. Interestingly, Pope John was killed by the effects of the law of gravity a few months later when the roof of his palace fell in on him. ~ Stephen Hawking,
385:But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and and through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. ~ Edith Wharton,
386:The fear of hell, the punishment of sin, how the modern parent revolts from such teaching. Yet I will assert that far from doing us children harm, it was a sure foundation to the world of our confidence, a master girder in our palace of delight. ~ Joyce Cary,
387:There's a reason we English are ruled more by tea than by Buckingham Palace or His Majesty's Government: Apart from the soul, the brewing of tea is the only thing that sets us apart from the great apes - or so the Vicar had remarked to Father. ~ Alan Bradley,
388:All I know is that once Julián told the kids in the building that he had a sister only he could see. He said she came out of mirrors as if she were made of thin air and that she lived with Satan himself in a palace at the bottom of a lake. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
389:All I know is that once Julián told the kids in the building that he had a sister only he could see. He said she came out of mirrors as if she were made of thin air and that she lived with Satan himself in a palace at the bottom of a lake. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon,
390:One of the things that I've learned from the Selection so far is that moving forward means joining your life before coming to the palace with the future that lies in front of you. I'm hoping to make another step in joining those two worlds today. ~ Kiera Cass,
391:One of the things that I’ve learned from the Selection so far is that moving forward means joining your life before coming to the palace with the future that lies in front of you. I’m hoping to make another step in joining those two worlds today. ~ Kiera Cass,
392:The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. Its a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections - and its hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon,
393:Hillary Clinton doesn't have a prayer. She does not make people feel good. She doesn't have the ability. She doesn't have the ability to be humble. It's just not in her. I mean, she's the Palace of Versailles every day in and out, and that's it. ~ Rush Limbaugh,
394:Maria cries unashamedly on my shoulder while I whisper and pet her cheek, but Anastasia grips my other hand and stares fiercely back at our Alexander Palace with her wet blue eyes until it is no more than a lemon-colored speck against the sunrise. ~ Sarah Miller,
395:PALACE, n. A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great official. The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church is called a palace; that of the Founder of his religion was known as a field, or wayside. There is progress. ~ Ambrose Bierce,
396:Verte was the kingdom's head sorceress, oracle, palace grump, and the only reason I hadn't died of sheer boredom.... One time, I blew up her caudron trying to make soup. In retaliation, she sent me a billy goat that ate my entire closet's contents. ~ Betsy Schow,
397:Welcome to Crystal Palace,” Ray said. “That’s the EDA’s code name for this place.” “Why?” I asked. He shook his head. “Because it’s easier to say than ‘Earth Defense Alliance Strategic Command Post Number Fourteen,’ ” he said. “Sounds cooler, too. ~ Ernest Cline,
398:Above us our palace waits, the only one I've ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,
399:Ivy Huxford kept peeking out and giving reports of who was there, and how she never saw so many seats filled in the Palace, and that she didn’t think they could squeeze a rattlesnake into the back even if he paid full price, the place was so packed. ~ Karen Hesse,
400:The day I'm in England performing, English security let a man in a Batman suit climb Buckingham Palace. I felt so much safer... Batman was on the wall of Buckingham Palace for five hours. Wouldn't happen in America - three minutes: dead Batman. ~ Christopher Titus,
401:This time James Swindler strode into the room. It had always irritated Jack that Swindler had the uncanny knack to give the impression he belonged, regardless of the surroundings. He’d probably look comfortable strolling through Buckingham Palace. ~ Lorraine Heath,
402:As I grew up, I knew that as a building it was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid of Giza, the nation's capital, the czar's winter palace, and the Louvre - except, of course, that it was better than all of those inconsequential places. ~ A Bartlett Giamatti,
403:But he had underestimated the strangeness of talking about the future of his life with someone for whom the future still seemed unbounded: a pleasure palace of choices, with infinite doors, in which only a fool would spend his time trapped in one room. ~ Zadie Smith,
404:If life's journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own. ~ Rabindranath Tagore,
405:12-27-10
Palace Hotel, San Francisco- Over Christmas
In bed, lights out:
O: 'Oh, oh, oh...!'
I: 'What was that for?'
O: 'I found your fifth rib.'
In the middle of the night: 'Wouldn't it be nice if we could dream together?' O whispers. ~ Bill Hayes,
406:KING EDWARD IV:

Now my soul's palace is become a prison;
Ah, would she break from hence, that this my body
Might in the ground be closed up in rest!
For never henceforth shall I joy again,
Never, O never, shall I see more joy! ~ William Shakespeare,
407:Lord Valentia famously observed that it was better that ‘India be ruled from a palace than a counting house’; but it was this spendthrift use of Company funds that more than anything gradually eroded Wellesley’s support among the Company Directors, ~ William Dalrymple,
408:He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. ~ Frank McCourt,
409:Moses spent forty years in the king's palace thinking that he was somebody; then he lived forty years in the wilderness finding out that without GOD he was a nobody; finally he spent forty more years discovering how a nobody with GOD can be a somebody. ~ Dwight L Moody,
410:Nico remembered something Jason Grace had told him in the palace of Notus: Maybe it’s time you come out of the shadows. If only I could, he thought. For the first time in his life, he had begun to fear the dark, because he might melt into it permanently. ~ Rick Riordan,
411:Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls. ~ Washington Irving,
412:California house, a palace on a cliff by the Pacific, and her father’s house, the largest in New York City, with a tower and 121 rooms, including one adorned with gold. Taking all this in, the neurologist wasn’t exactly sure how much to credit this tale of ~ Bill Dedman,
413:I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God? ~ Catherynne M Valente,
414:Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
415:He says, You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can't make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor , your shoes might be broken , but your mind is a palace. ~ Frank McCourt,
416:He wanted to stick his finger in it and see what happened. Some story, some quest, started here, and he wanted to go on it. It felt fresh and clean and unsafe, nothing like the heavy warm lard of palace life. The protective plastic wrap had been peeled off ~ Lev Grossman,
417:If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
418:Yet even as the wind stirs your petals, flowers fall. My flowers are eternal, my songs live forever. I lift them in offering; I, a singer. I cast them to the wind, I spill them. The flowers become gold, they come to dwell inside the palace of eternity. ~ Jacqueline Carey,
419:Fortunately, when I was in the palace, I got some practice stabbing him in the heart. This time, I was much better at it. And did it ten times instead of once. Then cut off his head." "I always thought the secret of your success was your thoroughness. ~ Edward W Robertson,
420:Pulcheria Ivanovna reached out her hand to stroke her; but the ungrateful animal had evidently become too well used to robber cats, or adopted some romantic notion about love and poverty being better than a palace, for the cats were as poor as church-mice. ~ Nikolai Gogol,
421:The first known perfumer was a woman, Tapputi, an overseer at a palace in Mesopotamia in the second millennium BCE. Clay tablets tell us that she used oil, reeds, flowers, resin, and water to make perfumes by a process of distillation and filtration. ~ Valerie Ann Worwood,
422:They had all agreed that Hades was a complete villain. But Kev had understood exactly why the underworld god had stolen Persephone for his bride. He had wanted a little bit of sunshine, of warmth, for himself, down in the cheerless gloom of his dark palace. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
423:This week, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the Yemeni government, heretofore pro-American. In September, they overran Sanaa, the capital. On Tuesday, they seized the presidential palace. On Thursday, they forced the president to resign. ~ Charles Krauthammer,
424:In the circle of yellow lamplight,
These few roof-beams and columns
Of what could be a Mogul Emperor's palace.
The Prince chews his long nails,
The Princess lowers her green eyelids.
They both smoke too much,
Never go to bed before daybreak. ~ Charles Simic,
425:Somewhere there was once a Flower, a Stone, a Crystal, a Queen, a King, a Palace, a Lover and his Beloved, and this was long ago, on an Island somewhere in the ocean 5,000 years ago. . . . Such is Love, the Mystic Flower of the Soul. This is the Center, the Self. ~ Carl Jung,
426:Cease with the displays of false modesty. The entire palace knows about it."
A feeling of warmth crept up Shahrzad's neck. "Knows about what?"
Despina grinned. "The Caliph of Khorasan going into the gardens at dawn alone. And returning with a single rose. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,
427:Sarusawa Pond is a very special place, because the Emperor paid it a formal visit when he heard how one of the Palace Maidens had drowned herself there. 1 Thinking of Hitomaro’s marvellous words ‘her hair tangled as in sleep’, there is really nothing I can add. ~ Sei Sh nagon,
428:The Élysée Palace is a place laden with history. It is a place where power has left its mark - over the course of centuries, ever since the revolution. You just sort of become part of it and continue the history. But, of course, there is a sense of gravitas. ~ Emmanuel Macron,
429:When we lay awake after making love I could hear the sleepy birds settling in their nests in the thatch. We had a little pallet bed, a table and two stools, a fireplace where we warmed up our dinner from the palace, and nothing more. We wanted nothing more. ~ Philippa Gregory,
430:SCORPIOUS: Correction, she used to hate me, but did you see the look in her eyes when I asked? That wasn't hate, that was pity.

ALBUS: And pity's good?

SCORPIOUS: Pity is a start, my friend, a foundation on which to build a palace- a palace of love. ~ J K Rowling,
431:We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth. But, as was mentioned to me not long since, "There is a time coming when all things shall be found out." I am not so sanguine myself, believing that the well in which Truth is said to reside is really a bottomless pit. ~ Oliver Heaviside,
432:Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father's palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels. ~ Thomas Traherne,
433:Above the plains up on the hill there stood a castle bold

A gleaming palace made of white, a pillar to behold

The horsemen lived in service to the castle and the crown

But the knights rose up and killed the kings

And it all burned down. ~ Ally Carter,
434:One must believe neither the people of the palace, who ordinarily measure the power of the king by the shape of his crown, which, being round, has no end, nor those who, in the excesses of an indiscreet zeal, proclaim themselves openly as partisans of Rome. ~ Cardinal Richelieu,
435:Harold Brodie is a louse and a lothario who cheats at cards and has a different girl in his rumble seat every week. That coupe of his is pos-i-tute-ly a petting palace. And he’s a terrible kisser to boot.” Evie’s parents stared in stunned silence. “Or so I’ve heard. ~ Libba Bray,
436:He would go east and fight the emperor’s wars, carrying out the bloody business of larger countries eating up the littler ones. It wasn’t a matter of theory in a tiny office in the emperor’s palace. It was the work of their lives and the end of many of them. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
437:Not much of a day for sight-seeing,” Pamela said, “but that’s Trafalgar Square off to the right.” I looked over my shoulder and caught sight of the National Gallery on one side and Buckingham Palace on the other and figured I had filled my culture quota for the trip. ~ Paul Levine,
438:It is alarming ... to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience. ~ Winston Churchill,
439:…the abstract geometrics spasming across the TV screen are settling into a deep crystalline blue, the same as the color from her implant’s diagnostics, which somehow seems natural, as though her history pervaded everything, and the world were the palace of her memory ~ Zachary Mason,
440:keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), ~ Charles Dickens,
441:Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
442:A lovely fatigue claimed him. He lay down on the grass and listened. He thought about how Kestrel had slept on the palace lawn and dreamed of him. When she had told him this, he'd wished that it had been real. He tried to imagine the dream, then found himself dreaming. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
443:Alucard knew the Maresh palace better than he should. Rhy had shown him a dozen ways in and out; hidden doors and secret halls, a curtain pulled aside to reveal a stairwell, a door set flush with the wall. All the ways a friend could sneak into a room, or a lover into bed. ~ V E Schwab,
444:She was already in his palace, in his life. He couldn't go back--and wouldn't even if he could. She was so close to him now that it was as if he held her in his palm like a glowing ember--and gave thanks for the pain even as he inhaled the smoke from his burning flesh. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,
445:[T]he blossom of benevolence, of charity, is the fairest flower, no matter whether it blooms by the side of a hovel, or bursts from a vine climbing the marble pillar of a palace. I respect no man because he is rich; I hold in contempt no man because he is poor. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
446:As the chips dissolved on my tong, the embedded video links travelled to my brain. Tapping into my synopsis and taking hold of my senses. They transported me to another time and place. I was no longer in Mackiel's office. I was in the palace. And I was covered in blood. ~ Astrid Scholte,
447:Her voice is full of money,"...
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it....High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl.... ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
448:But in her loneliness in the palace she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,
449:Time... is an essential requirement for effective research. An investigator may be given a palace to live in, a perfect laboratory to work in, he may be surrounded by all the conveniences money can provide; but if his time is taken from him he will remain sterile. ~ Walter Bradford Cannon,
450:To act – that is true wisdom. I can be what I want to be, but I have to want whatever it is. Success consists in being successful, not in having the potential for success. Any wide piece of ground is the potential site of a palace, but there’s no palace until it’s built. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
451:As he drank, I remembered that there's a reason we English are ruled more by tea than by Buckingham Palace or His Majesty's Government: Apart from the soul, the brewing of tea is the only thing that sets us apart from the great apes--or so the Vicar had remarked to Father... ~ Alan Bradley,
452:He got away with those affairs because he was never inattentive to Ellie. Some of the other guys around here should take a lesson from that. What women hate is when you turn cold to them. If you treat them like queens, they’ll let you have a concubine or two outside the palace. ~ Anne Rice,
453:Insight comes suddenly, as though you’ve been wandering around in the dark & someone switches on all the lights and reveals a palace. It’s been there all along. It feels as if we’ve discovered something that no one else ever knew & yet it’s completely straightforward ~ Pema Chodron,
454:These days, when I knock on the doors of the Tryptamine Palace, I am no longer greeted with unconditional love, but instead, I am reminded of the responsibility that comes with ultimate knowledge: an undeniable responsibility to myself, to my tribe, to my species, to my planet. ~ James Oroc,
455:On another occasion, when a party of two hundred Muslims turned up at the Palace demanding to be allowed to slaughter cows – holy to Hindus – at ‘Id, Zafar told them in a ‘decided and angry tone that the religion of the Musalmen did not depend upon the sacrifice of cows’. ~ William Dalrymple,
456:PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead. ~ Ambrose Bierce,
457:When you're filming in Russia in Catherine's Palace, and you're in the real place where the Tsar's ball really happened, all those years ago, it does so much of the work for you. It's so vivid. You escape into this different time through the costumes, the sets and the atmosphere. ~ Lily James,
458:And then I was simply running, flying along the hallways of the palace on glass-slippered feet, not knowing, not caring where I was going. The journey, not the destination, was all that mattered. The sense of freedom, never mind that it was false, that always comes with motion. ~ Cameron Dokey,
459:I am convinced that there is no great distance between heaven and earth, that the distance lies in our finite minds. When the Beloved visits us in the night, He turns our chambers into the vestibules of His palace halls. Earth rises to heaven when heaven comes down to earth. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
460:Kerin was wearing the most casual of high-end clothes, not exactly a jogging suit but something that clearly could be used during exercise, yet had cost as much as my television. She had no doubt just arrived on her way home from the fitness center at Buckingham Palace. “Kerin! ~ E J Copperman,
461:Nefertiti!" I shouted. "Meritaten!" How could they both be gone? Where could they be? I rounded the corner to the window of Appearences, then opened the door.
The blood had already spread across the tiles.
"Nefertiti!" I screamed, and my voice echoed through the palace. ~ Michelle Moran,
462:Harold Brodie is a louse and a lothario who cheats at cards and has a different girl in his rumble seat every week. That coupe of his is pos-i-tute-ly a petting palace. And he’s a terrible kisser to boot.”

Evie’s parents stared in stunned silence.

“Or so I’ve heard. ~ Libba Bray,
463:I'll give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, My gay apparel for an almsman's gown, My figured goblets for a dish of wood, My scepter for a palmer's walking staff My subjects for a pair of carved saints and my large kingdom for a little grave. ~ William Shakespeare,
464:I wish your donkey well, but you should always feel free to correct me when I make mistakes.'
'Yes, Your Highness,' Isaak said uncomfortably.
'Don't worry,' said Nikolai as they turned their backs on the gardens and headed toward the Grand Palace. 'It doesn't happen often. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
465:On top of the Tree of Life - in the Hall of the Palace - someone had found somebody for whom he had been searching for a long, long time. And the tears of joy which were shed became the fruit of the Tree of Life, the grapes whose juice if distilled by the flute of the blue god. ~ Miguel Serrano,
466:On top of the Tree of Life - in the Hall of the Palace - someone had found somebody for whom he had been searching for a long, long time. And the tears of joy which were shed became the fruit of the Tree of Life, the grapes whose juice is distilled by the flute of the blue god. ~ Miguel Serrano,
467:Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. ~ Ben Shapiro,
468:In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share. ~ Henry Adams,
469:Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
470:The walls loom, grey as the rain outside. LIke the sky of England itself. Everything seems colourless and humbled, despite the layers of velvets and tapestries, the peacock plumage of courtiers and ladies. Greenwich Palace feels like my father's disappointment made tangible. ~ Katherine Longshore,
471:Along the wide curving moat surrounding the palace, rows of cherry trees announced the end of their seasonal beauty. Some of the trees were weeping: blossoms in white and palest pink, ponderous with decreptitude, eddying on the brown water, stirred by the paddling of ducks. ~ John Burnham Schwartz,
472:How do I know Michael hasn't met some other girl?
Some Floridian girl, with long,sun-streaked hair, and a tan,and breasts? Who has access to the Internet and isn't cooped up in a palace with her crazy grandma,a homeless,Speedo-wearing prince and a freakish,hairless miniature poodle? ~ Meg Cabot,
473:Louis XVI made the Franco-American treaties official by receiving the three commissioners at Versailles on March 20. Crowds gathered at the palace gates to catch a glimpse of the famous American, and they shouted “Vive Franklin” as his coach passed through the gold-crested gates. ~ Walter Isaacson,
474:At night, she slipped into the shelter of the boy’s arms as they stood together on deck, picking out constellations from the vast spill of stars: the Hunter, the Scholar, the Three Foolish Sons, the bright spokes of the Spinning Wheel, the Southern Palace with its six crooked spires. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
475:History offers us not a single recorded cell phone conversation between Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan in which His Most Christian Majesty wishes he were a tampon, or photos of Nell Gwynn sunbathing topless in her walled garden near Whitehall Palace. It is most certainly our loss. ~ Eleanor Herman,
476:Only one store on the block looked open, its windows glaring with neon. The sign above the door said something like CRSTUY’S WATRE BDE ALPACE. “Crusty’s Water Bed Palace?” Grover translated. It didn’t sound like a place I’d ever go except in an emergency, but this definitely qualified. ~ Rick Riordan,
477:I am a stranger to half measures. With life I am on the attack, restlessly ferreting out each pleasure, foraging for answers, wringing from it even the pain. I ransack life, hunt it down. I am the hungry peasants storming the palace gates. I will have my share. No matter how it tastes. ~ Marita Golden,
478:Who is this? And what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the Knights at Camelot; But Lancelot mused a little space He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
479:Actually, IBM went through a severe identity crisis. It almost missed the computer opportunity. It became capable of growth only through a palace coup which overthrew Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the company’s founder, its chief executive, and for long years the prophet of “data processing. ~ Peter F Drucker,
480:I had no idea how Annabeth Chase had figured out that the Daedalus command could be used on any automaton. Then again, she’d been able to redesign my palace on Mount Olympus with perfect acoustics and surround-sound speakers in the bathroom, so her cleverness shouldn’t have surprised me. ~ Rick Riordan,
481:I tend to believe in the traditional architecture of life and the afterlife. This world is a journey of discovery and purification. The next world consists of two destinations: One is a palace for the spirit and an endless kingdom of wonder, while the other is cold and dark and unthinkable. ~ Dean Koontz,
482:Your--ah--intervention, shall we say, has simplified things in the palace enormously. We no longer have to worry about Salmissra's whims and peculiar appetites. We rule by committee, and we hardly ever find it necessary to poison each other anymore. No one's tried to poison me for months. ~ David Eddings,
483:Each palace, with its chimes, drums, pipes, and vertical flutes,     Releases its boudoir sorrows and springtime griefs.     There are in the forbidden courtyard     Young, fresh faces like flowers bedewed;     There are on the palace moat     Slender waists like willows dancing in the wind. ~ Anthony C Yu,
484:Greet the sky and live, blossom!... Yet even as the wind stirs your petals, flowers fall. My flowers are eternal, my songs live forever. I lift them in offering; I, a singer. I cast them to the wind, I spill them. The flowers become gold, they come to dwell inside the palace of eternity. ~ Jacqueline Carey,
485:Colt grimaced and said, “They might be enjoying their privacy a little too much. I was video chatting with Chance one day last week, and I noticed a huge bottle of lube on the dining room table. Dude, we eat there! Now that they’re unsupervised, those two have turned our home into a sex palace. ~ Alexa Land,
486:The Emperor himself amassed his great riches. The older he grew, the greater became his greed, his pitiable cupidity... he and his people took millions from the state treasurer and left cemeteries full of people who had died of hunger, cemeteries visible from the windows of the royal palace ~ Haile Selassie,
487:To Jo's lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of enchanted palace, full of splendors and delights which no one enjoyed. She had long wanted to behold these hidden glories, and to know the "Laurence boy," who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only ever knew how to begin. ~ Louisa May Alcott,
488:She sleeps: her breathings are not heard In palace chambers far apart. The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd That lie upon her charmed heart She sleeps: on either hand upswells The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest: She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells A perfect form in perfect rest. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
489:I don't care if you think I'm a Saint or a fool or the Darkling's whore. If you want to remain at the Little Palace you will follow me. And if you don't like it, you will be gone by tonight, or I will have you in chains. I am a solider. I am the Sun Summoners. And I'm the only chance you have. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
490:The entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room. ~ Orhan Pamuk,
491:The White Palace was pretty impressive. Very impressive, in fact. The day to day running of the set was everybody showed up for work. They are seasoned filmmakers over there. They have an infrastructure for filmmaking, which is very healthy. It's small, but they were tenacious, polite, timely. ~ Pierce Brosnan,
492:He did not look at her. He did not need to. Over the years she had built a special palace of the mind for him, and he had helped lay every brick. Now he could feel its golden walls tumbling. If he looked into her face, he would see hurt, bewilderment and the painful, necessary birth of doubt. ~ Frances Hardinge,
493:If you believe you are beyond harm, will you go inside? Will you enter this palace so prominent in blood and glory, follow your face through the web-spanned dark, toward the exquisite chiming of the clavier? The alarms cannot see us. The wet policeman lurking in the doorway cannot see us. Come … ~ Thomas Harris,
494: “I think we need food.”

“As long as I don’t have to cook it.”

He threw his arm around my shoulder as we turned back to the palace. It felt like a very boyfriendish thing to do. “But we did so great last time.”

“All I learned about was butter.”

“Then you know everything. ~ Kiera Cass,
495:My dreams were always small and puny. All I ever needed was a little house with a little picket fence by the sea. Little did I know that I would live in Malacanang Palace for 20 years and visit all the major palaces of mankind. And then also meet ordinary citizens and the leaders of superpowers. ~ Imelda Marcos,
496:How are you going to make it move? It doesn't have a – "

"Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying."

And, sure enough, as soon as they were all quite still, it began to move quickly through the streets, and in a very short time they arrived at the royal palace. ~ Norton Juster,
497:I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My scepter for a palmer's walking staff
My subjects for a pair of carved saints
and my large kingdom for a little grave. ~ William Shakespeare,
498:It had surprised and impressed Tessia to learn that Everran and Avaria owned two wagons, one for their own everyday use and one kept for visits to the Royal Palace. Since the journey to the palace consisted of half the length of two streets, it seemed frivolous to own a vehicle especially for it. ~ Trudi Canavan,
499:Dominika shuddered inside. The Kremlin. Majestic buildings, gilded ceilings, soaring halls, all filled to the rafters with deceit, rapacious greed, and cruelty. A Palace of Treason. And now Dominika—another sort of traitor—was coming to the palace, to smile and lick the impassive face of the tsar. ~ Jason Matthews,
500:You're telling me that this teenage girl has not only escaped from your prison and evaded capture by your highly trained military, but has now invaded your palace and the private quarters of the emperor himself, kidnapped him, and again gotten away with it?'

'Precisely correct, Your Majesty. ~ Marissa Meyer,
501:You're wonderful. So full of life and excitement. The priests and servants of the palace, they wear colors, but there's no color inside of them. They just go about their duties, eyes down, solemn. You've got color on the inside, so much of it that it bursts out and colors everything around you. ~ Brandon Sanderson,
502:And her palace,' Simeon said dreamily. 'You can hardly imagine, Isidore. It's made entirely of pink marble, and it looks over the banks of a huge rain plain. Sometimes the plain fills with white flowers, thousands and thousands of them. If there's rain, the plain forms a great blue mirror to the sky. ~ Eloisa James,
503:At Falkland Palace, Andrew Melville famously reminded James VI in 1596 that: [t]hair is twa Kings and twa Kingdomes in Scotland. Thair is Christ Jesus the King, and His kingdom, the Kirk, whase subject King James the Saxt is, and of whase kingdome nocht a king, not a lord, not a heid, but a member. ~ Alistair Moffat,
504:I'm one of those people, in any country I'm in, if somebody could just put me in a car or a bus, I'll look out the window and say, 'OK, there's the Tower of London, there's Buckingham Palace, there's Big Ben,' and if it all takes about five minutes, perfect. I've seen all of it and I can go home. ~ Gilbert Gottfried,
505:Corney & Barrow are proud to have the royal warrant, meaning that they provide the Palace with some of the greatest - and necessarily most expensive - wines from around the world. I am pleased to say that they also hold my own warrant, for providing exceptional wines at - surprisingly - modest prices. ~ Simon Hoggart,
506:No, of course not.... Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it.... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!" - Raoul ~ Gaston Leroux,
507:I basically left Texas with no money. I was making $3.50 working in some mall, so I didn't have a lot of cash. I took $1,000 and headed to California. Along the way I stopped in Vegas because I had always wanted to see Caesar's Palace. So I stopped there and won $2,500 on a slot machine! It was amazing. ~ Krista Allen,
508:I didn't come for him," Vhalla whispered softly. The gardens were surrounded by a tall palace wall that blocked most of the mountain winds. The prince heard her with little problem, his retreat stalled. "I came to see you."
"Me?" He looked back in disbelief.
"Yes, you," Vhalla laughed softly. ~ Elise Kova,
509:No. Despina would continue working at the palace until she could hide the truth no longer. Then she would set her world straight, once and for all. This child would not be raised to fear or hate the world around it. Be made to bow and cower to lesser men. No. The world around this child would bow first. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,
510:Now, as the party reached the royal hall the brothers shared, Tolners produced a note and held it up for Kell to read. “This isn’t funny.”
Apparently Rhy had had the grace to pin the note to his door, in case anyone in the palace should worry. "Not kidnapped. Out for a drink with Kell. Sit tight. ~ Victoria Schwab,
511:When I was sworn in as Mayor of Nashville back in 1991, I have to admit to you that I felt for several weeks like a bit of an outsider who had somehow taken over but didnt really belong in this nice palace. I secretly wondered if the real mayor would come back from vacation one day and call the police. ~ Phil Bredesen,
512:Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase “only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp. ~ Terry Pratchett,
513:There were events that stuck in my mind. One, for example, was the case of the missing palace seal at the beginning of winter.’

‘Oh the poor animal,’ she cried out, ‘they’re such beautiful creatures.’

‘I’m speaking of the royal seal placed on correspondence, as you would know,’ he said. ~ Melina Marchetta,
514:As much as Sammy Tigertail cherished the Mark Knopfler guitar, embracing it made him think of the casino from whose garish walls it had been lifted. The great Osceola would not have allowed his people to put their name on such a monstrous palace of white greed; more likely he would have set a torch to it. ~ Carl Hiaasen,
515:Later, when I was at Caesar's Palace, and [Joe and Gil Cates] were trying to get me to have opening acts for the show, they gave me a list of people, and Rosie O'Donnell was one of them. I said, "I don't really need any opening acts. I have funny stuff in the show, and I do a lot of comedy and stuff." ~ David Copperfield,
516:Our children and grandchildren visit us regularly in the Élysée Palace . The little ones are constantly running around outside in the garden. The first time they were intimidated by this place, but now they move around here totally normally. I think it is important that people really live in this place. ~ Emmanuel Macron,
517:If you look at animals like that," said Alucard, clapping her on the shoulder, "it's no wonder they hate you."

"Yes, well, then the feeling is mutual." She glanced around. "No Esa?"

"My cat dislikes horses almost as much as you do," he said. "I left her in the palace."

"God help them all. ~ V E Schwab,
518:In their perverted way all humanity imitates you. Yet they put themselves at a distance from you and exalt themselves against you. But even by thus imitating you they acknowledge that you are the creator of all nature and so concede that there is no palace where one can entirely escape from you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
519:I want to open up this palace . A concert will be held. We have invited school classes from socially disadvantaged neighborhoods and Élysée Palace staff and their families. That's 200 people who normally wouldn't have access to this building. Living in a place like this also means sharing it with others. ~ Emmanuel Macron,
520:She smoothed her skirt around her knees. “This Scarlet … you’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and he returned his gaze to the window. “She’s my alpha,” he murmured, with a haunting sadness in his voice. ~ Marissa Meyer,
521:Because the shadows can’t touch me, and the fallen won’t. Because I’m good with magic, and better with a blade, and I’ve got more power in my blood than you’ve got in this whole damned palace. Because I’ve no qualms about killing, and on top of it all, I’ve got a knack for keeping your sons—both of them—alive. ~ V E Schwab,
522:I first came to London as a musician, and when my group broke up, I did 'Guys and Dolls' at the Watford Palace theatre. After that, Ned Sherrin found me and brought me to the West End to do one of his shows. The work went from strength to strength, so I thought: 'This is where the world wants me; I'll stay. ~ Clarke Peters,
523:Both boys giggled at that one. Then growing more somber, Blakely said, “But man oh man, what a total Babe Lair.” “Love Nest.” “Herpes Haven.” “Penile Palace.” “Beaver Trap.” Myron tried not to sigh. It was like hanging out with a really annoying thesaurus. He turned to Win and asked what the plan was. “Follow ~ Harlan Coben,
524:He came for me. I couldn’t believe it.

He came for me. Into a flying palace full of thousands of armed rakshasas in the middle of a magic jungle. Oh, you stupid, stupid idiot man. What was the God damn point of saving him only to watch him throw his life away?


Kate for Curran ~ Ilona Andrews,
525:Out in the palace gardens, groundskeepers buried statues in the dirt. As Justice and Peace were entombed together, a workman wrote on one flank "We'll come back for you." The grave was covered with leaves to conceal it.

- Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad ~ M T Anderson,
526:She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd
That lie upon her charmed heart
She sleeps: on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest. ~ Alfred Tennyson,
527:There certainly can and will be plenty of external difficulties in life; nevertheless, the soul that comes unto Christ dwells within a personal fortress, a veritable palace of perfect peace. ‘Whoso hearkeneth unto me,’ Jehovah says, ‘shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil’ (Prov. 1:33). ~ Jeffrey R Holland,
528:smirk that begged to be slapped. Despina had heard tales of him. The palace was rife with salacious talk. And the captain of the Royal Guard had quite the reputation. A notorious rake. One who’d broken many hearts. He could supposedly charm the skirts off a girl with nothing but sly words and flippant promises. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,
529:But--" she tried not to wail, but her voice crept upward, anyway "--I want to go HOME--"
"And I want a palace and a handsome, young prince who has an unnatural lust for old women, and neither of us are going to get what we crave, so let's concentrate on what we can do something about!" Granny said sharply. ~ Mercedes Lackey,
530:Subby Subby Subby," whispered Goss. "Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we're silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic off together in the Meadow of Happy Kites. ~ China Mieville,
531:Subby Subby Subby," whispered Goss. "Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we're silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic off together in the Meadow of Happy Kites. ~ China Mi ville,
532:Things are even worse than they seem. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have what we would call a rule of law. Look inside a Saudi passport: It states that the holder “belongs” to the royal family. A Saudi commoner is chattel, a piece of property no different from an Al Sa’ud’s Jeddah palace or his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. ~ Robert B Baer,
533:I Built Myself A House Of Glass
I built myself a house of glass:
It took my years to make it:
And I was proud. But now, alas!
Would God someone would break it.
But it looks too magnificent.
No neighbour casts a stone
From where he dwells, in tenement
Or palace of glass, alone.
~ Edward Thomas,
534:them from the balcony and felt the world sway gently beneath my feet.  Then I turned and walked back into the palace.  The other people on the balcony followed me into the main room.  Quietly I slipped away from them, only my guard saw me go up the stairs.  Within moments, they had joined me along with several of ~ Hadena James,
535:Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott. ~ Alfred Tennyson,
536:But I do have a real and significant palace. It stands on yonder hills. I do not know how it compares to the other mansions of heaven, but there it is, and I know “that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
537:London is not a city, London is a person. Tower Bridge talks to you; National Gallery reads a poem for you; Hyde Park dances with you; Palace of Westminster plays the piano; Big Ben and St Paul’s Cathedral sing an opera! London is not a city; it is a talented artist who is ready to contact with you directly! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
538:You and your brother have everything, Prince Maven,’ I whisper in a voice so fervent it might be a prayer. 'You live in a palace, you have strength, you have power. You wouldn’t know hardship if it kicked you in the teeth, and believe me, it does that a lot. So excuse me if I don’t feel sorry for either of you. ~ Victoria Aveyard,
539:...it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room ~ Orhan Pamuk,
540:No," he said. "Relius was right and I was wrong. You are My Queen. Even though you cut my head from my shoulders, with my last breath as a noose tightens, to the last beat of my heart if I hang from the walls of the palace, you are My Queen. That I have failed you does not change my love for you or my loyalty. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
541:That’s hardly the point! It would have been a mark of your standing, of the Darkling’s esteem. It would have placed you high above all others.” “Well, I don’t want to be high above all others.” Genya threw up her hands in exasperation and took me by the elbow, leading me back through the palace to the main entrance. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
542:The past record of man is burdened with accounts of assasinations, secret combines, palace plots and betrayals in war. But in spite of this clear record, an amazing number of people have begun to scoff at the possibility of conspiracy at work today. They dismiss such an idea merely a conspiratorial point of view. ~ G Edward Griffin,
543:He has the hand, the eye and the heart of a warrior. He is intrepid and decisive. Help him to learn how to be equally thoughtful and careful… I feel that there is a life worth living before him… When he grows up, protect him from the intrigues in the imperial palace and the Senate… He is alone, completely alone…” After ~ Miro Gavran,
544:When a builder builds he clears the ground for his new foundations. Then he sees that the basic structure will support the whole. Should we not also clear the mind - at least that part of it that we can reach - of the ruins of past thinking, before building our palace of dharma which will one day reach the sky. ~ Christmas Humphreys,
545:I slept in Uday Hussein's bed - that was just so strange. Went to Saddam's palace, was in a mortar attack - crazy stuff. And like three days later you're back in traffic on Sunset Boulevard. It's all kind of behind you, which is kind of perfect for a guy like me because I can take that and turn it into quite the tale. ~ Henry Rollins,
546:Leelawati was sitting on a swing in the palace. Without meaning to, i ran towards her. She swung herself from the swing straight into my arms and hugged me. She wouldn't let go of me and i wasn't about to let go of her. To be trusted so, without any reservations, i too must have been up to some good in my past lives. ~ Kiran Nagarkar,
547:one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher,
548:In the palace, during my imprisonment, I learned that Maven had been made by his mother, formed into the monster he became. There is nothing on earth that can change him or what she did. But Cal was made too. All of us were made by someone else, and all of us have some thread of steel that nothing and no one can cut. ~ Victoria Aveyard,
549:When 'Ice Ice Baby' was selling a million records a day, I bought several properties: a home next to Michael J. Fox in L.A., a palace in Miami and a mountain cabin in Utah. Then, a few years later, I took a break from touring, saw that my properties had cobwebs, so I sold them, and - to my surprise - I made a huge profit! ~ Vanilla Ice,
550:At the presidential palace in Sanaa, the same polished stone building where he had recruited for the jihad in Afghanistan, Salih reacted to the news of the battle by calling Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, the radical preacher with the carrot-colored beard who had also played a major role in sending Yemenis abroad to fight. ~ Gregory D Johnsen,
551:Everywhere she looked she could see fairies of all shapes and sizes preparing the palace and the gardens for the Inaugural Ball. Every flower bloomed a little brighter, every pond rippled a bit clearer, and every bird’s chirp was a little merrier. The whole kingdom was buzzing with excitement for the ball… except for Alex. ~ Chris Colfer,
552:The Little Palace had become a very lonely place. I was surrounded by people, but I almost felt like they couldn't see me, only what they needed from me. I was afraid to show doubt or indecision, and there were days when I felt like I was being worn down to nothing by the constant weight of responsibility and expectation. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
553:Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace. For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances. ~ John Berger,
554:She has followed me into every single room in this palace, and then she followed Anne Neville when she was her lady-in-waiting, too. She walked behind Anne at her coronation, carrying the train. Perhaps Lady Margaret is feeling that it’s her turn to be the first lady now, and she wants someone trailing along behind her. ~ Philippa Gregory,
555:One time I was dying in a cage inside a palace that was flying over a magic jungle. And some idiot went in there, chased the palace down, fought his way through hundreds of rakshasas, and rescued me."

"I remember," he said.

"That's when I realized you loved me," I said. "I was in the cage and I heard you roar. ~ Ilona Andrews,
556:Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father’s palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
557:Michelangelo felt ill. He asked himself if what he was feeling was fear. Yet he knew that it was something more, something in his experience akin to the sacking of the Medici palace, the deterioration
of Piero, an awareness of the senseless destructiveness that lay inherent in time and space, ready to lash out and destroy. ~ Irving Stone,
558:From time to time, I would gaze up at the stars after a night shift and think that they looked like a glowing desert, and I myself was a poor child abandoned in the desert.… I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. ~ Liu Cixin,
559:And then another friend spoke up and said, "If what you tell is true, and it does seem as you have said, reasonable, then being so simple, if all men did it, there would not be enough wealth to go around." "Wealth grows wherever men exert energy," Arkad replied. "If a rich man builds him a new palace, is the gold he pays out ~ George S Clason,
560:By the end of his sixteen-course meal in Buckingham Palace, Ramsay McDonald discovered he had changed his mind about the workers owning the means of production. From now on, he felt it better that the Dukes and Duchesses should continue to own the means of production. The workers would just have to make do with what was left over. ~ Tony Benn,
561:And yet, even when all was well, as Shakespeare said, that ends well, did they say ‘Hey, Kendra, we understand that you made a noble effort. Why not come to the palace for some champagne sometime?’ Noooooo. They’re all, ‘Get thee from our kingdom, witch, or it’s the guillotine.” They’re lucky I didn’t turn them into talking swine. ~ Alex Flinn,
562:But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. ~ Walter Savage Landor,
563:There was something intoxicating about this. I kept wanting to laugh, just at the lavish giddy freedom of it: relatives and countries and possibilities spread out in front of me and I could pick whatever I wanted, I could grow up in a palace in Bhutan with seventeen brothers and sisters and a personal chauffeur if I felt like it. ~ Tana French,
564:When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma'am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He though it had probably been exploded.

'Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner. ~ Alan Bennett,
565:Once a wily and wicked person, perceiving her helplessness, offered her a position as dish-washer in a fashionable and depraved cabaret; but our heroine was true to her rustic ideals and refused to work in such a gilded and glittering palace of frivolity—especially since she was offered only $3.00 per week with meals but no board. ~ H P Lovecraft,
566:Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
567:There is humanist enterprise of the book, and amongst that there are many, many stories. And that is why at the end, when he says that the stories are so illuminating that they must be engraved and encased in gold and put in the palace library, the people who compile the book are telling us that this is a collection of human wisdom. ~ Marina Warner,
568:Cal and Maven are deadly creatures, soldiers. But their battle isn't just on the lines. It's here, in a palace, on the broadcasts, in the heart of every person they rule. They will rule, not just by right of a crown, but by might. Strength and power. It's all the Silvers respect, and it's all it takes to keep the rest of us slaves. ~ Victoria Aveyard,
569:The maintenance of secrecy in the matter, the confining all knowledge of it for a time to the place where the homicide occurred, the quarter-deck cabin; in these particulars lurked some resemblance to the policy adopted in those tragedies of the palace which have occurred more than once in the capital founded by Peter the Barbarian. ~ Herman Melville,
570:Gold,silver,gems, fine raiment , a marble palace, well-cultivated fields, paintings, a splendidly caparisoned horse such things as these give one nothing more than a mute and superficial pleasure. Books delight us through and through, they converse with us, they give us good advice; they become living and lively companions to us . ~ Francesco Petrarca,
571:You shouldn’t call me crazy. They don’t like that.” Scarlet faced her again, her gaze dragging down the raised scar tissue on her cheek. “But you are crazy.” “I know.” She lifted a small box from the basket. “Do you know how I know?” Scarlet didn’t answer. “Because the palace walls have been bleeding for years, and no one else sees it. ~ Marissa Meyer,
572:Corny as it sounds, I believe that unless we try to familiarize ourselves with the best that human beings have thought and accomplished, we doom ourselves to be little more than mindless consumer-wraiths, docile sheep waiting to be shorn by corporation or government, sad and confused dwellers on the threshold of a palace we never enter. ~ Michael Dirda,
573:The great love is gone. There are still little loves - friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire? ~ Mercedes Lackey,
574:A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail. ~ Anne Ursu,
575:For witches, there is but one King and one Palace—the one who has wronged them, and the house in which he lives. In fairness, Kings are often quite as dense, calling themselves sacred vessels and masters of all things above and below when in fact they command a few patches of lonely dirt with even lonelier houses sitting upon them. ~ Catherynne M Valente,
576:In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring. ~ James Russell Lowell,
577:Let dissolution come when it will, it can do the Christian no harm, for it will be but a passage out of a prison into a palace; out of a sea of troubles into a haven of rest; out of a crowd of enemies, to an innumerable company of true, loving, and faithful friends; out of shame, reproach, and contempt, into exceeding great and eternal glory. ~ John Bunyan,
578:Venice
Water and marble and that silentness
Which is not broken by a wheel or hoof;
A city like a water-lily, less
Seen than reflected, palace wall and roof,
In the unfruitful waters motionless,
Without one living grass's green reproof;
A city without joy or weariness,
Itself beholding, from itself aloof.
~ Arthur Symons,
579:Behold the Drojim Palace," King Urgit said extravagantly to Sadi, "the hereditary home of the House of Urga." "A most unusual structure, You Majesty," Sadi murmured. "That's a diplomatic way to put it." Urgit looked critically at his palace. "It's gaudy, ugly, and in terribly bad taste. It does, however, suit my personality almost perfectly. ~ David Eddings,
580:Bloodstains, tearstains are everywhere. Joseph’s heart was rubbed raw against the rocks of disloyalty and miscarried justice. Yet time and time again God redeemed the pain. The torn robe became a royal one. The pit became a palace. The broken family grew old together. The very acts intended to destroy God’s servant turned out to strengthen him. ~ Max Lucado,
581:Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind. ~ Orson Scott Card,
582:I try to follow certain rules. Nothing in Élysée Palace should become habitual, because routine lends one a deceptive feeling of security. You begin not noticing certain things and lose your focus on what's important. Uncertainty and change keep you attentive. This place and, to a certain extent, my office, help me avoid developing habits. ~ Emmanuel Macron,
583:You can't have Rosie on The View and Elton John packing Mom and Pop in at Caesars Palace and gay people all over television, and then have these politicians run out there with a straight face and say that gay and lesbian relationships are a threat to the family. We are winning in the culture - which is why we'll ultimately win the political war. ~ Dan Savage,
584:They say that each night, when the duties of state permit, she climbs, on foot, and limps, alone, to the highest peak of the palace, where she stands for hour after hour, seeming not to notice the cold peak winds. She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars. ~ Neil Gaiman,
585:It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians with his speech in London at the Palace of Westminster in 1982, which led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy and the emergence of democracy promotion as a central goal of United States foreign policy. ~ Michael Ignatieff,
586:Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. ~ Herman Melville,
587:The ubiquitous palace servants opened the door for Neverfell as she approached, and Zouelle was suddenly stung by the thought of the guards perhaps calling Neverfell ‘my lady’ the same way they had addressed her. Immediately the honour of that title cheapened in her mind, like a piece of tinsel that had adorned the neck of a puppy or piglet. ~ Frances Hardinge,
588:So Isis shows up in Byblos like "Hey queen my husband is embedded in your palace may I please extract him?"
And the queen is like "sure, go ahead. It's not like he's a major structural support or anything, right?" and Isis is like "haha, sucker".
And she goes and removes the pillar WITHOUT DAMAGING THE PALACE AT ALL
Thus inventing Jenga. ~ Cory O Brien,
589:This apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertaker --a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears --this apartment, I say, is the Dais-Chamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
590:Behold the Drojim Palace," King Urgit said extravagantly to Sadi, "the hereditary home of the House of Urga."
"A most unusual structure, You Majesty," Sadi murmured.
"That's a diplomatic way to put it." Urgit looked critically at his palace. "It's gaudy, ugly, and in terribly bad taste. It does, however, suit my personality almost perfectly. ~ David Eddings,
591:By popular account, on the morning of June 5, 1916, Emir Hussein climbed to a tower of his palace in Mecca and fired an old musket in the direction of the city’s Turkish fort. It was the signal to rebellion, and by the end of that day Hussein’s followers had launched attacks against a number of Turkish strongpoints across the length of the Hejaz. ~ Scott Anderson,
592:Li Tao had caught a single glimpse of her the first time he had been to the palace. The hunger that had gripped him had been immediate and all-consuming. He had been a young man then and had hungered for many things: acclaim, respect and power. The sight of her now, more than a decade later, stirred nothing but a faint echo of that forgotten desire. ~ Jeannie Lin,
593:Cinder’s voice was no longer jovial when she said, “You have ten minutes to come to the front gates of your palace and surrender.”

That was all.

The people waited for more. More taunting. More threats. More explanation. But the message was over.

Levana looked visibly shaken, while the emperor looked ready to burst out laughing. ~ Marissa Meyer,
594:I pray the gods will give me some relief and end this weary job. One long full year I've been lying here, on this rooftop, the palace of the sons of Atreus, resting on my arms, just like a dog. I've come to know the night sky, every star, the powers we see glittering in the sky, bringing winter and summer to us all, as the constellations rise and sink. ~ Aeschylus,
595:Come with us, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor said after they had finished an excellent lunch in the palace. “Four adventurers, out on the open plain. It’ll do ye some good an’ take a bit o’ that belly o’ yers away!” Regis grasped his ample stomach in both hands and jiggled it. “I like my belly and intend to keep it, thank you. I may even add some more to it! ~ R A Salvatore,
596:Finally, we should note that in the Song, the Bridegroom is sometimes called a king and the bride a queen. Sometimes he is a shepherd; sometimes they are workers in the vineyard. Sometimes they are in a palace; sometimes in the field. This teaches that people of all social classes are called to participate in spiritual life at the highest level. ~ Richard Wurmbrand,
597:Gilded palace of Flying Burritos
Excellent Nouveau Mexican Cuisine
We all got to wear Swank-Ass Nudie Suits
I should have known it was a lousy pipe dream

Ohhh, Ohhh, what an awesome job
Ohhh, Ohhh, what do I do now??
Ohh, Ohhhhh, it's like I've been robbed
Spent the last of my paycheque
And I'm feelin' pretty downnnnn!! ~ Bryan Lee O Malley,
598:Goods and cash worth crores of rupees lie buried to my knowledge in the palace of my late father-in-law (Qamruddin) besides heaps of gold and silver stored inside the ceiling. Complete disagreement exists among the emperor, his wazirs and nobles. If you invade India this time, the Indian Empire with all its riches of crores will fall into your hands. ~ Rajmohan Gandhi,
599:I will see you again,’ Hades promised. ‘I will prepare a room for you at the palace in case you do not survive. Perhaps your chambers would look good decorated with the skulls of monks.’
‘Now I can’t tell if you’re joking.’
Hades’s eyes glittered as his form began to fade. ‘Then perhaps we are alike in some important ways.’
The god vanished. ~ Rick Riordan,
600:Then there was David, lording it up at Buckingham Palace, thinking he was king of the shit heap. That guy was definitely nuts, like every dictator that had gone before him. Nero, Caligula, Henry the Eighth, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gaddafi, that crazy North Korean bastard who was in Team America, Kim Jong whatever. ~ Charlie Higson,
601:I believe that adulterers should be stoned to death. I believe that we should cut the hands off of thieves. I believe the Sharia should be implemented in Denmark. Maybe we should change the Christiansborg Palace [the Danish Parliament building] to Muslimsborg to have the flag of Islam flying over the parliament in Denmark. I think this would be very nice. ~ Anjem Choudary,
602:Like a horseman who reins in a wild stallion that has borne him, will he, nill he, across several counties; or a ship's captain who, after scudding before a gale through a bad night, hoists sail, and gets underway once more, navigating through unfamiliar seas- thus Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, anno domini 1685, watching King Charles II die at Whitehall Palace. ~ Neal Stephenson,
603:According to accounts of the Buddha's life, it would seem that he had a very deep relationship with nature. He was not born in the royal palace but in a park, under a sala tree. He attained complete enlightenment under the bodhi tree and left this earth to enter Parinirvana, again, between three sala trees. It would seem that the Buddha was very fond of trees. ~ Dalai Lama,
604:It is not at all a fit place for you," said Clementina.

"Gently, my lady. It is a greater than thou that sets the bounds of my habitation. Perhaps He may give me a palace one day. But the Father has decreed for His children that they shall know the thing that is neither their ideal nor His. All in His time, my lady. He has much to teach us. ~ George MacDonald,
605:Men look on knowledge which they learn--or might learn--from others as they do on the most beautiful structures which are not their own: in outward objects, they would rather behold their own hogsty than their neighbor's palace; and in mental ones, would prefer one grain of knowledge gained by their own observation to all the wisdom of a thousand Solomons. ~ Sarah Fielding,
606:If Bartleby is a new Messiah, he comes not, like Jesus, to redeem what was, but to save what was not. The Tartarus into which Bartleby, the new savior, descends is the deepest level of the Palace of Destinies, that whose sight Leibniz cannot tolerate, the world in which nothing is compossible with anything else, where "nothing exists rather than something. ~ Giorgio Agamben,
607:'Still too thin. You've let your hair grow out a bit, though. Trying to look pretty for your prince? I've told you time and again you're far too ugly to be saved.'

'You've got no room to talk of ugly. Your poor wife, always having to wear a blindfold to bed. If I'm too thin, it's because you've got all my weight. Palace life is making you into a unicorn.' ~ Megan Derr,
608:It follows that there are two ways for the nature and use of human power to change. One is that an order might issue from the palace, a command unto the people saying “It is thus.” But the other, the more certain, the more inevitable, is that those thousand thousand points of light should each send a new message. When the people change, the palace cannot hold. ~ Naomi Alderman,
609:Mesopotamian cities identified closely with their deities, and their temples functioned as the main social and economic engines. The king served as the intermediary between the city and its deity, and his palace operated side by side with the temple. Both palace and temple commanded the key function in any society: the production and distribution of food. ~ William J Bernstein,
610:When Sicily became part of the Kingdom of Naples, Palermo lost its capital status. It was never to regain it. It is now essentially a baroque city, beautiful though sadly dilapidated. But the setting – the Conca d’Oro or Shell of Gold – is as lovely as ever, and the Sicilian parliament still meets in King Roger’s old palace – so all, perhaps, is not lost. ~ John Julius Norwich,
611:Oceanos’ palace was a great wonder, set deep in the earth’s rock. Its high-arched halls were gilded, the stone floors smoothed by centuries of divine feet. Through every room ran the faint sound of Oceanos’ river, source of the world’s fresh waters, so dark you could not tell where it ended and the rock-bed began. On its banks grew grass and soft gray flowers, ~ Madeline Miller,
612:And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way. ~ Angela Carter,
613:They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to. This book is dedicated to those fine men. ~ Terry Pratchett,
614:Just over two weeks ago, right after we took the palace, he came to me in Vegas. He told me he’d fight for the chance to be with me, and I chose to give him that chance. I made the right decision. He might have a dark past, but he was strong enough to overcome it. He’s become something good. He’s become someone I respect, and if I have to fight for him now, I will. ~ Sandy Williams,
615:They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men. ~ Terry Pratchett,
616:For all his orders and sneers, his commanding presence, and his intimidating always all-black ensemble, Vhalla saw something different. She simply saw someone who was lonely, someone who could likely count their friends on one hand, and perhaps wanted to one day use two hands. He was nothing like the man she first met, the man who wore a mask to meet palace expectations. ~ Elise Kova,
617:So long. Say, Mack -- what happened to your wife?'
'I don't know," said Mack. "She went away.' He walked clumsily down the stairs and crossed over and walked up the lot and up the chicken walk to the Palace Flophouse. Doc watched his progress through the window. And then wearily he got a broom from behind the water heater. It took him all day to clean up the mess. ~ John Steinbeck,
618:The answer was again in the affirmative, so arrangements were made to bring 180 ladies out of the Palace. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies, and placed one of the King’s favorite concubines at the head of each. He then bade them all take spears in their hands, and addressed them thus: “I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand? ~ Sun Tzu,
619:The Russians were all really accommodating, and that made it really special. To be allowed in Catherine's Summer Palace...Lily [James] and I have this scene where we fall in love and we waltz up and down this enormous gold hall with thousands of candles and a live orchestra and 300 Russian extras. To do those scenes in situ really meant it was a once-in-a-lifetime job. ~ James Norton,
620:I was fucked and I knew it. I had stupidly wandered into some epic rape palace run by meth-addicted hobos and bald men with beards who recently escaped nearby jails and had taken over this place for their torture sessions with hapless young women they found exploring the coast. Even worse, I was going to be the hapless woman who decided to infiltrate their headquarters. ~ Karina Halle,
621:The answer was again in the affirmative, so arrangements were made to bring 180 ladies out of the Palace. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies, and placed one of the King's favourite concubines at the head of each. He then bade them all take spears in their hands, and addressed them thus: “I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand? ~ Sun Tzu,
622:The palace started as a single vaulted room and grew in proportion to my despair. It began as an exercise to keep my mind from its melancholy, then it became a dream and a necessity. . . . I built a temple in my head. . . . Its hallways were as lofty as a cathedral, and the arch of each window as supple as a bow. Its corridors were the passages of my own brain. ~ Lisa St Aubin de Ter n,
623:few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
624:When was the last time those two kids had a full meal or a good, long, clean drink of water? This was the way he had been as a child. Nothing had changed. The sultan still sat in his beautiful golden-domed palace, playing with his toys while people starved on the streets. Nothing would ever change until the sultan- or someone-woke up and saw how his people were suffering. ~ Liz Braswell,
625:As I passed a market, I thought I saw Devera, Aliera’s daughter, looking at me. I almost stopped, but when I looked again she was gone, so I decided I was either imagining it, or she didn’t want to talk to me. She is a very unusual child, but I guess now isn’t the best time for that conversation. I put it out of my head and kept walking until I reached the Imperial Palace. ~ Steven Brust,
626:those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly and as privately as possible. But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal ~ Anne Lamott,
627:The Pyramids first, which in Egypt were laid;
Next Babylon's Gardens, for Amytis made;
Then Mausolos' Tomb of affection and guilt;
Fourth, the Temple of Diana in Ephesus built;
The Colossus of Rhodes, cast in brass, to the Sun;
Sixth, Jupiter's Statue, by Phidias done;
The Pharos of Egypt comes last, we are told,
Or the Palace of Cyrus, cemented with gold. ~ Anonymous,
628:Let’s take down the gold leaf,” Caldenia said. “Elegance is never ostentatious, and there is nothing more bourgeois than covering everything in gold. It screams that one has too much money and too little taste, and it infuriates peasants. A palace should convey a sense of power and grandeur. One should enter and be awestruck. I’ve found the awe tends to cut down on revolts. ~ Ilona Andrews,
629:Master Fellows surprised Ellysetta with an unexpected compliment. "You have a natural regal grace, my lady, and it has been the greatest of pleasures to teach you. Just remember, while some part of you may always be Ellie, the woodcarver's daughter, you are also Lady Ellysetta, the Tairen Soul's queen." He bowed and kissed her hand. "At the palace tonight, let Ellysetta reign. ~ C L Wilson,
630:On the other hand, he was compassionate because he knew pain, real pain, and real suffering too. Yet even in those bouts when it looked for sure as if he would die, he was never given morphine, not even as his screams of pain rattled the palace windows. That poor child had traveled to the bottom of life and back again, and naturally that had had a profound effect on him. ~ Robert Alexander,
631:All these years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I've discovered since is that lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. ~ Anne Lamott,
632:All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But, what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief. The passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. ~ Anne Lamott,
633:And then he left the palace to roam the streets of Ombria, where he painted shadows as he searched for light within them, painted thick, barred doors, as he searched in their hewn, scarred grains for what it was they hid, painted high windowless walls as if, rebuilding them stone by stone on paper, he could dismantle them and finally see the secret life behind the real. ~ Patricia A McKillip,
634:Once there was a queen in a palace of bread.
Sing blue, sing white, stay up all night.
She nibbled on the walls and gobbled up her bed.
Sing white, sing blue, sing ballyhoo.

The people begged a crumb from their robust queen.
Sing blue, sing white, she ate all night.
She would not share a thing until it turned green.
So white, so blue, the mold it grew. ~ Shannon Hale,
635:It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor. [February 23, 1931] ~ Winston S Churchill,
636:Without any further ceremony, Denys tipped his hat to me, and then the two men moved off down the road, turning a corner and passing out of sight. They might have been headed to another party, or to white steeds waiting to whisk them off to an enchanted palace. I would have believed a magic carpet as well, or any storybook ending. They were that lovely, and now they were gone. — ~ Paula McLain,
637:All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. ~ Anne Lamott,
638:He waved at his attendants. "I dragged them like a ball and chain all the way across the palace and back."
"If sterner measures are called for, we can find a larger ball and chain." The queen turned and disappeared into the partment.
"Oh, dear," Eugenides muttered as he followed...The queen's sterner measures, dispensed by the Eddisian Ambassador, arrived before dawn. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
639:Your Majesty, you just-" Costis stopped.
"Just what?" the king prompted wickedly.
Nothing would induce Costis to say out loud that the king had almost fallen from the palace wall and that Costis had seen him manifestly saved by the God of Thieves.
The king smiled. "Cat got your tongue?"
"Your Majesty, you are drunk," Costis pleaded.
"I am. What's your excuse? ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
640:You have to believe him, because he's going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and you are going to have to deal with it."
Attolia smiled. "You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth.
"No," said Eddis thoughtfully. "Never more than he is worth. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
641:... in open breach of the said law, under the colour of extinguishing the fire kindled in the apartment of his Majesty's most dear imperial consort, did maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his urine, put out the said fire kindled in the said apartment, lying and being within the precincts of the said royal palace; against the statute in that case provided... ~ Jonathan Swift,
642:And, as I had gazed at my surroundings, at the muted, yet triumphant, colors splashed in joyful serenity over the immaculate stone floor, at the profiles of my fellow parishioners bent in prayer, and finally, up above, at the flickering lights held in a soft gray ceiling like chandeliers in an ancient palace, I realized that my thoughts had been transferred to Someone Else. ~ Gina Marinello Sweeney,
643:He books it into that little playground there. I mean the guy is zooming like the Road Runner, skidding through the gravel and the slush and everything. I’m yelling, “Police, police! Stop, motherfucker!”

‘You do not yell, “Stop, motherfucker.”’

‘I do. Because you know, Palace, this is it. This is the last chance I get to run after a perp yelling, “Stop, motherfucker. ~ Ben H Winters,
644:Recycling helps make people feel involved, and in some cases can be useful. Although you've got to do careful life history studies of what you're recycling. If all you're doing is recycling - if you've got three automobiles, and 10 children, and a 7,000-square-foot dot-com palace and second home up in the mountains that has to be heated - the recycling isn't making much difference. ~ Paul R Ehrlich,
645:You believe in the crystal palace, eternally indestructible, that is, one at which you can never stick out your tongue furtively nor make a rude gesture, even with your fist hidden away. Well, perhaps I’m so afraid of this building precisely because it’s made of crystal and it’s eternally indestructible, and because it won’t be possible to stick one’s tongue out even furtively. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
646:a pound or two of short dips; a crown, set with diamonds and rubies each as big as a duck’s egg; a cradle — empty, an affecting sight; carpets, kettles, and pots; a stretcher; a chariot; a bunch of carrots; a costermonger’s barrow; banners; a leg of mutton, and a baby. Everything, in short, that could possibly be wanted, either in a palace or a garret, a farmyard or a battle-field. ~ Jerome K Jerome,
647:I thought my duty was to restore Haan, but Haan is not King Cosugi or the burned-down palace or the ruins of the great estates or the dead nobles and their descendants pining for glory-these are but parts of an experiment at a way of life for the people of Haan, her true essence. When the experiment has proven to be a failure, one must be willing to try new paths, new ways of doing things. ~ Ken Liu,
648:As soon as politicians start climbing up the ladder, they suddenly become kings. I don't know how it works, but what I do know is that republics came to the world to make sure that no one is more than anyone else. The pomp of office is like something left over from a feudal past: "You need a palace, red carpet, a lot of people behind you saying, 'Yes, sir.' I think all of that is awful." ~ Jose Mujica,
649:Despite the diversity of the constructions that other animals create—the pendulous baskets of oriole nests, the intricate dens of prairie dogs, or the decorated nests of bowerbirds—humans construct the broadest array of dwellings on Earth. Our words for “dwelling” point to this diversity: Palace, hovel, hogan, ranch house, croft. Tipi, chalet, duplex, kraal. Igloo, bungalow, billet, cabin. ~ Anonymous,
650:I like poetry," said the king. "And plays. I used to put on little theatricals at the palace. If we survive this, and if I get my crown back, and if there's time, I'd like to open a theater someday."
"If we survive this, you totally should," G agreed.
They both tightened their grips on their swords and coughed in a manly way that meant that they weren't scared of a silly old bear. ~ Cynthia Hand,
651:If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the 'Hallelujah Chorus'. ~ D H Lawrence,
652:I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles. ~ Lord Byron,
653:The environment could not be fixed by a mere change of heart. It was by then well known that future centuries would suffer greatly for the incontinence of their ancestors. That humanity would survive was never in doubt, but one would always prefer a palace to a barn. Long-term plans were founded to seek ways to fix the problem, and one of these included looking for alternatives elsewhere. ~ Sean Williams,
654:The pane was a stream of moving darkness, and she watched it lighten to silver. It was the first rainfall since she had come to the city. In the dizziness of early morning and little sleep, Ani wondered what she would find outside, if the night and the water had washed it all away, the pasture, the walls, the guards, the palace, and left her with her name again standing in mud and darkness. ~ Shannon Hale,
655:In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth. Someone once told me, "Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished." In both Buddhist and Confucian writings of the philosophers of former times, there are also many missing chapters. ~ Yoshida Kenk,
656:Take the very word “etiquette.” From the French for “little signs,” it also connotes “social rules” both in French and in English. In fact, the two meanings share a history. King Louis XIV of France needed to give his nobles a bit of help behaving properly at his palace at Versailles, so little signs were posted telling them what was what—social dos and don’ts for dummies, so to speak. ~ Daniel Post Senning,
657:The Japanese cameras that used to proliferate in these places have almost all been replaced by camcorders. Like a magic lamp, the camcorder swallows the palace and sucks in the pond in front. In these tourists' minds, the Belvedere is reduced into an unfocused square image, cast with a bluish tint. The present is re-created to immortalize memories. It's pathetic, but that's human tendency now. ~ Young Ha Kim,
658:Victorian London. Rome in the fifth century. Egypt in the early twentieth. There must have been a hundred different places listed, all with small journal entries, like Saw the Queen as she and the Prince rode past us on their way to Buckingham Palace and The camel nearly ate Gus’s hair, ripped it from his scalp like grass and My God, if I never see another big-bellied man wrapped in a toga… ~ Alexandra Bracken,
659:The bride, the beautiful princess, a royal daughter is glorious. She waits within her chamber, dressed in a gown woven with gold. Wearing the finest garments, she is brought to the King. Her friends, her companions, follow her into the royal palace. What a joyful, enthusiastic, excited procession as they enter the palace! She comes before her King, who is wild for her!
-OLD TESTAMENT, PSALM 45 ~ Holly Wagner,
660:To call the place an anthill would be like calling the Versailles Palace a single-family home. Earthen ramparts rose almost to the tops of the surrounding trees--a hundred feet at least. The circumference could have accommodated a Roman hippodrome. A steady stream of soldiers and drones swarmed in and out of the mound. Some carried fallen trees. One, inexplicably, was dragging a 1967 Chevy Impala. ~ Rick Riordan,
661:Venezuelan dream dolls? We have some on display in the palace. They're incredibly rare." He examined its back. "What is it doing here?"
"I'm pretty sure Thorne stole it."
Kai's expression filled with clarity. "Ah. Of course." He nestled the doll back into its packaging. "He'd better plan on giving all this stuff back."
"Sure I'll give it back, Your Majesticness. For a proper finder's fee. ~ Marissa Meyer,
662:We got an expression ride back to the palace of Hades. Nico sent word ahead, thanks to some ghost he summoned out of the ground, and within a few minutes the Three Furies themselves arrived to ferry us back. They weren't thrilled about lugging Bob the Titan, too, but I didn't have the heart to leave him behind, especially after he noticed my shoulder wound, said, "Owie", and healed it with a touch. ~ Rick Riordan,
663:Instead of pressing, with the foremost of the crowd, into the palace of Constantinople, Libanius calmly expected his arrival at Antioch; withdrew from court on the first symptoms of coldness and indifference; required a formal invitation for each visit; and taught his sovereign an important lesson, that he might command the obedience of a subject, but that he must deserve the attachment of a friend. ~ Edward Gibbon,
664:He was sitting in his favorite spot: the window ledge in one of the south turrets of Greenwich Palace, his legs dangling over the edge as he watched the comings and goings of the people in the courtyard below and listened to the steady flow of the River Thames. He thought he finally understood the Meaning of Life now, the Great Secret, which he'd boiled down to this:
Life is short, and then you die. ~ Cynthia Hand,
665:As she moved swiftly and noiselessly through the vast palace cellar, odd noises weltered toward her. Voices and echoes of water rippled through the air as if, in some magic chamber, whales and dolphins cavorted among young maidens in great tanks of water. When she reached it, all the fish turned into laundry, stirred and beaten in steaming cauldrons by glum, limp-haired women as wet as mackerels. ~ Patricia A McKillip,
666:Many persecuted believers have thrived in the desert of prison. Perpetua, a third-century Christian who was imprisoned and martyred for her faith, said of her prison cell: “The dungeon became to me as it were a palace, so that I preferred being there to being elsewhere.” Do not be fearful of dry times in your spiritual life. Tap into the Bridegroom, seeking only His living water and you will thrive. ~ Richard Wurmbrand,
667:Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the Emperor’s visit—a sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing something. He ~ Leo Tolstoy,
668:Greg ceased stomping around the room turned toward the open door, as though just noticing we had company. Both Dara and Hivan’s eyes widened and, in unison, the couple took a step back. Greg charged toward them, chasing them out of the room while continuing to shout-recite, “Oh, that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace. Shame. Shame on thee!” And with that, he slammed the door in both their faces. ~ Penny Reid,
669:Hafid, so far as material wealth is concerned, there is only one difference between myself and the lowliest beggar outside Herod’s palace. The beggar thinks only of his next meal and I think only of the meal that will be my last. No, my son, do not aspire for wealth and labor not only to be rich. Strive instead for happiness, to be loved and to love, and most important, to acquire peace of mind and serenity. ~ Og Mandino,
670:I was a slave in the corsair Dragut’s own palace. I saw his women—Spanish, French, Italian, Irish. I was at the branding of all his poor children. To some women, degradation like that is the worst sort of torture.’ There was a small silence, in which Philippa’s epiglottis popped like a cork. Beside her, Jerott’s breathing faltered in the same moment and resumed, shallowly, as he went on straining to hear. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,
671:I was impressed, and also unnerved. Being around Nikolai was always like this, watching him shift and change, revealing secrets as he went. He reminded me of the wooden nesting dolls I'd played with as a child. Except instead of getting smaller, he just kept getting grander and more mysterious. Tomorrow, he'd probably tell me he'd built a pleasure palace on the moon. Tough to get to, but quite a view. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
672:The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro—closely watched meanwhile by her hidden observer—when the heavy bell of St. Paul’s tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had come upon the crowded city. The palace, the night-cellar,* the jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child: midnight was upon them all. ~ Charles Dickens,
673:There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father's palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
674:When we're strong enough," said Sam, "will you come with me?"
"Where? To Bucko Palace?"
"Yes. To find Ella."
"Course I will," said the Kid, and he put an arm around Sam. "It'll be a new grand adventure of the old school. They'll write books about us. Long books. Nothing's gonna split us up, small fry. We're a team. Like Batman and Robin Hood."
And he sang.
"Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-Batman! ~ Charlie Higson,
675:You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else, but you can't make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. [...] Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish (...) it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. ~ Frank McCourt,
676:In my work, it's simultaneously realities, instead of parallel. Simultaneous avoids the problem of alternate reality. In parallel reality, there's always a hierarchy, and there doesn't necessarily have to be a hierarchy. When you're in a palace like Blenheim, you're supposed to be in awe - why not be in awe of something different than the stuff they're showing you? It's about finding your own existential place. ~ Lawrence Weiner,
677:We commend a horse for his strength, and sureness of foot, and not for his rich caparisons; a greyhound for his share of heels, not for his fine collar; a hawk for her wing, not for her jesses and bells. Why, in like manner, do we not value a man for what is properly his own? He has a great train, a beautiful palace, so much credit, so many thousand pounds a year, and all these are about him, but not in him. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
678:From the dim woods on either bank, Night’s ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear-guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. ~ Jerome K Jerome,
679:Nothing in his story glosses over the presence of evil. Quite the contrary. Bloodstains, tearstains are everywhere. Joseph’s heart was rubbed raw against the rocks of disloyalty and miscarried justice. Yet time and time again God redeemed the pain. The torn robe became a royal one. The pit became a palace. The broken family grew old together. The very acts intended to destroy God’s servant turned out to strengthen him. ~ Max Lucado,
680:The gods gave me a father who ruled over me and rid me of any trace of arrogance and showed me that one can live in a palace without bodyguards, extravagant attire, chandeliers, statues, and other luxuries. He taught me that it is possible to live instead pretty much in the manner of a private citizen without losing any of the dignity and authority a ruler must possess to discharge his imperial duties effectively. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
681:There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester's bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh. ~ Robert E Howard,
682:In one of his sermons, the Buddha described reality as a display of pearls—each pearl reflects all of the others, as well as the palace whose façade they decorate, and the entirety of the universe. This comes down to saying that all of reality is present in each of its parts. This image is a good illustration of interdependence, which states that no entity independent of the whole can exist anywhere in the universe. ~ Matthieu Ricard,
683:I met Indira Gandhi in her office in the government palace. The same office that had been her father's - large, cold and plain. She was sitting, small and slender, behind a bare desk. When I entered, she got up and came forward to give me her hand, then sat down again and cut the preliminaries short by fixing me with a gaze that meant: Go ahead with the first question, don't waste time, I really have no time to waste. ~ Oriana Fallaci,
684:News of the miracle had reached the doge's palace, but in a somewhat garbled form. the result of the successive transmissions of facts, true or assumed, real or purely imaginary, based on everything from partial, more or less eyewitness accounts to reports from those who simply liked the sound of their own voice, for, as we know all too well, no one telling a story can resist adding a period, and sometimes even a comma. ~ Jos Saramago,
685:Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings? ~ William Morris,
686:The bliss that I feel in this moment is like something from a fairy tale. A prince laying the world out at his princesses feet. A hope to win her heart and take her away from her awful existence to live happily ever after in his palace. While life is no where near a fairy tale, it feels good to know that moments like this can exist. Moments that render you speechless and take your breath away. -Addison Grant- Consumed ~ Melissa Toppen,
687:She descended, not through the nearest hole as was her childhood habit, but more sedately down a marble staircase that began life in the upper world as an innocent stairway from a cellar door. Below, Faey complained about her tardiness, but was too busy to press for explanations. A gentleman from the palace had sent a request, with gold, for a method of detecting poison. Mag sighed. It would be a smelly afternoon. ~ Patricia A McKillip,
688:After the end of the war, Princess Lalitha did the unthinkable: she moved out of the palace, in pursuit of her own freedom. ‘It sounds very simple now,’ tells her cousin, ‘but at the time it was an extraordinary thing to do. Most people aspired to live like princes, with servants and luxury and all that wealth, but here was this young woman running away from it; giving up her golden spoon for something much more ordinary. ~ Manu S Pillai,
689:Loos famously put his dictum into physical form with the ‘Haus ohne Augenbrauen’ (‘House without eyebrows’) – so-called because the windows had no decorative lintels – on Michaelerplatz in 1910. (It was said that as a result Emperor Franz Joseph never looked out of his favourite window in the imperial palace again; Hitler got over the problem of the building’s existence by simply putting another in its place in his paintings. ~ Anonymous,
690:No further use now for this language, this learning, this whole education through which I was taught to exert myself at the heart of the world. Mirage or mirror, a great enchantment glows in this darkness and leans against the door-jam of ravages in the classic pose assumed by death immediately after shedding her shroud. O my image of bone, here I am: let everything finally decompose in the palace of illusions and silence. ~ Louis Aragon,
691:The groundswell of outrage over the invasion of Iraq often cited the preemptive war as a betrayal of American ideals. The subtext of the dissent was: 'This is not who we are.' But not if you were standing where I was. It was hard to see the look in that palace tour guide's eyes when she talked about the American flag flying over the palace and not realize that ever since 1898, from time to time, this is exactly who we are. ~ Sarah Vowell,
692:When Cyrus and his disciplined Persians stood at the gates, the anticlericals of Babylon connived to open the city to him, and welcomed his enlightened domination.170 For two centuries Persia ruled Babylonia as part of the greatest empire that history had yet known. Then the exuberant Alexander came, captured the unresisting capital, conquered all the Near East, and drank himself to death in the palace of Nebuchadrezzar.171 ~ Will Durant,
693:Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees and say they are 'miserable sinners,' and their hearts rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their servility is real and their insolence is real but their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream. ~ William Winwood Reade,
694:Please, call me Melaina, and I will call you Sinda. Though I have to say, I did not expect to see you roaming the palace again.” Her gaze flicked to Kiernan behind me. “But I can see that even the maneuvering of kings and wizards were not enough to keep you from your friends.”
“Yes,” I said in what I hoped was a light voice, though it sounded more strangled to me. “There’s very little that could keep me away from Kiernan. ~ Eilis O Neal,
695:were your men treated?” Ashby shrugged. “There were so many from so many different countries, I don’t think we stood out. When we got back, the palace staff looked like they wanted to spit on us, but the people down below knew nothing of our arrival. Nary a word about it.” “Thank you, Ashby,” Owen said, finishing his work. He stood and buckled his scabbard around his waist. “So what you’re saying is the kingdom is vulnerable. ~ Jeff Wheeler,
696:We never quite learned to part, -We wander slowly side by side.
Outside it’s starting to get dark,
I’m silent, - you’re preoccupied.

We’ll enter a church and we’ll see
Baptisms, marriages, mass.
A minute later, we’ll leave…
Why is everything different with us?

Or we’ll sit on the trampled snow
In a dark cemetery and sigh,
With a stick in your hand, you’ll draw
A palace for just you and I. ~ Anna Akhmatova,
697:Song Of The Palace
Tears utmost gauze cloth dream not succeed
Night deep before palace press song sound
Red cheek not old favour first cut
Slant lean on smoke cover sit arrive brightness
Her handkerchief all soaked in tears, she cannot dream,
In deepest night before the palace voices sing.
Her rosy cheeks aren't old, but first love has been cut,
Leaning, wreathed in smoke, she sits until the dawn.
~ Bai Juyi,
698:With regard to his material position Mr. Wharton could of course ask direct questions if he pleased, and require evidence as to alleged property. But he felt that by doing so he would abandon his right to object to the man as being a Portuguese stranger, and he did not wish to have Ferdinand Lopez as a son-in-law, even though he should be a partner in Hunky and Sons, and able to maintain a gorgeous palace at South Kensington ~ Anthony Trollope,
699:Walk with me.” Abban held up his crutch.
“It is a long way to the palace, Par’chin,” he said.
“I’ll walk slowly,” Arlen said, knowing the crutch had nothing to do with the refusal.
“You don’t want to be seen with me outside the market, my friend,” Abban warned. “That alone may cost you the respect you’ve earned in the Maze.”
“Then I’ll earn more,” Arlen said. “What good is respect, if I can’t walk with my friend? ~ Peter V Brett,
700:We never quite learned to part,
-We wander slowly side by side.
Outside it’s starting to get dark,
I’m silent, - you’re preoccupied.

We’ll enter a church and we’ll see
Baptisms, marriages, mass.
A minute later, we’ll leave…
Why is everything different with us?

Or we’ll sit on the trampled snow
In a dark cemetery and sigh,
With a stick in your hand, you’ll draw
A palace for just you and I. ~ Anna Akhmatova,
701:Thalia grimaced. “Well, don’t just stand there! I’ll be fine. Go!” We didn’t want to leave her, but I could hear Kronos laughing as he approached the hall of the gods. More buildings exploded. “We’ll be back,” I promised. “I’m not going anywhere,” Thalia groaned. A fireball erupted on the side of the mountain, right near the gates of the palace. “We’ve got to run,” I said. “I don’t suppose you mean away,” Grover murmured hopefully. ~ Rick Riordan,
702:After Odin had established order, he caused a wonderful palace, called Asgard, to be built on the top of a mountain, and here the twelve Æsir (gods) dwelt together, far above the limitations of mortal men. On this mountain also was Valhalla, the palace of the slain, where those who had heroically died fought and feasted day after day. Each night their wounds were healed and the boar whose flesh they ate renewed itself as rapidly as it was consumed,
703:Ram and Lakshman had joined their father, who had been housed in a separate palace, at the edge of the royal grounds because it was considered inauspicious for brides and grooms to meet in the days that preceded the wedding. I had to console myself with the fact that in a few days we'd belong to each other. We'd spend the rest of our lives together, and we wouldn't allow any of society's foolish dictates to separate us. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,
704:A cold fist of rage wrapped around my heart, squeezing tight. I wasn’t going to best Sullivan, but I had to try. I couldn’t afford for him or any of the other gladiators to think that I was weak. More importantly, I didn’t want to be weak. I didn’t want to keep my mouth shut and plaster a smile on my face and stay in the background like I had all those years at the palace. I just wanted to be myself, for the first time in a long time. ~ Jennifer Estep,
705:Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
706:Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon,
707:Percy stared at his jelly donut. He had a rocky history with Nico di Angelo. The guy had once tricked him into visiting Hades's palace, and Percy had ended up in a cell. But most of the time, Nico sided with the good guys. He certainly didn't deserve slow suffocation in a bronze jar, and Percy couldn't stand seeing Hazel in pain.

"We'll rescue him," he promised her. "We have to. The prophecy says he holds the key to endless death. ~ Rick Riordan,
708:Dancing On The Hill-Tops
Dancing on the hill-tops,
Singing in the valleys,
Laughing with the echoes,
Merry little Alice.
Playing games with lambkins
In the flowering valleys,
Gathering pretty posies,
Helpful little Alice.
If her father's cottage
Turned into a palace,
And he owned the hill-tops
And the flowering valleys,
She’d be none the happier,
Happy little Alice.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,
709:The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
710:All men dream: but nor equally, those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore! a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. ~ T E Lawrence,
711:It looked for all the world as Karou had described it in her one brief e-mail to Zuzana: like a sandcastle, a very big sandcastle. It was monumental: an entire town, really – lanes and plazas, neighborhoods, a caravansary, granary, and palace – all of it echoing empty. Its creators had dreamed on a legendary scale, and to stand in its flagstone court, mud walls and peaked roofs jutting overhead, was to feel shrunk to the size of a songbird. ~ Laini Taylor,
712:Brushing dirt from his coat, Sam ignored the wild-eyed looks the other three gave him. Surely a house like this had enough staff to clean up a little dirt?
“And who is this young man?” the old lady demanded.
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but froze when he saw just who the old woman was.
“May I present Sam Morgan, Your Highness,” Griffin said.
Bloody hell. It was Queen Victoria. They’d just burrowed their way into Buckingham Palace. ~ Kady Cross,
713:I was reminded of a married chatelaine who, after sleeping with a young vassal one night, had him seized by the palace guards the next morning and summarily executed in a dungeon on trumped-up charges, not only to eliminate all evidence of their adulterous night together and to prevent her young lover from becoming a nuisance now that he thought he was entitled to her favors, but to stem the temptation to seek him out on the following evening. ~ Andr Aciman,
714:Jasper doesn’t think Santa will be able to find us.” “Trust me on this,” Christine said with a knowing air. “Santa will always be able to find us. Don’t you know he has his magical ways?” Tyler twisted his lips in thought. “You mean like a GPS?” A chuckle escaped her, in spite of herself.  “Something like that,” she said, steering Tyler toward the door. “Come on, let’s grab our coats. The Pancake Palace awaits!” Christine sat in Ellen’s office ~ Ginny Baird,
715:He could, though, just make out a miniature replica of Cori Celesti, upon whose utter peak the world’s quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods lived in a palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suites they had chosen to call Dunmanifestin. It was always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they were ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience was a musical doorbell. ~ Terry Pratchett,
716:Why?” he whispered as he leaned over her, supported on one arm. “Why must ye be the one that haunts me dreams? I’ve seen ye weepin’ night after bloody night since the day I sent ye from me palace with yer dress half undone. If I had it to do over again, I’d cut me own right hand off rather than hurt ye so. Will ye never be able to forgive me, Silence love?”

“I already have,” she replied, cradling his cheek in her hand. “Long, long ago. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,
717:Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack who got lost in the woods. His best friend went after him. Along the way, she had many adventures. She met woodsmen, witches, and wolves. She found her friend in the thrall of a queen who lived in a palace of ice and had a heart to match. She rescued him with the help of a magical object. And they returned home, together, and they lived on, somehow, ever after.

It went something like that, anyway. ~ Anne Ursu,
718:From atop his back, she could see the dazzling spires of Wonderland Palace and the red glow that the palace cast on the land around it. From here she could imagine the small lives taking place; Harris, asleep in the library, glasses sliding off the end of his nose; Sir Gorrann, tossing back some ale as he chuckled among fellow Spades; and Wardley, staring out across the land with a burdened heart, wondering how much he would give for his kingdom. ~ Colleen Oakes,
719:Sometimes Arthur talked about his childhood. As a boy he was delicate and had never been sent to school. An only son, he lived alone with his widowed mother, whom me adored. Together they studied literature and art; together they visted Paris, Baden-Baden, Rome, moving always in the best society, from Schloss to château, from château to palace, gentle, charming, appreciative; in a state of perpeutal tender anxiety about each other's health. ~ Christopher Isherwood,
720:Your daughters will leave this school as confident, resilient young women." Ms. Byrne was off, delivering the private school party line. Resilience. What crap. No kid was going to go to school in a place that looked like freaking Buckingham Palace and come out of it resilient. She should be honest: "Your daughter will leave this school with a grand sense of entitlement that will serve her well in life; she'll find it especially useful on Sydney roads. ~ Liane Moriarty,
721:Anyone who has walked through the deserted palaces of Versailles or Vienna realise how much of a part of the life of a nation is lost when a monarchy is abolished. If buckingham palace and windsor castle were transformed into museums, if one politician competed against another for president of the republic, Britain would be a sadder and less interesting place. Our politicians are not men such as could challenge more than a thousand years of history. ~ William Rees Mogg,
722:THE ROYAL PIGEON Nasruddin became prime minister to the king. Once while he wandered through the palace, he saw a royal falcon. Now Nasruddin had never seen this kind of a pigeon before. So he got out a pair of scissors and trimmed the claws, the wings and the beak of the falcon. “Now you look like a decent bird,” he said. “Your keeper had evidently been neglecting you. “You’re different so there’s something wrong with you!” MONKEY SALVATION FOR A FISH ~ Leonard J Duhl,
723:The “conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized,” he wrote. Inequality is a better thing than it may seem, Carnegie explained: “The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to-day measures the change which has come with civilization. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial.” Stratification was the price of the onward chugging of progress. ~ Anand Giridharadas,
724:In the middle of the swinging sixties people in England were apparently under some sort of obligation to have a good time and most of them didn't. A Russian and an American walked about in space to no one's particular advantage. The Beatles received their British Empire medals and, so it was said, smoked cannabis in the lavatories at Buckingham Palace. American aeroplanes were bombing Vietnam, but no one seemed to talk about the nuclear holocaust any more. ~ John Mortimer,
725:There is no period in history when it would have been better to be alive than today. People who fantasise about a romantic past imagine themselves living in Pharaoh’s court, Caesar’s palace, Plato’s athenaeum, a medieval knight’s manor, a king’s castle, a queen’s château, an emperor’s citadel, a cardinal’s cathedral. But the cold, hard reality is that 99.99 per cent of all the people who ever lived existed in what we would today consider squalid poverty. ~ Michael Shermer,
726:The old gardens of Kusu Terrace
are a wilderness, yet the willows
that remain still put out new branches;
lasses gathering water chestnuts
sing so loudly and with such
clarity, that the feeling of spring
returns to us; but where once stood
the palace of the King of Wu, now
only the moon over the
west river once shone on
the lovely ladies there.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, On Kusu Terrace
,
727:don’t know what it is about Africa, but champagne is absolutely compulsory here.” Without any further ceremony, Denys tipped his hat to me, and then the two men moved off down the road, turning a corner and passing out of sight. They might have been headed to another party, or to white steeds waiting to whisk them off to an enchanted palace. I would have believed a magic carpet as well, or any storybook ending. They were that lovely, and now they were gone. — ~ Paula McLain,
728:Iain Dowie famously coined the phrase 'bouncebackability' to describe Crystal Palace's ability to come from behind. But this is a typical manager's idea, so optimistic. What fans are interested in is 'throwawayability': which teams toss away hard-earned leads? Now we know that 'throwawayability' exists because we proved last season that 'bouncebackability' exists (although, hilariously, Palace don't have it) and 'throw-awayability' is the flip side of it. ~ Daniel Finkelstein,
729:Dortchen was called the wild one because one day, when she was seven years old, she had got lost in the forest. She had wandered off to a far-distant glade where a willow tree trailed its branches in a pool of water. Dortchen crept within the shadowy tent of its branches and found a green palace. She wove herself a crown of willow tendrils and collected pebbles and flowers to be her jewels. At last, worn out, she lay down on a velvet bed of moss and fell asleep. ~ Kate Forsyth,
730:In the time between the two wars, a British colonial officer said that with the invention of the airplane the world has no secrets left. However, he said, there is one last mystery. There is a large country on the Roof of the World, where strange things happen. There are monks who have the ability to separate mind from body, shamans and oracles who make government decisions, and a God-King who lives in a skyscraper-like palace in the Forbidden City of Llhasa. ~ Heinrich Harrer,
731:I'm not scared. I'm..." She paused. "I've been locked up in this... this dungeon of a palace my whole life. As of tomorrow, that's all I'll ever have. This palace. This life. At seventeen, that's it. My future decided."
"Sorrow, I know-"
"No, you don't know." Sorrow threw her arms wide, as though gesturing to all of Rhannon. "I've only ever known Rhannon as it is. This is Rhannon, for me. No one in their right mind would want me in charge of it. ~ Melinda Salisbury,
732:We’re a lot of newcomers, see, for my Lord Meshe was born 2,202 years ago, but the Old Way of the Handdara goes back ten thousand years before that. You have to go back to the Old Land if you’re after the Old Way. Now look here, Mr. Ai, I’ll have a room in this island for you whenever you come back, but I believe you’re a wise man to be going out of Erhenrang for a while, for everybody knows that the Traitor made a great show of befriending you at the Palace. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
733:No, it turns out Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And how crazy does that make Saddam? All he had to do was tell Hans Blix, 'Look anywhere you want. Look under the bed. Look beneath the couch. Look behind the toilet tank in the third presidential palace on the left, but keep your mitts off my copies of Maxim.' And Saddam could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld gets elected head of the World Council of Churches. But no . . . ~ P J O Rourke,
734:The Manchus drank tea with a lot of milk. In her case, the milk came from the breasts of a nurse. Cixi had been taking human milk since her prolonged illness in the early 1880s, on the recommendation of a renowned doctor. Several wet nurses were employed, and took turns to squeeze milk into a bowl for her. The nurses brought their sucking babies with them, and the woman who served her the longest stayed on in the palace, her son being given education and an office job. ~ Jung Chang,
735:His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop’s palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote you a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and he spends it. He will take a bet on anything. ~ Hilary Mantel,
736:The memories were strange clingy things like burrs knotted in his hair. He could choose to let them be, he only felt them when he pulled them, and he could pretend they weren't there like positioning his head on a pillow so as not to notice the lumps against his scalp. But amidst the commotion of the parade—a strange cocoon—he recalled things sharply. He had a part in Dam leaving the palace, and ever since that point, his best friend was headed down a dangerous path. ~ Andrew J Peters,
737:One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks ”stardust” or “caesar’s palace.” Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with “real” life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder. ~ Joan Didion,
738:You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas, it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. ~ Frank McCourt,
739:Captain considered it, and shrugged. "It seems right," he said. "It is not precisely what El wanted; but enthroned as he is in his Palace, viewing the Land from a high seat, he does not see its complexity. This Land was made wrong. All of his efforts to make it right only spread the wrongness about it new ways. It is left to souls like me to decide what to do about it; and though I cannot see all the answers, I can guess that adding more wrongness will not help matters. ~ Neal Stephenson,
740:It’s not too late,” he says. “Zahra, I—”
“Sh.” I lay a finger across his lips. “Don’t say it. You will marry Caspida, and you will learn to love each other. You will live a happy life, long after my lamp has passed to new hands.”
“I won’t make my third wish,” he says. “That’s the answer! If I don’t make the wish, you can stay here in the palace for as long as you want. You’ll never have to go back to your lamp. We can fight off anyone who tries to take you from me. ~ Jessica Khoury,
741:But I can tell you this,” he continued. “The white witch doesn’t feel things the way we do, do you understand? She’s all ice. That is her whole point.”

A palace of ice and a heart to match. “I don’t understand. Why would people go looking for her? Why would they want to go with her?”

Ben sat back. He looked at Hazel searchingly, sadly. His shoulders rose and fell. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “it seems like it would be easier to give yourself to the ice. ~ Anne Ursu,
742:My Lolita remarked: "You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own"; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
743:Wise is the man who has the potential for height in his muscles but who renounces climbing in his consciousness. By virtue of his gaze, he has all hills, and by virtue of his position, all valleys. The sun that gilds the summits will gild them more for him than for someone at the top who must endure the bright light; and the palace perched high in the woods will be more beautiful for those who see it from the valley than for those who, imprisoned in its rooms, forget it. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
744:…my Lolita remarked: “You know, what’s so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own”; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling’s mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions… ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
745:The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. ~ Oscar Wilde,
746:Exotic, vaguely sinister with its skyline of onion-domed mosques and slender minarets, its ornate Topkapi Palace housing the sultan's seraglio, its noisome Haydarpasar stews, the luxury hotels overlooking the Bosporus, the Golden Horn separating the city from its wealthy suburbs, Constantinople had seen Saracens and Crusaders eviscerate one another, had watched red-bearded Sultan "Abdul the Damned" butcher his subjects in the streets, and seemed stained by its memories. ~ William Manchester,
747:Wise is the man who has the potential for height in his muscles but who renounces climbing in his consciousness. By virtue of his gaze, he has all hills, and by virtue of his position, all valleys. The sun that gilds the summits will gild them more for him than for someone at the top who must endure the bright light; and the palace perched high in the woods will be more beautiful for those who see it from the valley than for those who, imprisoned in its rooms, forget it. I ~ Fernando Pessoa,
748:To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand ~ Seneca,
749:I do miss the stage. There's nothing like it, nothing. When I did my one-woman show and played the Palace and played the Gershwin and all that, I did - what? - eight shows or maybe more a week. Of course you can't do anything else, and you can't run quickly for a cab in the rain, and you can't have a drunken love affair. You can't do any of that. Because you've got to be perfectly healthy. And I guess I value enjoying my life a little bit more than the discipline these days. ~ Shirley MacLaine,
750:Pick Offs
THE TELESCOPE picks off star dust
on the clean steel sky and sends it to me.
The telephone picks off my voice and
sends it cross country a thousand miles.
The eyes in my head pick off pages of
Napoleon memoirs ... a rag handler,
a head of dreams walks in a sheet of
mist ... the palace panels shut in nobodies
drinking nothings out of silver
helmets ... in the end we all come to a
rock island and the hold of the sea-walls.
~ Carl Sandburg,
751:But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don't ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both? . . . . The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches. ~ Anne Lamott,
752:As far as I could see, she didn't take any better care of her apparel than I did mine, but I owned shirts that looked like they'd been run through a car engine half an hour after I removed the price tags, and she had socks from high school that were still as white as palace linen. Women and their clothes often astounded me this way, but I figured it was one of those mysteries I'd never solve - like what really happened to Amelia Earhart or the bell that used to occupy our office. ~ Dennis Lehane,
753:On Tea
Venus her myrtle, Phoebus has her bays;
Tea both excels, which she vouchsafes to praise.
The best of Queens, and best of herbs, we owe
To that bold nation, which the way did show
To the fair region where the sun doth rise,
Whose rich productions we so justly prize.
The Muse's friend, tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors which the head invade,
And keep the palace of the soul serene,
Fit on her birthday to salute the Queen.
~ Edmund Waller,
754:1072
These—saw Visions
758
These—saw Visions—
Latch them softly—
These—held Dimples—
Smooth them slow—
This—addressed departing accents—
Quick—Sweet Mouth—to miss thee so—
This—We stroked—
Unnumbered Satin—
These—we held among our own—
Fingers of the Slim Aurora—
Not so arrogant—this Noon—
These—adjust—that ran to meet us—
Pearl—for Stocking—Pearl for Shoe—
Paradise—the only Palace
Fit for Her reception—now—
~ Emily Dickinson,
755:In the palace, during my imprisonment, I learned that Maven had been made by his mother, formed into the monster he became. There is nothing on earth that can change him or what she did. But Cal was made too. All of us were made by someone else, and all of us have some thread of steel that nothing and no one can cut. I thought Cal was immune to the corruptive temptation of power. How wrong I was. He was born to be a king. It's what he was made for. It's what he was made to want. ~ Victoria Aveyard,
756:Why would I want to be the lover of a broken oven that fails in the cold, a flimsy door that the wind blows through, a palace that falls on its staunchest defenders, a mouse that gnaws through its thin reed shelter, tar that blackens the workman’s hands, a waterskin that is full of holes and leaks all over its bearer, a piece of limestone that crumbles and undermines a solid stone wall, a battering ram that knocks down the rampart of an allied city, a shoe that mangles its owner’s foot? ~ Anonymous,
757:Unfortunately, there’s still a market for rubbish. I picked up a recently written fantasy book at the weekend, and one character said of another: “He will grow wroth.” Oh, my God. And the phrase was in a page of similar jaw-breaking, mock-archaic narrative. Belike, i’faith … this is the language we use to turn high fantasy into third-rate romantic literature. “Yonder lies the palace of my fodder, the king.” That’s not fantasy—that’s just Tolkien reheated until the magic boils away. ~ Terry Pratchett,
758:Darker thoughts crowded in during the deepest hours of the night when he woke listening to the secret mystifying sounds of the sleeping palace. Many nights, the king was there. Pleasant, irrelevant, and distracting, he eased Relius past nightmares and self-recrimination. Some nights he said nothing at all, just comforted with his presence. Other nights he related the events of his day, spewing out his insights and analyses of the Attolian court in a devastatingly funny critique. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
759:And then he went in the evening up to the nursery and told the boy how his mother was gone for a while to Elfland, to her father's palace (which may only be told of in song). And, unheeding any words of Orion then, he held on with the brief tale that he had come to tell, and told how Elfland was gone.

"But that cannot be," said Orion, "for I hear the horns of Elfland every day."

"You can hear them?" Alveric said.

And the boy replied, "I hear them blowing at evening. ~ Lord Dunsany,
760:He should have said something, why hadn't he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they'd ignored it. If he'd been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, Eddisian soldiers on the move. He'd meant to deceive them, and he'd succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
761:few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return. For me those enchanted pages will always be the ones I found among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
762:To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand ~ Seneca the Younger,
763:It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first arrived-- a hot-air balloon-- just a few hours before seditious ministers were to lead a Palace revolt and to hold an execution without trial. ~ Gregory Maguire,
764:Unfortunately, there’s still a market for rubbish. I picked up a recently written fantasy book at the weekend, and one character said of another: ‘He will grow wroth.’ Oh, my God. And the phrase was in a page of similar jaw-breaking, mock-archaic narrative. Belike, i’faith . . . this is the language we use to turn high fantasy into third-rate romantic literature. ‘Yonder lies the palace of my fodder, the king.’ That’s not fantasy – that’s just Tolkien reheated until the magic boils away. ~ Terry Pratchett,
765:The two Ednas were nothing alike. They were as different as Methuselah and Enoch. Mother Edna was kind, sweet, supportive, and submissive. Sixteen-year old Edna was spunky, feisty, independent, and stubborn. Methuselah’s differences with his father haunted him wherever he turned. The living quarters they occupied were humble compared with other palace servants or royalty. According to Enoch, a wisdom sage was not concerned about the things of this world, but about truth, justice, and heaven. ~ Brian Godawa,
766:You will,” said Vorkosigan wearily, “sit in that fortified palace that half the engineers are going to be tied up constructing, and party in it, and let your men do your dying for you, until you’ve bought your ground by the sheer weight of the corpses piled on it, because that’s the kind of soldiering your mentor has taught you. And then send bulletins home about your great victory. Maybe you can have the casualty lists declared top secret.” “Aral, careful,” warned Vorhalas, shocked. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
767:Don’t.” I walked up to him. “If it ever comes down to a situation between me and you, save yourself. I’m not worth dying for.” “Princess, I-” “None of us are,” I said, looking at him seriously. “Not the Queen or any of the Markis or Marksinna. That’s a direct order from the Princess, and you have to follow it. Save yourself.” “I don’t understand.” Duncan’s whole face scrunched in confusion. “But… if it’s as you wish, Princess.” “It is. Thank you,” I smiled at him and walked into the palace. ~ Amanda Hocking,
768:I saw the Ramones, early on at a country-rock palace in Denver. They were opening for some record-company band, so the local music establishment, and I emphasize the word "establishment," was there in force, and the handful of us who knew the Ramones were up in front. And half the fun was, you know, not only were the Ramones the most powerful band I had ever seen at that point, but they made it look so simple - that anyone could do it, hell, even I could do it. This is what I should be doing. ~ Jello Biafra,
769:Like her youngest son, Julia administered stern lectures on republican virtue. Before supper, two noblewomen stopped by to school her in palace etiquette. “Mrs. Grant,” one said, “I hope you will not feel fatigued. Our Queen always receives standing.” Julia replied breezily, “Oh, I am sure I will not feel the fatigue. You must remember I too have received for the last eight years and always standing.”32 Julia was at pains to remind the two women that they were dealing with American royalty. The ~ Ron Chernow,
770:Arjuro made a scoffing sound. ‘You think Lumatere will invade because of you? Are you that important?’

Froi looked away. ‘Isaboe would invade if you kidnapped a servant, let alone a friend.’

‘Isaboe? We’re on first-name terms with the Queen of Lumatere, are we?’ Gargarin asked.

Froi found himself bristling. ‘What? Do you think I’m some cutthroat for hire who they found hanging around the palace walls with the words “I want
to kill a Charynite King” tattooed on my arse? ~ Melina Marchetta,
771:I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old.… ~ Liu Cixin,
772:Because I remembered your words,” she said quietly. “I remembered that you liked me least. You said it in my palace chamber. ‘Have one of the others wake me, for I like you least.’” She turned to face him and brushed tears fiercely from her face. “Sometimes when I see what’s left of Quintana of Charyn through my own eyes, I think I can learn to love her. But when I see her through your eyes, I despise her.” If she saw Quintana of Charyn through Froi’s eyes, he knew she’d see a part of himself. ~ Melina Marchetta,
773:The castle always looks so mysterious," she said, awed. "Is it wonderful, living there?"

"It isn’t so mysterious when you're there. I'd rather look at it from the hills. It's just—full of people, at least the servants' parts are, crowded and ordinary. Things should be mysterious, but there's nothing mysterious in the palace."

"Should things be mysterious?"

"There's mystery in the hills and in the wind on the grass. And in the stories you like. Isn't life mysterious? ~ Shirley Rousseau Murphy,
774:You are happening as a compulsive being, not as a conscious being. That is the basis of all unpleasantness in a human being.
Karma is deciding not about what happens. Karma is deciding how you experience your life. The quality of your life is always decided by how you experience, not by what you have around you. You can sit in a palace and be utterly miserable. You can be on the street and be joyful. So it is the quality of your experience, not what you have, which decides the quality of your life. ~ Sadhguru,
775:In the palace, during my imprisonment, I learned that Maven had been made by his mother, formed into the monster he became. There is nothing on earth that can change him or what she did.

But Cal was made too. All of us were made by someone else, and all of us have some thread of steel that nothing and no one can cut.

I thought Cal was immune to the corruptive temptation of power. How wrong I was.
He was born to be a king. It’s what he was made for. It’s what he was made to want. ~ Victoria Aveyard,
776:Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said "No, not there. ~ E M Forster,
777:Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death! Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.The choice lies with you! ~ Peter Kropotkin,
778:Could you penetrate this palace, Prince Kheldar?" King Anheg challenged.
"I already have, your Majesty," Silk said modestly, "a dozen times or more."
Anheg looked at Rhodar with one raised eyebrow.
Rhodar coughed slightly. "It was some time ago, Anheg. Nothing serious. I was just curious about something, that's all."
"All you had to do was ask," Anheg said in a slightly injured tone.
"I didn't want to bother you," Rhodar said with a shrug. "Besides, it's more fun to do it the other way. ~ David Eddings,
779:The legend used in the Lesser rites is that of the abduction of the goddess Persephone, the daughter of Ceres, by Pluto, the lord of the underworld, or Hades. While Persephone is picking flowers in a beautiful meadow, the earth suddenly opens and the gloomy lord of death, riding in a magnificent chariot, emerges from its somber depths and, grasping her in his arms, carries the screaming and struggling goddess to his subterranean palace, where he forces her to become his queen. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages,
780:In her palace at Alexandria, Cleopatra begins her final night. The last of the pharaohs, who was not as beautiful as they say, who was a better queen than they say, who spoke several languages and understood economics and other male mysteries, who astonished Rome, who challenged Rome, who shared bed and power with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, now dresses in her most outlandish outfit and slowly sits down on her throne, while the Roman troops advance against her. Julius Caesar is dead, Mark Anthony is dead. ~ Eduardo Galeano,
781:I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn’t no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies. I reckoned he believed in the Arabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school. ~ Mark Twain,
782:Do Come To Me
You may not take notice of me
But do come to me
I am a sacrifice unto you
Do come to me
I've looked around in fields and forest
There is none like you
Do come to me
Cowherd you are to others
You are my faith, my beau
Do come to me
Leaving my parents, I am tied to you,
Oh Shah Inayat, my beloved teacher
Do come to me
Bulleh enterd the great palace
And had a spledid treat
What have we gained in the world
A black face and blue feet?
~ Bulleh Shah,
783:As events would show, Cixi was indeed opposed to the foreign policy of her husband and his inner circle – but for very different reasons. Silently observing from close quarters, she in fact regarded their stubborn resistance to opening the door of China as stupid and wrong. Their hate-filled effort to shut out the West had, in her view, achieved the opposite to preserving the empire. It had brought the empire catastrophe, not least the destruction of her beloved Old Summer Palace. She herself would pursue a new route. ~ Jung Chang,
784:...freedom is of more account than the height of a roof beam. I ought to know; mine cost me eighteen years' slavery. The man who lives on his own land is an independent man. He is his own master. If I can keep my sheep alive through winter and can pay what has been stipulated from year to year - then I pay what has been stipulated; and I have kept my sheep alive. No, it is freedom that we are all after, Titla. He who pays his way is a king. He who keeps his sheep alive through the winter lives in a palace. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness,
785:Just take one thing out and the whole palace, the whole edifice of the human mind collapses. Take effort out of it and desiring disappears, imagination disappears, past and future disappear, or take desire out and effort disappears and time disappears and ego disappears. Just take one thing out of the gestalt and the whole gestalt simply disappears; it cannot exist without certain things. Those are the very essentials of it - effort is one of the essentials. Hence all the great Masters of the world have taught about grace. ~ Rajneesh,
786:ʺWhere is it?ʺ I asked. ʺLexington, Kentucky.ʺ ʺOh for Godʹs sake,ʺ I moaned. ʺWhy not the Bahamas? Or the Corn Palace?ʺ Dimitri tried to hide a smile. It might have been at my expense, but if Iʹd lightened his mood, I was grateful. ʺIf we leave right now, we can reach him before morning.ʺ I glanced around. ʺTough choice. Leave all this for electricity and plumbing?ʺ Now Sydney grinned. ʺAnd no more marriage proposals.ʺ ʺAnd weʹll probably have to fight Strigoi,ʺ added Dimitri. I jumped to my feet. ʺHow soon can we go?ʺ ~ Richelle Mead,
787:I'd always wanted a voice-activated virtual assistant for my palace on Olympus, but Hephaestus hadn't been able to get the technology quite right. The one time he tried, the assistant had been named Alexasiriastrophona. She'd been very picky about having her name pronounced perfectly, and at the same time had an annoying habit of getting my requests wrong. I'd say, Alexasiriastrophona, send a plague arrow to destroy Corinth, please. And she would reply, I think you said: Men blame rows of soy and corn fleas. ~ Rick Riordan,
788:And what was more, he’d had to let Silence’s brothers bear her away because the palace wasn’t safe for her or the babe now. Conceding to anyone was not something Mick was used to doing. If any man had told him a month ago that he’d let four men walk out of the palace with something—someone—he considered his, Mick would’ve laughed in his face. But that was before Silence and the babe had come to be important to him. More important than even his self-esteem and his reputation. If that made him a weaker man, well, then so be it. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,
789:Their circumstances furnish them with more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental, and that not everyone can have a thousand wives and palaces like Solomon, that for everyone who has a thousand wives there are a thousand without a wife, and that for each palace there are a thousand people who have to build it in the sweat of their brows; and that the accident that has today made me a Solomon may tomorrow make me a Solomon’s slave. ~ Anonymous,
790:When I had been writing food reviews for a number of years, there were so many restaurants and individual dishes in my brainpan that when people asked for a recommendation, I couldn’t think of a single restaurant where I’d ever actually eaten. But if the person could narrow it down to, say, Indian, I might remember one lavish Indian palace, where my date had asked the waiter for the Rudyard Kipling sampler and later for the holy-cow tartare. Then a number of memories would come to mind, of other dates and other Indian restaurants. ~ Anne Lamott,
791:And yet, why do you think Jesus Christ came into this world through a pregnant, unwed teenage girl in a patriarchal shame-and-honor culture? God didn’t have to do it that way. But I think it was his way of saying, “I don’t do things the way the world expects, but in the opposite way altogether. My power is made perfect in weakness. My Savior-Prince will be born not into a cradle in a royal palace but into a feed trough in a stable --not to powerful and famous people but to disgraced peasants. And that is all part of the pattern. ~ Timothy J Keller,
792:The king took the club and urged his horse after the ball which he had thrown. He struck it, and then it was hit back by the courtiers who were playing with him. When he felt very hot he stopped playing, and went back to the palace, went into the bath, and did all that the physician had said. The next day when he arose he found, to his great joy and astonishment, that he was completely cured. When he entered his audience-chamber all his courtiers, who were eager to see if the wonderful cure had been effected, were overwhelmed with joy. ~ Anonymous,
793:Tyson okay?” I asked. The question seemed to take my dad by surprise. He’s fine. Doing much better than I expected. Though “peanut butter” is a strange battle cry. “You let him fight?” Stop changing the subject! You realize what you are asking me to do? My palace will be destroyed. “And Olympus might be saved.” Do you have any idea how long I’ve worked on remodeling this palace? The game room alone took six hundred years. “Dad—” Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works. “I am praying. I’m talking to you, right? ~ Rick Riordan,
794:Makina had never seen snow before and the first thing that struck her as she stopped to watch the weightless crystals raining down was that something was burning. One came to perch on her eyelashes; it looked like a stack of crosses or the map of a palace, a solid and intricate marvel at any rate, and when it dissolved a few seconds later she wondered how it was that some things in the world — some countries, some people — could seem eternal when everything was actually like that miniature ice palace: one-of-a-kind, precious, fragile. ~ Yuri Herrera,
795:If he guessed his mistake, if he wanted me back, I thought, let him suffer and work for it as I had worked and suffered. Let him follow me over a mountain of iron and a lake of glass, and wear out three swords in my defense. But at my truest, lying awake trying to count the stars, I knew my prince would not follow. In my mind's eye I saw him in his palace, stroking the gold and silver and starry dresses which were fading now like leaves in winter, weeping for a spotless princess who did not exist, who had drowned in the river of time. ~ Emma Donoghue,
796:Although Arin was eager to see Kestrel, he would have to wait. He caught threads of music from far away. As he came across the grass, the piano’s melody strengthened. It opened within him a happiness that gathered and gleamed…glossy, but the way water is, with weight.
A lovely fatigue claimed him. He lay down on the grass and listened. He thought about how Kestrel had slept on the palace lawn and dreamed of him. When she had told him this, he’d wished that it had been real. He tried to imagine the dream, then found himself dreaming. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
797:have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate,—revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of the man ~ Victor Hugo,
798:I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear. How the Chimney-sweeper's cry Every black'ning Church appalls; And the hapless Soldier's sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls. But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot's curse Blasts the new born Infant's tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. ~ William Blake,
799:The window opened in the same direction as the king's, and there, summer-bright and framed by the darkness of the stairwell, was the same view. Costis passed it, and then went back up the stairs to look again. There were only the roofs of the lower part of the palace and the town and the city walls. Beyond those were the hills on the far side of the Tustis Valley and the faded blue sky above them. It wasn't what the king saw that was important, it was what he couldn't see when he sat at the window with his face turned toward Eddis. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
800:My father’s halls were dark and silent. His palace was a neighbor to Oceanos’, buried in the earth’s rock, and its walls were made of polished obsidian. Why not? They could have been anything in the world, blood-red marble from Egypt or balsam from Araby, my father had only to wish it so. But he liked the way the obsidian reflected his light, the way its slick surfaces caught fire as he passed. Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when he was gone. My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ~ Madeline Miller,
801:Tess had said that the river was liable to wash the palace and the city and the whole kingdom off the rocks, and then there would finally be peace in the world.

"Peace in the world," Brigan repeated musingly when Fire told him. "I suppose she's right. That would bring peace to the world. But it's not likely to happen, so I suppose we'll have to keep blundering on and making a mess of it."

"Oh," Fire said, "well put. We'll have to pass that on to the governor so he can use it in his speech when they dedicate the new bridge. ~ Kristin Cashore,
802:Phoenixes that play here once, so that the place was named for them,
Have abandoned it now to this desolated river;
The paths of Wu Palace are crooked with weeds;
The garments of Chin are ancient dust.
...Like this green horizon halving the Three Peaks,
Like this Island of White Egrets dividing the river,
A cloud has risen between the Light of Heaven and me,
To hide his city from my melancholy heart.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, On Climbing In Nan-King To The Terrace Of Phoenixes
,
803:Well, if he wants to be king, he’ll just plain have to get used to questions and toadies and all the rest of it,” I said. Remembering the conversation at dinner and wondering if I’d made an idiot of myself, I added crossly, “I don’t have any sympathy at all. In fact, I wish he hadn’t come up here. If he needed rest from the fatigue of taking over a kingdom, why couldn’t he go to that fabulous palace in Renselaeus? Or to Shevraeth, which I’ll just bet has an equally fabulous palace?”
Nee sighed. “Is that a rhetorical or a real question? ~ Sherwood Smith,
804:It is easy enough to call men
from the edges of the earth.
It is easy enough to summon them to my feet
with a thought–
it is beautiful to see the tall panther
and the sleek deer-hounds
circle in the dark.
It is easy enough
to make cedar and white ash fumes
into palaces
and to cover the sea-caves
with ivory and onyx.

But I would give up
rock-fringes of coral
and the inmost chamber
of my island palace
and my own gifts
and the whole region
of my power and magic
for your glance. ~ H D,
805:Was Shell there, wondered Liir, knuckles on some marble windowsill, Lord High Apostle Muscle himself, Shell Go-to-hell Thropp, First Spear, Emperor of Oz, Personal Shell of the Unnamed God? Did he lean forward and squint at the holy ghost of his remonstrating sister, and rub his eyes?

Six thousand strong, they cried in unison, hoping that the echo of their message would be heard in the darkest, most cloistered cell in Southstairs as well as the highest office in the Palace of the Emperor. “Elphaba lives! Elphaba lives! Elphaba lives! ~ Gregory Maguire,
806:There was a palace faction in the diocese, and an anti-palace faction. Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful belonged to one, and Mr. Oriel and Mr. Robarts to the other. Mr. Thumble was too weak to stick to his faction against the strength of such a man as Dr. Tempest. Mr. Quiverful would be too indifferent to do so, — unless his interest were concerned. Mr. Oriel would be too conscientious to regard his own side on such an occasion as this. But Mark Robarts would be sure to support his friends and oppose his enemies, let the case be what it might. ~ Anthony Trollope,
807:ʺWhere is it?ʺ I asked.
ʺLexington, Kentucky.ʺ
ʺOh for Godʹs sake,ʺ I moaned. ʺWhy not the Bahamas? Or the Corn Palace?ʺ
Dimitri tried to hide a smile. It might have been at my expense, but if Iʹd lightened his mood, I was grateful. ʺIf we leave right now, we can reach him before morning.ʺ
I glanced around. ʺTough choice. Leave all this for electricity and plumbing?ʺ
Now Sydney grinned.
ʺAnd no more marriage proposals.ʺ
ʺAnd weʹll probably have to fight Strigoi,ʺ added Dimitri.
I jumped to my feet. ʺHow soon can we go?ʺ ~ Richelle Mead,
808:I had worried that he might think of me differently, once he learned about my new powers. That the thought of being accidentally roasted alive if I got angry with him might send him running back to the palace.
I shouldn’t have bothered. Kiernan’s tongue was poking between his lips. I had seen that look a hundred times, usually just before a stunt that would have him, or both of us, in trouble. “Magic,” he murmured. “You, a wizard. A dangerous one.” His eyes swept over me, then landed on my face. “Do you have any idea how much fun this could be? ~ Eilis O Neal,
809:   On Soochows terrace the crows find their nests.
    The King of Wu in his palace drinks with Hsi Shih.
    Songs of Wu, Dances of Chu quicken their pleasure
    One half of the sun is caught in the valleys throat.

    The clocks silver arrow marks the passing hours.
    They rise early to see the autumn moon,
    Watch it sink down into deep river.
    Daylight glows in the East. Dawn renews their joy.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, The Roosting Crows
,
810:We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although as poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers. ~ William Booth,
811:He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. ~ Frank McCourt,
812:It is better to have a Christian’s days of sorrows than an unbeliever’s days of fun; better to have a Christian’s sorrows than a worldling’s joys. It is happier to be chained in the inner prison with a Paul and Silas than reign in the palace with a king like Ahab. It is better to be a child of God in poverty than a child of Satan in riches. Cheer up, then, you discouraged spirit, if this is your trial. Remember that many saints have passed through the same things you have; even the best and most celebrated believers have had their nights. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
813:Lawrence would prove very adept at using both the advances and deficiencies in communications to his advantage, repeatedly breaching protocol to get messages to his allies quickly, conveniently failing to receive undesired orders—“garbled transmission” was a favorite excuse—until it was too late and the matter decided. Joined to a certain ruthless streak, it all enabled T. E. Lawrence to emerge as a kind of exemplar of the bureaucratic infighter, with a prowess that even the most devious palace intriguer or tenure-track college professor might envy. ~ Scott Anderson,
814:if he waited for one load of passengers to get off and another to get on, he would never see the motor launch again. He was on the other side of the canal now. The streets were a little less crowded here. Alex caught his breath. He wondered how much longer he could run. And then he saw, with a surge of relief, that the motor launch had also arrived at its destination. It was pulling into a palace a little further up, stopping behind a series of wooden poles that slanted out of the water as if, like javelins, they had been thrown there by chance. As ~ Anthony Horowitz,
815:O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell;
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace! ~ William Shakespeare,
816:How I like claret!...It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarrelling with one's liver. No; 'tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step. ~ John Keats,
817:The Painted Bed
'Even when I danced erect
by the Nile’s garden
I constructed Necropolis.
Ten million fellaheen cells
of my body floated stones
to establish a white museum.'
Grisly, foul, and terrific
is the speech of bones,
thighs and arms slackened
into desiccated sacs of flesh
hanging from an armature
where muscle was, and fat.
'I lie on the painted bed
diminishing, concentrated
on the journey I undertake
to repose without pain
in the palace of darkness,
my body beside your body.'
~ Donald Hall,
818:Love is an act of faith and its face should always be covered in mystery. Every moment should be lived with feeling and emotion because if we try to decipher it and understand it, the magic disappears. We follow its winding and luminous paths, we let ourselves go to the highest peak or the deepest seas, but we trust in the hand that leads us. If we do not allow ourselves to be frightened, we will always awaken in a palace; if we fear the steps that will be required by love and want to reveal everything to us, the result is that we will be left with nothing. ~ Paulo Coelho,
819:They camped at night among evergreens, and George showed her how to make use of her herbs for a lentil stew for breakfast. She already was thinking longingly of the food back in the Palace- though, she was ravenous enough to have eaten almost anything. But their fare was plain in the extreme and even though there was quite enough to keep her from feeling hungry, still, images of roast fowl, lamb, bowls of ripe fruit and yogurt, fresh bread and honeycomb, and sweet wine kept intruding between her and her plain flatbread and crumbled goat cheese and olives. ~ Mercedes Lackey,
820:I saw a small square of paper, folded over on itself and sealed with a blob of wax from the candle by my bed. Cracking it open, I recognized Kiernan’s hand.
Don’t you dare get up until you’re rested! When you are, send one of those message lights and I’ll come. In the meantime, I’ll talk to O., see if she remembers anything about last night. And I’ll find out if anyone saw M. or N. wandering the palace last night. Don’t frown like that! I’ll be sly.
I was frowning, I realized, which made me let out an irritated huff of breath. He knew me too well. ~ Eilis O Neal,
821:With what wonderful wisdom has George Eliot told us that people are not any better because they have long eye-lashes! Yet it must be that there is something anomalous in this outward beauty and inward ugliness; for, in spite of all experience, we revolt against it, and are incredulous to the last, believing that the palace which is outwardly so splendid can scarcely be ill furnished within. Heaven help the woman who sells her heart for a handsome face, and awakes, when the bargain has been struck, to discover the foolishness of such an exchange.   It ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
822:English version by A. J. Alston I have heard that today Hari will come. O my companion, I will climb my high palace To see when my King will come Frogs, peacocks and papihas are calling. The koil is striking its plaintive note Indra is exulting, rain is falling everywhere. The lightning is dancing without shame The earth robes herself anew To greet Indra. Says Mira, O my Master, the courtly Giridhara Come quickly, my King [bk1sm.gif] -- from The Devotional Poems of Mirabai, by Mirabai / Translated by A. J. Alston

~ Mirabai, I have heard that today Hari will come
,
823:France divided Vietnam into three parts: the French colony of Cochinchina, which encompassed the sprawling, sparsely peopled Mekong Delta in the South; and two “protectorates”—Annam, the poorest and most mountainous part of the country, just thirty miles wide at its narrowest point, and Tonkin, the densely populated Red River Delta. These protectorates were nominally overseen by a compliant descendant of the Nguyen emperors, but actually ruled—along with Laos and Cambodia—as part of the Indochinese Union by a French governor-general from his palace in Hanoi. ~ Geoffrey C Ward,
824:Is Tyson okay?" I asked. The question seemed to take my dad by surprise. He's fine. Doing much better than I expected. Though "peanut butter" is a strange battle cry. "You let him fight?" Stop changing the subject! You realize what you are asking me to do? My palace will be destroyed. "And Olympus might be saved." Do you have any idea how long I've worked on remodeling this palace? The game room alone took six hundred years. "Dad—" Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works. "I am praying. I'm talking to you, right?" Oh . . . yes. Good point. ~ Rick Riordan,
825:Suppose you woke up one morning to discover that you were the last person on earth. [...] In the situation described, you could satisfy many material desires that you can't satisfy in our actual world. You could have the car of your dreams. You could even have a showroom full of expensive cars. You could have the house of your dreams - or live in a palace. You could wear very expensive clothes. You could acquire not just a big diamond ring but the Hope Diamond itself. The interesting question is this: without people around, would you still want these things? ~ William B Irvine,
826:Even when portrayed as a man, Hatshepsut often used grammatically feminine epithets, describing herself as the daughter (rather than son) of Ra, or the lady (rather than lord) of the Two Lands. The tension between male office and female officeholder was never satisfactorily resolved. Little wonder that Hatshepsut’s advisers came up with a new circumlocution for the monarch. From now on, the term for the palace, per-aa (literally “great house”), was applied also to its chief inhabitant. Peraa—pharaoh—now became the unique designation of the Egyptian ruler. While ~ Toby Wilkinson,
827:Marx’s first point is one still made by critics of the modern consumer society: A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut… however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls. (WLC 259) ~ Anonymous,
828:But you do believe, don’t you," Rose implored him, "you think it’s true?"
"Of course it’s true," the Boy said. "What else could there be?" he went scornfully on. "Why," he said, "it’s the only thing that fits. These atheists, they don’t know nothing. Of course there’s Hell. Flames and damnation," he said with his eyes on the dark shifting water and the lightning and the lamps going out above the black struts of the Palace Pier, "torments."
"And Heaven too," Rose said with anxiety, while the rain fell interminably on.
"Oh, maybe," the Boy said, "maybe. ~ Graham Greene,
829:Marx’s first point is one still made by critics of the modern consumer society: A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut… however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls. (WLC 259) ~ Peter Singer,
830:PLAYED day and night with my comrades, and now I am greatly afraid.
So high is my Lord's palace, my heart trembles to mount its stairs: yet I must not be shy, if I would enjoy His love.
My heart must cleave to my Lover; I must withdraw my veil, and meet Him with all my body:
Mine eyes must perform the ceremony of the lamps of love.
Kabr says: "Listen to me, friend: he understands who loves. If you feel not love's longing for your Beloved One, it is vain to adorn your body, vain to put unguent on your eyelids."
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
~ Kabir, Poem 5
,
831:The fog turned a strange yellow, then orange, then black. The gilded winged statue Victory at Buckingham Palace retreated into mist. St. Paul's was a hazy outline, ghostlike in the gloom. La Traviata at the Sadler's Wells theatre was terminated midway because the audience could no longer see the singers on stage. Pedestrians noticed how everything below the waist disappeared. Knees, shoes, dogs became indistinguishable. The Great Smog was days and nights of people and things passing out of sight and existence. It seemed a fitting time for a mother to evaporate. ~ Kyo Maclear,
832:Our gift is to be a series of puzzles. In reading our clues and seeking our answers, we hope and pray you will find a future as well. A morrow filled with reasons to live, and a purpose grand enough to bestow upon you the gift of hope. For you deserve it all, my dear Brian. All the hope a tomorrow worth living can bring. “Here, then, is the first clue: From the hope tossed skyward on your beloved’s happiest day, in a grand palace made to make a child feel grander still, search for the heart, search for the heart, search for the heart of your beloved. Yours ever, Heather. ~ Davis Bunn,
833:The gardens surrounding the palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha were spectacularly beautiful, full of vibrant colors, the smell of jasmine pervading everything.
Harry stopped in front of an exquisite flowering plant with delicate blooms of soft pink and white. "Orchids," he murmured. "They grew in the foliage around Changi, and I've seen them everywhere since I arrived in Bangkok. They are rare in England."
"They are like weeds here," said Lidia.
"Golly! I wish we had weeds at home like this," Harry said, thinking he must take some back to his mother. ~ Lucinda Riley,
834:You've seen the prince? Like the real prince of the Otherworld?''
''Yep. Saw him three times.'' (...) ''Once he was in this meadow. Kind of like the meadow in that movie with the sparkly vampires and crazy hair''.
(...) The second time was when i was near their palace. It kind of looked like something on the show you watch where everyone dies.''
''Game of Thrones? I suggested. ''King's Landing?''
He jumped as he nodded. ''And the third time was...well, he was doing something you never do.''
(...) ''What was that?''
(...) ''He was having sex. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
835:The whole point of anti-Semitism has been to create a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top. Peasants who go on pogrom against their Jewish neighbors won't make it to the nobleman's palace to burn him out and seize the fields. This was the role of Jews in Europe. This has been the role of Jews in the United States, and this is the role of Jews in the Middle East. ~ Aurora Levins Morales,
836:Spring Night In The Imperial Chancellery
Evening falls on palace walls shaded by flowering trees, with cry of birds
flying past on their way to roost. The stars quiver as they look down on the
myriad doors of the palace, and the moon's light increases as she moves into
the ninefold sky. Unable to sleep, I seem to hear the sound of the bronze-clad
doors opening for the audience, or imagine the sound of bridle-bells bourne
upon the wind. Having a sealed memorial to submit at tomorrow's levee, I make
frequent inquiries about the progress of the night.
~ Du Fu,
837:We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing. Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only everything, and we will be content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have had your day. Some little dogs never get theirs. You must not be greedy. You have KNOWN happiness. The palace was Paradise for those few months, and the Prince's arms were about you, Cinderella, the Prince's kisses on your lips; the gods themselves cannot take THAT from you. ~ Jerome K Jerome,
838:A Lady's Choice
Her old love in tears and silence had been building her a palace
Ringed by moats and flanked with towers, he had set it on a hill
'Here,' he said, 'will come no whisper of the world's alarms and malice,
In these granite walls imprisoned, I will keep you safe from ill'
As he spoke along the highway there came riding by a stranger,
For an instant on her features, he a fleeting glance bestowed,
Then he said: 'My heart is fickle and the world is full of danger,'
And he offered her his stirrup and he pointed down the road.
~ Alice Duer Miller,
839:he takes as his text and example the unfortunate Ahab, seventh king of Israel, who lived in a palace of ivory. Under the influence of the wicked Jezebel he built a pagan temple and gave the priests of Baal places in his retinue. The prophet Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered. The dogs of Samaria licked Ahab’s blood. All his male heirs perished. They lay unburied in the streets. Jezebel was thrown out of a window of her palace. Wild dogs tore her body into shreds. ~ Hilary Mantel,
840:How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back?
Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Jin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life? ~ Zhuangzi,
841:You can't live on nothing." "I can live on sunlight falling across little bridges. I can live on the Botticelli-blue cornflower pattern on the out-billowing garments of the attendant to Aphrodite and the pattern of strawberry blossoms and the little daisies in the robe of Primavera. I can live on the doves flying (he says) in cohorts from the underside of the faded gilt of the balcony of Saint Mark's cathedral and the long corridors of the Pitti Palace. I can gorge myself on Rome and the naked Bacchus and the face like a blasted lightning-blasted white birch that is some sort of Fury. ~ H D,
842:Look for yourself. The L is pronounced W, the A isn’t like your A, sort of an I, which makes a Wine. Our C is really a TZ. And we give the final T a kind of Th sound. So it comes out Wine-tzooth.” She stared at her two maps, each of which clearly showed Lancut as the site of the palace; the word even carried a minute drawing of battlements to prove the point, but now she knew the name was really Winetzooth. Looking up, she had said: “I’m so glad you’ve proved you love me, Wiktor.” She had slammed the books shut. “Because otherwise I’d think you were trying to drive me crazy. ~ James A Michener,
843:You know what he was telling me just the other day?” “What?” “Korea, right, you’d think it was tea, tea, tea. Like China and Japan. But the last emperor of Korea, his name was Sunjong, the nineteen twenties, he loved the West and always had coffee at the palace. He and his father would sit around drinking coffee and talking about world affairs. Word got around and the citizens began to drink coffee. They liked to do what their emperor does. There’re more coffee drinkers in Korea than any other Asian country. They even have coffee shop hookers. Dabang girls, they’re called.” He ~ Jeffery Deaver,
844:On May 7 crowds had gathered on Dam Square in the center of Amsterdam in front of the Royal Palace, cheering, dancing, singing, waving the orange flag of the Dutch royal family, in anticipation of the triumphant British and Canadian troops whose arrival was imminent. Watching the happy throng from the windows of a gentlemen’s club on the square, German naval officers decided in a last-minute fit of pique to fire into the crowd with a machine gun mounted on the roof. Twenty-two people died, and more than a hundred were badly injured. Even that was not the very last violent act of the war. ~ Ian Buruma,
845:New Rule: Let the Pope be Pope. An animal-rights group in Italy has asked Pope Benedict to give up his fur-trimmed cape and hat. To which the Pope replied, "Don't be hatin' on my cape, bitch." Sorry, but Popes are the original divas, they invented bling, they've been wearing outlandish outfits for a thousand years--almost as long as Elton John. The clothes, the jewels, the fancy palace...Those aren't just symbols of the Papacy, they are the Papacy. The day the Pope shows up on the balcony in a pair of jeans and polo shirt is the day a billion Catholics go, "What the hell were we thinking? ~ Bill Maher,
846:I do think your brother grows more peculiar every day,' I complain to Edward when he comes to my rooms in Whitehall Palace to escort me to dinner.
'Which one?' he asks lazily. 'For you know I can do nothing right in the eyes of either. You would think they would be glad to have a York on the throne and peace in Christendom, and one of the finest Christmas feasts we have ever arranged; but no: Richard is leaving court to go back north as soon as the feast is over, to demonstrate his outrage that we are not slogging away in a battle with the French, and George is simply bad tempered. ~ Philippa Gregory,
847:Is Tyson okay?" I asked.
The question seemed to take my dad by surprise. He's fine. Doing much better than I expected. Though "peanut butter" is a strange battle cry.
"You let him fight?"
Stop changing the subject! You realize what you are asking me to do? My palace will be destroyed.
"And Olympus might be saved."
Do you have any idea how long I've worked on remodeling this palace? The game room alone took six hundred years.
"Dad—"
Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works.
"I am praying. I'm talking to you, right?"
Oh . . . yes. Good point. ~ Rick Riordan,
848:Night And Morning
The winds are piping loud to-night,
And the waves roll strong and high;
God pity the watchful mariner
Who toils 'neath yonder sky!
I saw the vessel speed away,
With a free, majestic sweep,
At evening as the sun went down
To his palace in the deep.
An aged crone sat on the beach,
And, pointing to the ship,
'She'll never return again,' she said,
With a scorn upon her lip.
--The morning rose tempestuous,
The winds blew to the shore,
There were corpses on the sands that morn,
But the ship came nevermore!
~ Charles Sangster,
849:The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting point. Keep opening new doors and eventually you’ll have built a palace. ~ George Couros,
850:In Alexandria, 31 B.C.
From his village near the outskirts of town,
still dust-covered from the journey in,
the peddler arrives. And "Incense!" "Gum!"
"The best olive oil!" "Perfume for your hair!"
he hawks through the streets. But with all the hubbub,
the music, the parades, who can hear him?
The crowd shoves him, drags him along, knocks him around.
And when he asks, now totally confused, "What's going on here?"
someone tosses him too the huge palace lie:
that Antony is winning in Greece.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
851:The heavy black she had worn for years was gone; her dress was of turquoise-colored silk, bright and soft as the evening sky. It belled out full from her hips, and all the skirt was embroidered with thin silver threads and seed pearls and tiny crumbs of crystal, so that it glittered softly, like rain in April. She looked at the magician, speechless. “Do you like it?” “Where—” “It’s like a gown I saw a princess wear once, at the Feast of Sun-return in the New Palace in Havnor,” he said, looking at it with satisfaction. “You told me to show you something worth seeing. I show you yourself. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
852:8. Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle,
853:However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
854:The Eiffel Tower wasn’t just the largest thing that anyone had ever proposed to build, it was the largest completely useless thing. It wasn’t a palace or burial chamber or place of worship. It didn’t even commemorate a fallen hero. Eiffel gamely insisted that his tower would have many practical applications—that it would make a terrific military lookout and that one could do useful aeronautical and meteorological experiments from its upper reaches—but eventually even he admitted that mostly he wished to build it simply for the slightly strange pleasure of making something really quite enormous. Many ~ Bill Bryson,
855:A pathway of destruction and carnage made its way through the city and devastated the palace and the Ishtar Gate. The structures crumbled to mounds of painted bricks and broken bodies. Then as quickly as the destruction had fallen upon them it was gone. The funnel cloud retracted to the sky and the storm vanished. And everything was eerily still.              Then cries of pain and misery from human victims echoed throughout the city. Countless thousands lay dead, half again as many injured. They were bruised, cut, maimed and crushed by the debris of mud brick and stone that now lay across the city. ~ Brian Godawa,
856:When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
857: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,
858:When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty clothes of everyday, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli,
859:For those who are sceptical about such events as the wives of clerics and other religious being sold into slavery with the sanction of Rome, I have to point out the following: during the time of Pope Leo IX (1049–54), the pontiff did sanction the rounding up of the wives of priests to become slaves in the Lateran Palace. Moreover, it was when Urban II (1088–99) was elected to the papacy that he reinforced celibacy not only by decree but also by force. While attending a council in Rheims he gave approval to the Archbishop of Rheims to order Robert, Count of Rheims, to abduct all the wives of priests and ~ Peter Tremayne,
860:I've hardly taken any pictures on this trip. Melanie teased me about it, to which I always said I preferred to experience something rather than obsessively record it. Though, really, the truth of it was, unlike Melanie (who wanted to remember the shoe salesman and the mime and the cute waiter and all the other people on the tour), none of that really mattered to me. At the start of the trip, I took shots of the sights. The Colosseum. Belvedere Palace. Mozart Square. But I stopped. They never came out very well, and you could get postcards of these things.

But there are no postcards of this. Of life. ~ Gayle Forman,
861:But now, as for you, you must make your way, when dawn shows, back to our house, and be with the group of insolent suitors. At a later time the swineherd shall take me to the city, and I shall look like a dismal vagabond, and an old man. But if they maltreat me within the house, then let the dear heart 275 in you even endure it, though I suffer outrage, even if they drag me by the feet through the palace to throw me out of it, or pelt me with missiles; you must still look on and endure it; though indeed you may speak to them with soft words and entreat them to give over their mad behavior, but still they will never ~ Homer,
862:I Ask My Mother to Sing"

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.

Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song. ~ Li Young Lee,
863:He had given each a code and procedure to follow should any kind of disaster arise, be it a siege of the city or a revolt from within. This revolt fulfilled the second contingency. He would not have to gather everyone himself. He need only contact a couple of them and they would pass along the information through their prescribed channels. All of them would follow various prepared routes to meet in the secret passageways below the palace, created for this very purpose. Down there, they could weather the danger in the city above. They even had food stores which stayed well-preserved in the cool and dry environment. ~ Brian Godawa,
864:Queen Mahapajapati was not like other women in the palace. She frequently told Yasodhara that women possessed as much wisdom and strength as men and needed to shoulder the responsibilities of society also. While women did possess a special ability to create warmth and happiness in their families, there was no reason for them to remain only in the kitchen or in the palace. Gotami found in her daughter-in-law a woman with whom she could share true friendship, for like herself, Yasodhara was thoughtful and independent. Not only did the queen offer Yasodhara her approval, but she worked alongside Yasodhara as well. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
865:One of Wilson’s addresses was clairvoyant. At the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, he told the audience, about his League of Nations, “I have it in my heart that if we do not do this great thing now, every woman ought to weep because of the child in her arms. If she has a boy at her breast, she may be sure that when he comes to manhood, this terrible task will have to be done once more.” Without his treaty, “I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation, there will be another world war.” Wilson made this forecast exactly two decades, to the month, before the outbreak of a second world war. ~ Michael R Beschloss,
866:And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave star, bird, clock, will answer you: 'it is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will."" (He grins at his father provocatively.) ~ Eugene O Neill,
867:The Refusal
MINE is a palace fair to see,
All hung with gold and silver things,
It is more glorious than a king's,
And crownèd queens might envy me.
Ah, no, I will not let you in!
Stay rather at the gates and weep
For all the splendour that I keep,
The treasures that you cannot win.
While you desire and I refuse,
For both the palace still is here-Its turrets gold, its silver gear
Are yours to wish for--mine to use.
But if I let you in, I know
The spell would break, the palace fade,
And we stand, trembling and afraid,
Lost in the dark where chill winds blow.
~ Edith Nesbit,
868:Gerald nodded. “The people who broke into the palace looked like frail humans but they certainly were not. They ripped through us in seconds, and it was only through sheer numbers and the power of our king that we weren’t all destroyed. Just as you did, at first we thought it was wolf shifters, but then…” He trailed off, looking around the table and the room. “Can we speak privately, Your Highness?” he said in a low voice. Breanna looked affronted, getting in before Selene this time. “She isn’t queen yet.” Gerald pinned her with a look. “I know a queen when I see one.” I managed to contain the smile trying to curl my lips. ~ Jaymin Eve,
869:London

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. ~ William Blake,
870:As the next Cinderella, she would have to marry whichever fairytale prince ended up in her story.
But she couldn't help making a small, secret wish that her assigned prince might be the kind who would grab her hand and run off into the woods- build a tree house with her or lie back and watch the stars come out through the canopy.
The kind of person who would make a birdhouse for a family of robins.
She didn't care about a fancy palace and loads of dresses. Just a cozy cottage somewhere- perhaps with an attached two-story, fully-stocked shoe shed. And a guy with dirt under his fingernails and goodness in his heart. ~ Shannon Hale,
871:The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its businesses as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering’s Reichstag President’s Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany’s leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved. ~ William L Shirer,
872:The Call Of The Nightingale
Awake! awake!
Sleep no more, my gentle mate!
With your tiny tawny bill,
Wake the tuneful echo shrill,
On vale or hill;
Or in her airy rocky seat,
Let her listen and repeat
The tender ditty that you tell,
The sad lament,
The dire event,
To luckless Itys that befell.
Thence the strain
Shall rise again,
And soar amain,
Up to the lofty palace gate
Where mighty Apollo sits in state
In Jove's abode, with his ivory lyre,
Hymning aloud to the heavenly choir,
While all the gods shall join with thee
In a celestial symphony.
~ Aristophanes,
873:I am at the mercy of the moon to reveal the secrets of this kingdom. Until then, you must practice what it means to rule. I will test you, as this palace will, in its own way.”
I straightened in my seat. “On what?”
“Familiarity, you might say.” His voice was low. “All the usual aspects of ruling. I’ll test your fangs and claws and bloodlust.” He stopped to trace the inside of my wrist, and my pulse leapt to meet his touch. I scowled and grabbed my hand back. Treacherous blood. “I’ll test your eyes and ears and thoughts.”
“Not geography, then?” I asked, half joking.
“It’s useless here.” He shrugged. “You’ll see. ~ Roshani Chokshi,
874:Fury and rumors flitted to the Otherworld, that the Rani of Naraka had befouled her title with her decisions. I paid no attention to the rumors.
But Amar did.
“If this continues, they will storm our palace. I cannot let that happen. We have the sanctity of the balance to maintain.”
I flinched; something in his words felt strangely distant. “Do you believe them?”
“Of course not,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. But I caught a tremor in his fingers. “Still, we need to control the peace. We must care what they think.”
“Why? It won’t change anything.”
“It’s your”--he caught his words--“our reputation. ~ Roshani Chokshi,
875:This waltz was the music of the softly falling snow on the regal new buildings of the Ringstrasse. It was the spring tulips covering the lawns and arcades in front of the Schönbrunn Palace. It was the indomitable, majestic peaks of the Alps, the red-cheeked goatherds plucking wild edelweiss from the summits. It was the spirited laughter of Viennese students, wooing and debating in the beer gardens and cafés. It was the stately blue Danube, it was the cathedrals, it was the mountain chalets, and it was the ancient villages sprung up around church bell towers and brooks and streams. It was all of it, and it was all Franz Josef. ~ Allison Pataki,
876:Sharko and his interpreter had to hand over their cell phones—to keep them from taking pictures or recording conversations—and were ushered into an office worthy of a gallery in the Palace of Versailles. Everything was outsized. Marble floors, Canopic and Minoan vases, figural tapestries, gilded bronzes. An immense fan spun on the ceiling, stirring the viscous air. Sharko smiled to himself. National heritage: everything here belonged to the state, and not to the conceited pig who sat heavily in his chair while sucking on a local cigar. While many Cairenes carried their excess weight gracefully, this fellow wasn’t one of them. ~ Franck Thilliez,
877:In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian imperial heir, was shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Do you know the motive behind the act?

It was in retaliation for the subjugation of the Sebs in Austria.

It was not.Franz Ferdinand had stated his intention to introduce reforms favorable to the Serbs in his empire. Had he survived to ascend the throne, he would have made a revolution unnecessary. In plain terms, he was killed because he was going to give the rebels what they were shouting for. They needed a despot in the palace in order to seize it.

What's good for reform is bad for the reformers ~ Loren D Estleman,
878:Corus lay on the southern bank of the Oloron River, towers glinting in the sun. The homes of wealthy men lined the river to the north; tanners, smiths, wainwrights, carpenters, and the poor clustered on the bank to the south. The city was a richly colored tapestry: the Great Gate on Kings-bridge, the maze of the Lower City, the marketplace, the tall houses in the Merchants' and the Gentry's quarters, the gardens of the Temple district, the palace. This last was the city's crown and southern border. Beyond it, the royal forest stretched for leagues. It was not as lovely as Berat nor as colorful as Udayapur, but it was Alanna's place. ~ Tamora Pierce,
879:I don’t see any option except to stick to the plan. Split up, infiltrate, find out why they’re here. If things go bad—” “We use the backup plan,” Piper said. Jason hated the backup plan. Before they left the ship, Leo had given each of them an emergency flare the size of a birthday candle. Supposedly, if they tossed one in the air, it would shoot upward in a streak of white phosphorus, alerting the Argo II that the team was in trouble. At that point, Jason and the girls would have a few seconds to take cover before the ship’s catapults fired on their position, engulfing the palace in Greek fire and bursts of Celestial bronze shrapnel. ~ Rick Riordan,
880:The Dark Prophecy The words that memory wrought are set to fire, Ere new moon rises o’er the Devil’s Mount. The changeling lord shall face a challenge dire, Till bodies fill the Tiber beyond count. Yet southward must the sun now trace its course, Through mazes dark to lands of scorching death To find the master of the swift white horse And wrest from him the crossword speaker’s breath. To westward palace must the Lester go; Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots. The cloven guide alone the way does know, To walk the path in thine own enemy’s boots. When three are known and Tiber reached alive, ’Tis only then Apollo starts to jive. ~ Rick Riordan,
881:...I love her. I think I want to be with her."
"Be careful, Captain al-khoury. Those words mean different things to different people. Make sure they man the right things to you."
"Don't be an ass. I mean them."
"When did you mean them?"
"I mean them now. Isn't that what matters?"
A muscle worked in Khalid's jaw. "Now is easy. It's easy to say what you want in a passing moment. That's why a harem waits outside your door and the mother of your child won't have you."
He strode back toward the palace.
"Then what is the right answer, say yidi? What should I have said?" Jalal called out to the sky in exasperation.
"Always. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,
882:Splendid work, Malchus!" the high priest commended. "Oh... I'm sorry about the ear, but we'll need you at the trial as evidence that they were armed and gave resistance. Now, go and see the doctor."
Still dazed and in semi-shock, Malchus slowly removed his hand and showed Caiaphas a normal right ear, attached where it should be. "Yeshu," he said, "picked it up... put it back... healed—"
"Fool!" Caiaphas slapped him. "We have no time for your idle lies. Get hold of yourself! Now take this over to the Herodian palace." He thrust a note into the servant's hand and sent him out, muttering, "A little excitement, and the knave hallucinates. ~ Paul L Maier,
883:Peter and the deer herd ranged over the forest together, and without words, Peter told the deer about his new life at the Palace, amongst people. The scents that lingered on him told a hundred stories. His expressions and movements too, echoed foreign influences. And in Peter’s eyes, the story was told plainly. They sensed that he had grown not just physically, but in his being he was bigger, more mature.
The deer wanted the Wild Boy to return to the Enchanted Forest with them, but they were uncertain he would come. They called him by his forest name, and he replied, “Peter.” The strangeness of this intonation puzzled them. ~ Christopher Daniel Mechling,
884:Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. It was they who led me from door to door, and with them have I felt about me, searching and touching my world. It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; they showed me secret paths, they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart. They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, and, at last, to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening at the end of my journey? [1884.jpg] -- from Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore

~ Rabindranath Tagore, (101) Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs (from Gitanjali)
,
885:At the height of Russia’s tsarist empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, alcohol revenues constituted fully one-third of the entire operating budget of the Russian state—enough to cover the full costs of fielding and maintaining the largest standing army in Europe with enough left over to construct the royal family’s opulent Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.39 Even into the late twentieth century—when alcohol revenues were at best an afterthought to state finance in most European states—Soviet Russia was still reaping in the neighborhood of 170 billion rubles every year from vodka—over one-quarter of all the income to the Soviet state.40 ~ Anonymous,
886:Imam al-Ghazālī says that there are three types of people: (1) Those who worship God freely (aḥrār); they do so only for the sake of God and His pleasure; included in this type are those who are diligent in their worship to fulfill their covenant of obedience to God. (2) The second type is people who worship like merchants (tujjār), looking to get something out of their worship; for example, a person of this type prays a certain number of prayers in order to receive a known reward, such as a palace in Heaven. (3) Finally, the third type is those who worship like slaves (ʿabīd); they do it out of fear of punishment, specifically, fear of Hellfire. ~ Hamza Yusuf,
887:The city guard was the first to be taken out,” the messenger wailed. Enoch said, “Where are the Rephaim? Enmeduranki?” The messenger shook his head. “Nowhere to be found.” That did not make sense to Enoch. They would be the first to coordinate action to protect the citizens. He knew the priest-king truly cared for his people and the Rephaim did not tolerate rebellion. “The gates of the city have been locked,” said the messenger. “No one can get out. For some reason, the Nephilim have stayed away from the palace area.” The palace and its riches were always the ultimate goal in these revolutions. “Justice” usually meant theft, plunder, and destruction. ~ Brian Godawa,
888:The Rephaim leaders Thamaq and Yahipan were not at the palace or coordinating a military response to the riots because they had been the ones who betrayed the militia guard. They had been the ones to lock the city gates, and they had been the ones to instigate the mob riots of Nephilim. They had planned this entire drunken orgy of bloodlust. They had now gone off to a dark corner of the city to celebrate. Bloodshed made them delirious with carnal desire that they acted out on each other. After they had finished their depraved deed, they donned their royal robes and started back to the bonfire. Only a few streets from the scene of Nephilim atrocities, ~ Brian Godawa,
889:Summer Night
NOW sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
890:Quick check, said Christ’s emissary from his seat at the diamond table. The being on the right held the mirror up before the red-bearded fellow. The being on the left reached into the red-bearded man’s chest and, with a deft and somehow apologetic movement, extracted the man’s heart, and placed it on the scale. The being on the right checked the mirror. The being on the left checked the scale. Very good, said the Christ-emissary. We are so happy for you, said the being on the right, and I cannot adequately describe the sound of rejoicing that echoed then from across what I now understood to be a vast kingdom extending in all directions around the palace. ~ George Saunders,
891:From 'The Princess'
'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: wake thou with me.
Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now lies the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.'
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
892:Some errors and imperfections arose inevitably from the haste and pressure under which the Covenant was prepared. Nevertheless the base of the new building was set upon the living rock; and the mighty foundation stone, shaped by the innumerable chisellings of merciful men the world over and swung into position by loyal and dexterous English pulleys, will bear for all time the legend: ‘Well and truly laid by Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America.’ Who can doubt that upon and around this granite block will ultimately be built a dwelling-place and palace to which ‘all the men in all the lands’ will sooner or later resort in sure trust? ~ Winston S Churchill,
893:It was there she had conceived the extraordinary notion of learing to read,for so long her proudest accomplishment.
But no longer. Now it had to give way before her pride in being the wife of the Dragon. They entered Winchester on horseback and rode along the broad, straight avenue that led to the palace. People pressed in all around the, staring at the stern-faced warriors rank on rank behind the mighty lords whose names ran like quicksilver through the crowds.The Hawk was known in Winchester and his banner drew cheers, but Viking warlords in the king's city were something new. Heavy silence descended in the wake of the jarls of Sciringesheal and Landsende. ~ Josie Litton,
894:However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
895:Love And The Gentle Heart
Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.
Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.
Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,
Till love, at last, out of its dreaming starts.
Woman’s moved likewise by a virtuous man.
~ Dante Alighieri,
896:She shielded her eyes with a salute to the afternoon sun. “Right there, where the ground is blackened, just to the left of that cloud, that’s where the Presidential Palace stood.” Rotating in a slow circle, her index finger pressed the past into the empty panorama. The market selling Levi’s two decades before any licensed clothing store. The music college, where some years earlier a prodigy had learned to play the viola by listening to the two-hundred-year history of chamber music lilting through those open windows. She reconstructed the square for Akhmed—her voice raised every edifice from the dust, replanted every linden tree—because that was easier than apology. ~ Anthony Marra,
897:She took refuge in her newborn son. she had felt him leave her body with a sensation of relief at freeing herself from something that did not belong to her and she had been horrified at herself when she confirmed that she did not feel the slightest affection for that calf from her womb the midwife showed her in the raw, smeared with grease and blood and with the umbilical cord rolled around his neck. But in her lonliness in the palace she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but becuase of the friendship formed while raising them. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,
898:From time to time, I would gaze up at the stars after a night shift and think that they looked like a glowing desert, and I myself was a poor child abandoned in the desert... I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old... ~ Liu Cixin,
899:Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;
The firefly wakens, waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts, in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
900:Iv
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems ! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
For hand of thine ? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door ?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof !
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation ! there 's a voice within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
901:Forgive me, cousin.—Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee,
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again. Here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber maids. Oh, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.
Arms, take your last embrace. And, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death. ~ William Shakespeare,
902:To Antiochos Epiphanis
The young Antiochian said to the king:
'My heart pulses with a precious hope.
The Macedonians, Antiochos Epiphanis,
the Macedonians are back in the great fight.
Let them only win, and I'll give anyone who wants them
the lion and the horses, the coral Pan,
the elegant palace, the gardens of Tyre,
and everything else you've given me, Antiochos Epiphanis.'
The king may have been moved a little,
but then he remembered his father, his brother,
and said nothing: an eavesdropper
might repeat something they'd said.
In any case, as was to be expected,
the terrible defeat came swiftly, at Pydna.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
903:Chinese clients used to talk only about prices and vintages, not what was in the bottle. Now the important thing is not how much money you have but how you express it in wine knowledge.” Tim Weiland, former general manager of the exclusive Aman at Summer Palace in the emperor’s onetime retreat in Beijing, suggests that the image of China’s wealthy class as crass nouveau riche—mixing expensive Bordeaux with Coca-Cola, for example—is entirely out of date. “The nouveaux riches of ten years ago are now the old rich,” he says. “They have homes in Switzerland and Aspen, they’re incredibly sophisticated and well traveled—much more well traveled than I am—and they know their wines. ~ Andrew McCarthy,
904:One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many terraces, with gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque brachiate efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that may have been sardonic. She had changed - as those who take to the water change - and told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a spot her dead son had learned about, and had leaped to a realm whose wonders - destined for him as well - he had spurned with a smoking pistol. This was to be my realm, too - I could not escape it. I would never die, but would live with those who had lived since before man ever walked the earth. ~ H P Lovecraft,
905:Queen Alyss, my guards have discovered something you should see."
Her face had relaxed at the sight of him, but her brow at once contracted, her lips thinned with tension.
We've found evidence of suspicious activity in the palace," he said.
What sort of activity?"
You might want to step this way and see for youself. I apologize in advance for you having to set foot in a gaurdsman's quaters."
He led her into his rooms. The boyish portrait of Sir Justice, the fire crystals in the hearth, the elegantly arrayed table: Alyss blinked in puzzlement.
What is all this?"
My best guess, You Majesty, is that it's breakfast, but I can't be sure until we taste it. ~ Frank Beddor,
906:Septimus had no need to untie Spit Fyre as the dragon had already chewed his way through the rope. They followed Aunt Zelda and Jenna out the side door at the foot of the turret and down to the Palace Gate. Aunt Zelda kept up a brisk pace. Showing a surprising knowledge of the Castle’s narrow alleyways and sideslips, she hurtled along. Oncoming pedestrians were taken aback at the sight of the large patchwork tent approaching them at full speed. They flattened themselves against the walls, and, as the tent passed by with the Princess, the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice and a feral-looking boy with bandaged hands—not to mention a dragon—in its wake, people rubbed their eyes in disbelief. ~ Angie Sage,
907:Hadrian was fortunate that for much of his reign he had an indispensable and indefatigable supporter in the Rome city prefect, Marcius Turbo. Turbo, who replaced the equally sound Annius Verus in this crucial role, occupied it for over fifteen years. As guardian of Hadrian’s interests in Rome, Turbo impressed all who saw him as a man of the greatest generalship . . . Prefect or commander of the Praetorians. He displayed neither softness nor haughtiness in anything that he did, but lived like one of the multitude; among other things, he spent the entire day near the palace and often he would go there even before midnight, when some of the others were just beginning to sleep. ~ Elizabeth Speller,
908:Sonnet Iv
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems ! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
For hand of thine ? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door ?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof !
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation ! there 's a voice within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
909:The central police station of the governorate of Qasr el-Nil looked like the poorly maintained palace of a deceased sheikh. Protected by tall black fences, its dark facade opened onto a garden containing a mix of palm trees and police vehicles, which seemed more like grocers’ delivery vans. Only the large blue two-note revolving lights showed the difference. In front of a long staircase, six military guards—each with white short-sleeved shirt, kepi bearing the insignia of an eagle stamped with the national flag, Misr assault rifle across the shoulder—slapped the edge of their hands against their chests at the exit of a corpulent man endowed with three stars on his epaulettes. ~ Franck Thilliez,
910:I'd been surprised by the depth of emotion that was invested in that curiously archaic phrase 'great power'. What would it mean, I'd asked myself, to the lives of working journalists, salaried technocrats and so on if India achieved 'great power status'? What were the images evoked by this tag?

Now, walking through this echoing old palace, looking at the pictures in the corridors, this aspiration took on, for the first time, the contours of an imagined reality. This is what the nuclearists wanted: to sign treaties, to be pictured with the world's powerful, to hang portraits on their walls, to become ancestors. On the bomb they had pinned their hopes of bringing it all back. ~ Amitav Ghosh,
911:The Dark Prophecy
The words that memory wrought are set to fire,
Ere new moon rises o'er the Devils Mount.
The changeling lord shall face a dire,
Till bodies fill the Tiber beyond count.

Yet southward the sun now trace its course,
Through mazes dark to lands of scorching death
To find the master of the swift white horse
And wrest from him the crossword speaker's breath.

To westward palace must the Lester go;
Demeter's daughter finds her ancient roots.
The cloven guide alone the way does know,
To walk the path in thine own enemy's boots.

We three are known and Tiber reached alive,
'Tis only then Apollo starts to jive. ~ Rick Riordan,
912:When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
913:Thirrin and King Grishmak reached the entranceway and swept out of the Blood Place, followed by their escorts and Oskan. The massive double doors slammed shut after them with a deep boom. Oskan woke from his reverie with a shock – the slamming doors had only just missed him. Swinging round furiously he glared at the studded and hinged woodwork with such fierce intensity that suddenly they burst open again, crashing back against the walls inside the palace and splintering deeply.

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to be rude,” he bellowed over the heads of the courtiers cowering just inside the entrance. “Your doors seem to be slammed shut in a draught. I’d get that fixed if I were you. ~ Stuart Hill,
914:Leo's expression made him look as serious and dangerous as it was possible for a small elfin demigod to look in a little girl's overalls (a clean pair, mind you, which he'd intentionally found and put on). "I'm a son of Hephaestus, chica. I can problem-solve. This guy Lityerses tried to kill me and my friends once before. Now he's threatened Calypso? Yeah, I'll get us inside that palace. Then I'm going to find Lit and..."
"Light him up?" I suggested, surprised by pleased to find I could speak again so soon after being told to shut up. "So he's literally lit?"
Leo frowned. "I wasn't going to say that. Seemed to corny."
"When I say it," I assured him, "it's poetry. ~ Rick Riordan,
915:Sonnet: Love And The Gentle
Love and the gentle heart are one same thing,
Even as the wise man in his ditty saith.
Each, of itself, would be such life in death
As rational soul bereft of reasoning.
'Tis Nature makes them when she loves: a king
Love is, whose palace where he sojourneth
Is call'd the Heart; there draws he quiet breath
At first, with brief or longer slumbering.
Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind
Will make the eyes desire, and through the heart
Send the desiring of the eyes again;
Where often it abides so long enshrined
That Love at length out of his sleep will start.
And women feel the same for worthy men.
~ Dante Alighieri,
916:Sonnet Iv: Thou Hast Thy Calling
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drip here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there's a voice within
That weeps...as thou must sing...alone, aloof.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
917:Morning
HOW beautiful that earliest burst of light
Which floodeth from the opening eyes of morn,
When like a fairy palace dew-bedight
Bough storying over bough upspreads the thorn,
And sweet the melodies which tow’rd the corn
In tassel, or the orchard these invite,
And that most love-like ever fresh delight
Which breathes of many a bloomy thing new born—
Breathes from vine clumps in the moist dells appearing,
Rich meads and river banks. And cheering then
The voice of cattle to their pasture steering,
And the full speech of fieldward hastening men!—
My very boyhood seems renew’d again
’Mid these delights like a delight careering!
~ Charles Harpur,
918:My grief is my castle, which like an eagle's nest is built high up on the mountain peaks among the clouds; nothing can storm it. From it I fly down into reality to seize my prey; but i do not remain down there, I bring it home with me, and this prey is a picture I weave into the tapestries of my palace. There I live as one dead. I immerse everything I have experienced in a baptism of forgetfulness unto an eternal remembrance. Everything finite and accidental is forgotten and erased. Then I sit like an old man, grey-haired and thoughtful, and explain the pictures in a voice as soft as a whisper; and at my side a child sits and listens, although he remembers everything before I tell it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
919:And just as Catskin went to the ball, and Cendrillon, and Aschenputtel, so must you. The ball that will be given soon in the palace; I've heard talk of it in the kitchens. The servants say one is held each year. Have you never gone?"
She shook her head.
"Then you must go this year dressed in a fine gown as it is done in the stories."
She sat staring at him. "Me, Gillie? I don’t belong at the ball."
"As much as Cinderella did."
"But they are only stories; they’re not things that can happen." She studied him for a long time. He did not seem to be making a joke.
"It's what you dream, Thursey. You should do what you dream of doing, else where is the good in dreaming? ~ Shirley Rousseau Murphy,
920:So when do we get married?” Rio asked, nuzzling her cheek. “This Bond thing is telling me to hurry up.”
“You truly want it?”
He caught her gaze, his own softening. “Yes.”
Nella’s heart swelled with warmth, happiness. “Right away. Tomorrow, if you want.”
“Good. We’ll do it fast, then break it to your mother and father that you Bonded with a Shareem.”
“They will already know,” Nella said, laughing. “Everything that happens in the Gallery of Light is broadcast throughout the palace. The news of our Bonding will probably be all over the feeds by morning.”
“Shit,” Rio said, then he grinned. “Good thing I’ve got a great ass.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Glad you like it. ~ Allyson James,
921:No!” Kell shouted, reaching toward his brother, uselessly, desperately, but as his hand brushed the nearest person, the darkness leaped like fire from his fingers to the man’s chest. He shuddered, and then collapsed, crumbling to ash as his body struck the street stones. Before he hit the ground, the people on either side of him began to fall as well, death rippling in a wave through the crowd, silently consuming everyone. Beyond them, the buildings began to crumble too, and the bridges, and the palace, until Kell was standing alone in an empty world. And then in the silence, he heard a sound: not a sob, or a scream, but a laugh. And it took him a moment to recognize the voice.
It was his. ~ Victoria Schwab,
922:Several months after the death of his father, in December of 1787, Mozart’s primary ambition came to fruition: he obtained an appointment from Emperor Joseph II, as the emperor’s chamber composer. The position itself was not as lofty as Mozart would have hoped: it was part-time, with a salary of just over 800 florins a year. Mozart’s sole duty as chamber composer was to craft dances for the annual balls at Hofburg Palace. It is a matter of court record that the emperor offered this appointment to Mozart to discourage the musician from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects in the future, which suggests the emperor perhaps had other plans for Mozart to come, though they never materialized. ~ Hourly History,
923:Emigre In Autumn
Walking down the garden path
From the house you do not own,
Once again you think of how
Cool the autumns were at home.
Dressed as if you had just left
The courtyard of the summer palace,
Walk the boundaries of the park,
Count the steps you take each day Miles that span no distances,
Journeys in sunlight toward the dark.
Sit and watch the daylight play
Idly on the tops of leaves
Glistening overhead in autumn's
Absolute dominion.
Nothing lost by you excels
These empires of sunlight.
But even here the subtle breeze
Plots with underlying shadows.
One gust of wind and suddenly
The sun is falling from the trees.
~ Dana Gioia,
924:Hist! Something stirred in the hazel bush near her. Can I describe little Annabelle's amazement at finding in the bush a palace and a tall and dark-faced fairy before it? "I am Amunophis, the Lily of Ethiopia," said the strange creature. "And I come to the children of the Seventh Veil." She was black and regal, and her voice was soft and low and gentle like the Niger on a summer evening. Her dress was the wing of the sacred beetle, and whenever the wind stirred it played the dreamiest of music. Her feet were bound with golden sandals, and on her head was a crown of lotus leaves. "And you're a fairy?" gasped Annabelle. "Yes, I am a fairy, just as you wished me to be. I live in the tall grass many, many miles ~ Various,
925:The Princess: A Medley: Now Sleeps The Crimson
Petal
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
926:Cats," he said succinctly. "You two-legs think they're so inscrutable. They are the world's worst gossips. And they are everywhere."
Andie had to agree to that statement. The Palace was full of cats. Lean, hardworking cellar cats, energetic kitchen cats, pampered, aloof darlings of Cassiopeia's ladies- you couldn't walk ten feet without seeing a cat somewhere. The Queen didn't mind, because cats didn't demand attention the way dogs did, nor were they noisy, and as long as her maids could keep her gowns cat-hair free, she tolerated the creatures.
And as if they understood the limits of that tolerance, they kept their territorial squabbles and amorous serenades out of earshot of the Queen's Wing. ~ Mercedes Lackey,
927:Is this what I think it is?" Having returned his focus to his own crate, Kai held up a carved wooden doll adorned with bedraggled feathers and four too many eyes.
Cinder finished unloading the handgun and set it next to the others. "Don't tell me you've actually seen one of those hideous things before."
"Venezuelan dream dolls? We have some on display in the palace. They're incredibly rare." He examined its back. "What is it doing here?"
"I'm pretty sure Thorne stole it."
Kai's expression filled with clarity. "Ah, Of course." He nestled the doll back into its packaging. "He'd better plan on giving all this stuff back."
"Sure I'll give it back, Your Majesticness. For a proper finder's fee. ~ Marissa Meyer,
928:Because, Seaweed Brain, it’s the first time we really talked, you and me. I told you about my family, and…” She took out her camp necklace, strung with her dad’s college ring and a colorful clay bead for each year at Camp Half-Blood. Now there was something else on the leather cord: a red coral pendant Percy had given her when they had started dating. He’d brought it from his father’s palace at the bottom of the sea. “And,” Annabeth continued, “it reminds me how long we’ve known each other. We were twelve, Percy. Can you believe that?” “No,” he admitted. “So…you knew you liked me from that moment?” She smirked. “I hated you at first. You annoyed me. Then I tolerated you for a few years. Then—” “Okay, fine. ~ Rick Riordan,
929:Methuselah replied simply, “We should prepare the family to leave. Mother will be back before long.” “Son, we must have confirmation.” “What else do you need to be — ” A knock at the door interrupted Methuselah. Enoch opened the door to a servant messenger. The man was pale and trembling. “My lord, a riot has begun in the city. The Nephilim are on a rampage, destroying everything in sight and capturing citizens.” Enoch could not believe his ears. “They are taking hostages? What ransom can the palace possibly give them that they have not already extorted out of us?” “They have been demanding justice. Some say they are taking their anger out on the poor citizens.” “Holy Utu,” said Enoch. “My Edna is out there. ~ Brian Godawa,
930:Julian recognized that the strength of the orthodox Church rested to a great extent on the imperial discrimination in its favour. According to Ammianus, he tried to atomize the Church by ending the system:

'He ordered the priests of the different Christian sects, and their supporters to be admitted to the palace, and politely expressed his wish that, their quarrels being over, each might follow his own beliefs without hindrance or fear. He thought that freedom to argue their beliefs would simply deepen their differences, so that he would never be faced by a united common people. He found from experience that no wild beasts are as hostile to men, as Christians are to each other.'
~ Paul Johnson,
931:The people of Lancre wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’d done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them. ~ Terry Pratchett,
932:If I wanted to punish myself, I’d keep looking at your face.”
“Isn’t my face in half the pictures taped to your bunk wall?”
“Maybe I keep them there to scare away the devil.”
“Just show him your feet,” he said, going for her weak spot. She had adorable toes, but she hated that her second one was longer than the first. “He’ll run screaming back to hell with his forked tail between his legs.”
“Keep talking and I’ll send you there to meet him.”
“I’ll say hello to your demon-spawn mother while I’m there.”
“Try not to wet yourself like you did at the palace.”
“Hey!” He drew back an inch. That was hitting below the belt. “I was only four when that happened, and your mom was legitimately scary. ~ Melissa Landers,
933:ONE QUIET AFTERNOON when the other Grisha had ventured out of Os Alta, Genya convinced me to sneak into the Grand Palace, and we spent hours looking through the clothes and shoes in the Queen’s dressing room. Genya insisted that I try on a pale pink silk gown studded with riverpearls, and when she laced me up in it and stuck me in front of one of the giant golden mirrors, I had to look twice. I’d learned to avoid mirrors. They never seemed to show me what I wanted to see. But the girl standing next to Genya in the glass was a stranger. She had rosy cheeks and shiny hair and … a shape. I could have stared at her for hours. I suddenly wished good old Mikhael could see me. “Sticks” indeed, I thought smugly. Genya ~ Leigh Bardugo,
934:At the sound of his voice, the Princess of Bengal suddenly grew calm, and an expression of joy overspread her face, such as only comes when what we wish for most and expect the least suddenly happens to us. For some time she was too enchanted to speak, and Prince Firouz Schah took advantage of her silence to explain to her all that had occurred, his despair at watching her disappear before his very eyes, the oath he had sworn to follow her over the world, and his rapture at finally discovering her in the palace at Cashmere. When he had finished, he begged in his turn that the princess would tell him how she had come there, so that he might the better devise some means of rescuing her from the tyranny of the Sultan. It ~ Anonymous,
935:Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads. ~ Charles Dickens,
936:Then I wonder who you are, you, this figure strolling through all my lingering visions of slow landscapes, ancient interiors and lavish ceremonies of silence. In all my dreams you either appear as a dream or else accompany me like a false reality. With you I visit regions that are perhaps dreams of yours, lands that are perhaps embodiments of absence and cruelty, your essential body fashioned into a quiet plain or a mountain with a chilling profile in the garden of some hidden palace. Perhaps my only dream is you, perhaps when I press my face to yours I will read in your eyes those impossible landscapes, those false tediums, those feelings that inhabit the gloom of my wearinesses and the grottoes of my disquiets. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
937:In that day every trial borne in patience will be pleasing and the voice of iniquity will be stilled; the devout will be glad; the irreligious will mourn; and the mortified body will rejoice far more than if it had been pampered with every pleasure. Then the cheap garment will shine with splendor and the rich one become faded and worn; the poor cottage will be more praised than the gilded palace. In that day persevering patience will count more than all the power in this world; simple obedience will be exalted above all worldly cleverness; a good and clean conscience will gladden the heart of man far more than the philosophy of the learned; and contempt for riches will be of more weight than every treasure on earth. ~ Thomas Kempis,
938:The luxury of the caliphs, so useless to their private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest had been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet; and, after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The Abbassides were impoverished by the multitude of their wants and their contempt of œconomy. Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their leisure, their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by pomp and pleasure; the rewards of valour were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was encumbered by the luxury of the palace. ~ Edward Gibbon,
939:On The Cliffs, Newport
Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er
Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom
A savor steals from linden trees in bloom
And gardens ranged at many a palace door.
Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour
Their pale enchantment down the dim coast-line,
Terrace and lawn, trim hedge and flowering vine,
Crown with fair culture all the sounding shore.
How sweet, to such a place, on such a night,
From halls with beauty and festival a-glare,
To come distract and, stretched on the cool turf,
Yield to some fond, improbable delight,
While the moon, reddening, sinks, and all the air
Sighs with the muffled tumult of the surf!
~ Alan Seeger,
940:Before working with Trump, Manafort had been Yanukovych’s election strategist. There was something quite Trump-ish about his former client, not least his $75 million palace — with its golden chandeliers and Fabergé eggs and personalized cognac bottles (the label had a little photograph of Yanukovych), his shiny grand pianos and sweeping gold-trimmed staircases. And then there was his private ostrich zoo. The palace had been constructed in secret, and had come as a huge surprise to the Ukrainian people, given that Yanukovych spent much of his career apparently earning a civil servant’s salary of $24,000 a year. Most Ukrainians knew of its existence only after Yanukovych was ousted from office in 2014 and fled to Russia. In ~ Jon Ronson,
941:Francis Ii, King Of Naples
Written after reading Trevelyan's "Garibaldi and the making of Italy"
Poor foolish monarch, vacillating, vain,
Decaying victim of a race of kings,
Swift Destiny shook out her purple wings
And caught him in their shadow; not again
Could furtive plotting smear another stain
Across his tarnished honour. Smoulderings
Of sacrificial fires burst their rings
And blotted out in smoke his lost domain.
Bereft of courtiers, only with his queen,
From empty palace down to empty quay.
No challenge screamed from hostile carabine.
A single vessel waited, shadowy;
All night she ploughed her solitary way
Beneath the stars, and through a tranquil sea.
~ Amy Lowell,
942:Sonnet 04 - Thou Hast Thy Calling To Some PalaceFloor
IV
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there 's a voice within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
943:A tall, thin, middle-aged man with a long, gray Jovian beard stood outside the Hermitage Museum with an expression of absolute shattered regret.
Tatiana instantly reacted to his face. What could make a man look this way? He was standing next to the back of a military truck, watching young men carry wooden crates down the ramp from the Winter Palace. It was these crates the man looked at with such profound heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love.
"Who is that man?" she asked, tremendously affected by his expression.
"The curator of the Hermitage."
"Why is he looking at the crates that way?"
Alexander said, "They are his life's sole passion. He doesn't know if he is ever going to see them again. ~ Paullina Simons,
944:The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Largely credited to Philo of Byzantium. But since it was compiled in the third century BC, I’m guessing he called it the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. And even back then it pissed people off.” “Why?” “Because Philo did his research at the largest library of the time in Alexandria. And some people got the notion that the fix was in. At the top of the list, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt—no argument there—and at the bottom, the lighthouse at Alexandria. The early Persians are like, ‘I thought we outgrew this hometown bullshit in the Neolithic. I mean, you can’t be serious. That lighthouse? When we’ve got the Apadana Palace of Persepolis? What are we, fucking Mesopotamians over here? ~ Tim Dorsey,
945:Their love was equal; on the hills they roamed together, and together they would go back to their cave; and this time too they went into the Lapith's palace side by side and side by side were fighting in the fray. A javelin (no knowing from whose hand) came from the left and wounded Cyllarus, landing below the place where the chest joins neck--slight wound, but when the point was pulled away, cold grew his damaged heart and cold his limbs. Hylonome embraced him as he died, caressed the wound and, putting lips to lips, she tried to stay his spirit as it fled. And when she saw him lifeless, she moaned words that in that uproar failed to reach my ears; and fell upon the spear that pierced her love, and, dying, held her husband in her arms. ~ Ovid,
946:And it has stayed there, calmly in its spot, growing slowly, producing leaves, losing leaves, producing more, as those mammoths became extinct, as Homer wrote The Odyssey, as Cleopatra reigned, as Jesus was nailed to a cross, as Siddhartha Gautama left his palace to weep for his suffering subjects, as the Roman Empire declined and fell, as Carthage was captured, as water buffalo were domesticated in China, as the Incas built cities, as I leaned over the well with Rose, as America fought with itself, as world wars happened, as Facebook was invented, as millions of humans and other animals lived and fought and procreated and went, bewildered, to their fast graves, the tree had always been the tree. That was the familiar lesson of time. ~ Matt Haig,
947:Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. ~ C S Lewis,
948:Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds.  Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen’s plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last. From the dim woods on either bank, Night’s ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear-guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. ~ Jerome K Jerome,
949:Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. ~ C S Lewis,
950:Creativity is, by its nature, fitful and inconstant, easily upset by constraint, foreboding, insecurity, external pressure. Any great preoccupation with the problems of ensuring animal survival exhausts the energies and disturbs the receptivity of the sensitive mind. Such creativity as was first achieved in the city came about largely through an arrogation of the economic means of production and distribution by a small minority, attached to the temple and the palace. In the epic of creation Marduk remarks of man: "Let him be burdened with the toil of the gods that they may freely breathe." Shall we err greatly if we translate this as: "Let our subjects be burdened with daily toil that the king and the priesthood may freely breathe"? ~ Lewis Mumford,
951:Not since Mr. Kaiser,” they would say, as if the construction of the Hawaiian Village Hotel on a few acres of reclaimed tidal flat near Fort De Russy had in one swing of the builder’s crane wiped out their childhoods and their parents’ childhoods, blighted forever some subtropical cherry orchard where every night in the soft blur of memory the table was set for forty-eight in case someone dropped by; as if Henry Kaiser had personally condemned them to live out their lives in California exile among only their token mementos, the calabashes and the carved palace chairs and the flat silver for forty-eight and the diamond that had been Queen Liliuokalani’s and the heavy linens embroidered on all the long golden afternoons that were no more. ~ Joan Didion,
952:Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last.

From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. ~ Jerome K Jerome,
953:Behind its outer walls, the Temple of Inanna was another world. When they entered the bronze gates from the dusty barren city streets, patrons became submerged in a world of sensuality, a garden of earthly delights. Lush flora filled the open courtyard: exotic fruit trees with dates, figs, and pomegranates. Tamarisk and palm trees rose above the floor in a canopy of leaves. The complex artificial irrigation channels of the city watered this botanical paradise of flowers and vegetation. A wisp of incense mixed with perfume wafted through the air, teasing the nostrils. The temple and palace gardens replicated a memory of Eden. It was as if gods and kings sought to retain their ancestral past even as they perverted it into its mirror opposite. ~ Brian Godawa,
954:The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,—the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince ~ Victor Hugo,
955:When circumstances become difficult and you are in the furnace of testing, remain where God has put you until He tells you to move. Faith moves in the direction of peace and hope, but unbelief moves in the direction of restlessness and fear. “He that believeth shall not make haste” (Isa. 28:16). In times of testing, the important question is not “How can I get out of this?” but “What can I get out of this?” (James 1:1–12). God is at work to build your faith. God alone is in control of circumstances. You are safer in a famine in His will than in a palace out of His will. It has well been said, “The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.” Abraham failed the test of circumstances and turned from the will of God. ~ Warren W Wiersbe,
956:The Luxembourg is within five minutes’ walk of the rue Notre Dame des Champs, and there he sat under the shadow of a winged god, and there he had sat for an hour, poking holes in the dust and watching the steps which lead from the northern terrace to the fountain. The sun hung, a purple globe, above the misty hills of Meudon. Long streamers of clouds touched with rose swept low on the western sky, and the dome of the distant Invalides burned like an opal through the haze. Behind the Palace the smoke from a high chimney mounted straight into the air, purple until it crossed the sun, where it changed to a bar of smouldering fire. High above the darkening foliage of the chestnuts the twin towers of St. Sulpice rose, an ever-deepening silhouette. ~ Robert W Chambers,
957:As if the sky itself were listening, the dome overhead darkened, and three enormous screens lit up against the black backdrop.
"People of Luna," said a feminine voice, "please give your full attention now to this mandatory broadcast, live from Artemisia Palace. The royal coronation ceremony is about to begin."
A wicked grin pulled at Winter's lips. She stepped away from Jacin, faced the people, and raised her arms to her sides. "People of Luna," she said, echoing the broadcast and pulling the crowd's attention away from the dome, "please give your full attention now to the true heir to the Lunar throne, Princess Selene, live from your very own sector." Her eyes flashed as she swooped and arm toward Cinder. "Our revolution is about to begin. ~ Marissa Meyer,
958:Block City

What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.

Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A sort of a tower on top of it all,
And steps coming down in an orderly way
To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.

This one is sailing and that one is moored:
Hark to the song of the sailors on board!
And see on the steps of my palace, the kings
Coming and going with presents and things! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
959:With a thousand thousand eyes she stared out through the Cloud, and flexed a thousand thousand limbs. There was pain, yes, she’d forgotten the fullness of the pain—but there was joy, too, far worse. She wanted the pain to stop, and it did—Groundswell just reached inside her, obedient to her will, and turned the pain receptors off. Its systems embraced her, planet-shattering vast, obedient to her will. It needed her to want things. It needed her will to shape its own, to give its weaponized hulk frame and purpose. She was a girl in a palace, empty and immense, and when she shouted, invisible hands answered her every command. But no matter how she ran, she never reached the walls, and if she demanded a door, it only opened into the palace once again. ~ Max Gladstone,
960:Love is all very well; but there must be something else to go with it. The useless must be mingled with happiness. Happiness is only the necessary. Season that enormously with the superfluous for me. A palace and her heart. Her heart and the Louvre. Her heart and the grand waterworks of Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a duchess. Fetch me Phyllis crowned with corn-flowers, and add a hundred thousand francs income. Open for me a bucolic perspective as far as you can see, beneath a marble colonnade. I consent to the bucolic and also to the fairy spectacle of marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry bread. One eats, but one does not dine. I want the superfluous, the useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose. ~ Victor Hugo,
961:Her profession? Ah! as to that, English readers, try not to be too severe. Russia is a great, but hard mistress, who demands of all her children work according to their means and ability. The word spy has an ugly meaning with us, we loathe it, if applied to a man, and cannot even conceive it as an attribute to a young and gifted woman. But in Russia, where all round an absolute monarchy a web of intrigue and conspiracy is woven, where blows are aimed and dealt at the head of the State from every quarter of the Empire, from every class of society, and always from the dark, these blows must be met with counter-blows of the same nature, secret, swift, and dark. An enemy, hidden behind every pillar of a palace, can but be fought by means as secret as his own. ~ Emmuska Orczy,
962:And with that, we resume our trek.

It takes an annoyingly long time to get to the palace. I mean, the walk is scenic and all, the forest lush with life, the ground sprinkled with glittering pools and rippling creeks, and blah, blah, blah—lots of pretty shit. But it’s still a stupidly long walk, and now that Des and I have five billion guards hemming us in, our conversation is next to non-existent.

To be fair, I have been entertained. Des has spent most of the last hour plaiting one guard’s hair into at least fifty braids (he hasn’t yet noticed) and moving branches into another guard’s way.

“Mother fucking trees,” the fairy mutters under his breath. “I swear they’re moving in my way.”

“Lay off the spirits, Sythus,” another says. ~ Laura Thalassa,
963:was possessed of clear judgement and great discernment. She committed her European experiences to paper in 1942 under the title Athene Palace, the name then of today’s Bucharest Hilton, where she lived and worked for seven months. For years Rumania had had its own violent fascist movement, the Iron Guard. From 1938 the country was ruled by strict anti-Semitic legislation. At the same time, King Carol II was trying to make himself Rumania’s dictator, as Miklós Horthy had done in Hungary in 1920 and Ioannis Metaxas in Greece in 1936. Since spring 1940, Bucharest had been run by a coalition of fascists and generals led by Marshal Ion Antonescu. In September, Germany more or less took over the country, which was crucially important for the Reich’s energy supplies. ~ Geert Mak,
964:Arin remmembered seeing her hand in Javelin’s mane, curling into the coarse strands. This made him remember the almost freakish lenghth between her littlest finger and thumb as her hand spanned piano keys. The black star of the birth-mark. He saw her again in the imperial palace. Her music room. He’d seen that room only once. About a month ago, right before Firstsummer. Her blue sleeves were fastened at the wrist.
Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.
Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him. A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason. She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
965:Hearing The Early Oriole
When the sun rose I was still lying in bed;
An early oriole sang on the roof of my house.
For a moment I thought of the Royal Park at dawn
When the Birds of Spring greeted their Lord from his trees.
I remember the days when I served before the Throne
Pencil in hand, on duty at the Ch'eng-ming;
At the height of spring, when I paused an instant from work,
Morning and evening, was this the voice I heard?
Now in my exile the oriole sings again
In the dreary stillness of Hsün-yang town ...
The bird's note cannot really have changed;
All the difference lies in the listener's heart.
If he could but forget that he lives at the World's end,
The bird would sing as it sang in the Palace of old.
~ Bai Juyi,
966:The Dragons of the Air
There is a circle of malignant hell
Not given to the Florentine to know.
It is not hidden in the earth below,
But far aloft its fateful legions dwell.
They are not human, though from earth they riseThey are of him, the Prince who rules the Air
The quiver of his torments on they bearThe cities cower and fend them from the skies!
The azure and the grey of heaven they snatch
To be their banner; masked in cloud they sail,
The levin-bolts they break in murderous hailUp flames the palace roof, the cottage thatch.
They are not human! They renounce their kind,
They join them with the arch antagonist....
O world that kindly yet remains- resist!
Find means the dragons of the air to bind!
~ Edith Matilda Thomas,
967:You know the real reason we celebrate Christmas, don't you? I mean, beyond Santa Claus and jungle bells and Christmas trees?

You mean because Jesus was born? she asked.

Yes... but did you ever think how Jesus was born? I mean, have you considered how it was such a humble birth, in a small barn...how he was laid in a hay trough...how the Son if almighty God humbled himself to be born in such lowly conditions? Have you thought about it like that? Jesus could have been born in a fine palace. After all, he was the Son of God. But for some reason God chose humble beginnings for His son. Do you ever wonder why? ... I think because God wanted to show that his love could reach to everyone, no matter who they were, from the poorest of poor to great kings. ~ Melody Carlson,
968:In Malkus, the lowest of the Sephiros, the sphere of the physical world of matter, wherein incarnate the exiled Neschamos from the Divine Palace, there abides the Shechinah, the spiritual Presence of Ain Soph as a heritage to mankind and an ever-present reminder of spiritual verities. That is why there is written “ Keser is in Malkus, and Malkus is in Keser, though after another manner The Zohar would imply that the real Shechinah, the real Divine Presence, is allocated to Binah whence it never descends, but that the Shechinah in Malkus is an eidolon or Daughter of the Great Supernal Mother. Isaac Myer suggests that : “ It is considered by Qabalists as the executive energy or power of Binah, the Holy Spirit or the Upper Mother.” ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegrantes,
969:Amongst the grandeur of Hua Shan
I climb to the Flower Peak,
and fancy I see fairies and immortals
carrying lotus in their
sacred white hands, robes flowing
they fly filling the sky with colour
as they rise to the palace of heaven,
inviting me to go to the cloud stage
and see Wei Shu-ching, guardian angel
of Hua Shan; so dreamily I go with them
riding to the sky on the back
of wild geese which call as they fly,
but when we look below at Loyang,
not so clear because of the mist,
everywhere could be seen looting
armies, which took Loyang, creating
chaos and madness with blood
flowing everywhere; like animals of prey
rebel army men made into officials
with caps and robes to match.
~ Li Bai, Climbing West of Lotus Flower Peak
,
970:At length Isis discovered that the chest had floated to the coast of Byblos. There it had lodged in the branches of a tree, which in a short time miraculously grew up around the box. This so amazed the king of that country that he ordered the tree to be cut down and a pillar made from its trunk to support the roof of his palace. Isis, visiting Byblos, recovered the body of her husband [Osiris], but it was again stolen by Typhon, who cut it into fourteen parts, which he scattered all over the earth. Isis, in despair, began gathering up the severed remains of her husband, but found only thirteen pieces. The fourteenth part (the phallus) she reproduced in gold, for the original had fallen into the river Nile and had been swallowed by a fish. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages,
971:The Moon Was But A Chin Of Gold
737
The Moon was but a Chin of Gold
A Night or two ago—
And now she turns Her perfect Face
Upon the World below—
Her Forehead is of Amplest Blonde—
Her Cheek—a Beryl hewn—
Her Eye unto the Summer Dew
The likest I have known—
Her Lips of Amber never part—
But what must be the smile
Upon Her Friend she could confer
Were such Her Silver Will—
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest Star—
For Certainty She take Her Way
Beside Your Palace Door—
Her Bonnet is the Firmament—
The Universe—Her Shoe—
The Stars—the Trinkets at Her Belt—
Her Dimities—of Blue—
~ Emily Dickinson,
972:He watched Attolia out of the corner of his eye. She was still cool, like a breath of winter in the warm evening air, but in the last few days he had begun to sense a subtle humor in her chilly words. When Gen had complained earlier that evening that Petrus, the palace physician, should stop fussing over him like a worried old woman, Attolia had asked, archly,"And me as well?"
"When you stop fussing," Gen had said, slipping to his knees beside her couch, "I will sleep with two knives under my pillow."
Allolia had looked down at him and said sharply, "Don't be ridiculous."
Only when Eugenides laughed had Sounis realized her implication: If she ever turned against Eugenides, a second knife wouldn't save him. He almost swallowed the olive in his mouth unchewed. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
973:The Israelites were as shocked as the inhabitants of the city. They did not anticipate such a spectacular act of their god. Their faith was amazingly weak. But the commanders sallied forth with charges and the forces stormed the fort. They climbed over the rocky rubble and broke into the city fighting the stunned soldiers that had not been crushed in the earthquake. It would be over quickly.   Caleb and Salmon swiftly made their way to the north of the city where Rahab’s house was. They had prayed that hers was not a part of the wall that had collapsed.   Othniel, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Jahaz by killing King Sihon, had a penchant for taking out leaders, so he led a platoon of men toward the crumbled palace walls to seek out the commander of the fort. ~ Brian Godawa,
974:In a few minutes, she stood outside Friedrich’s room. She had never been inside before—mostly because she had no reason to. He rarely used his rooms in the royal palace, and after they were married, they would have joint quarters. Now, however, Cinderella had a sneaking suspicion. “Your Grace!” a lady’s maid shrieked when Cinderella pushed the doors open. “Yes, it is as I thought.” She entered the room, although she barely had enough space to walk in. “Your Grace, this might be a little unseemly,” Margrit said. Cinderella pointed to a beautiful writing desk. “That was mine,” she announced. “And I would recognize this rug anywhere. That horse statue used to stand in my parlor—it’s a sculpture of a riding horse I used to have. The tapestry, bookshelf, wall hangings, everything is… ~ K M Shea,
975:The two Spartan soldiers escorting Milo and me were puzzled by my intention to get him a cloak, and they didn’t hesitate to say what they thought of the matter.
“A cloak?” the taller one remarked from behind me. “In this weather? That poor lad’s going to sweat away to nothing!”
“You know how cold the nights can get back home,” I said. “He doesn’t have to wear it now.
“Then I can’t say it makes sense for him to get it now, Lady Helen,” the soldier ahead of us put in. “The palace women make better cloth than any of this foreign stuff. A Spartan cloak for Spartan weather, that’s what I say.”
“The palace women aren’t here, and who knows what the weather’s going to be like on the road home?” I pointed out. “I want Milo to be prepared. ~ Esther M Friesner,
976:THE DATE WAS APRIL 14, 1912, a sinister day in maritime history, but of course the man in suite 63–65, shelter deck C, did not yet know it. What he did know was that his foot hurt badly, more than he had expected. He was sixty-five years old and had become a large man. His hair had turned gray, his mustache nearly white, but his eyes were as blue as ever, bluer at this instant by proximity to the sea. His foot had forced him to delay the voyage, and now it kept him anchored in his suite while the other first-class passengers, his wife among them, did what he would have loved to do, which was to explore the ship’s more exotic precincts. The man loved the opulence of the ship, just as he loved Pullman Palace cars and giant fireplaces, but his foot problem tempered his enjoyment. ~ Erik Larson,
977:The Father of Winter says tells Ista,
"...For my great-souled child is very late, and lost upon his road. My calling voice cannot reach him. He cannot see the light in my window, for he is sundered from me, blind and deaf and stumbling, with none to take his hand and guide him. Yet you may touch him, in his darkness. And I may touch you, in yours. Then take you this thread to draw him through the maze, where I cannot go."

Later, Ista delivers the message,

"Your Father calls you to His Court. You need not pack; you go garbed in glory as you stand. He waits eagerly by His palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at His high table by His side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved. In this I speak true. Bend your head. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
978:But you are crazy.”

“I know.” She lifted a small box from the basket. “Do you know how I know?”

Scarlet didn't answer.

“Because the palace walls have been bleeding for years, and no one else sees it.” She shrugged, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to say. “No one believes me, but in some corridors, the blood has gotten so thick there's nowhere safe to step. When I have to pass through those places, I leave a trail of bloody footprints for the rest of the day, and then I worry that the queen's soldiers will follow the scent and eat me up while I'm sleeping. Some nights I don't sleep very well.” Her voice dropped to a haunted whisper, her eyes taking on a brittle luminescence. “But if the blood was real, the servants would clean it up. Don't you think? ~ Marissa Meyer,
979:Rumania ceded large parts of its territory to Hungary, King Carol abdicated, real power was transferred to Antonescu and the Iron Guard was given free rein and organised one bloody pogrom after another. In June 1941, Rumania committed itself completely by joining Germany’s foray into the Soviet Union. In 1940, however, the country was still neutral, and in June all of Europe was sitting side by side in the lobby of the Athene Palace, as though nothing untoward was going on: the old Rumanian dignitaries, the leaders of the new radical right-wing government, the American journalists and diplomats, the despondent French ambassador. The ‘elegantly bored’ British – diplomats, oil men, journalists and intelligence officers – had their own table, the young Rumanian nobility sat at the bar, ~ Geert Mak,
980:but I can say just as surely that this minute, in a northern-California valley, I can taste-smell-hear-see and feel between my teeth the potato chips I ate slowly one November afternoon in 1936, in the bar of the Lausanne Palace. They were uneven in both thickness and color, probably made by a new apprentice in the hotel kitchen, and almost surely they smelled faintly of either chicken or fish, for that was always the case there. They were a little too salty, to encourage me to drink. They were ineffable. I am still nourished by them. That is probably why I can be so firm about not eating my way through barrels, tunnels, mountains more of them here in the land where they hang like square cellophane fruit on wire trees in all grocery stores, to tempt me sharply every time I pass them. ~ M F K Fisher,
981:The Greeks’ Christian successors rejected the idea that the universe is governed by indifferent natural law. They also rejected the idea that humans do not hold a privileged place within that universe. And though the medieval period had no single coherent philosophical system, a common theme was that the universe is God’s dollhouse, and religion a far worthier study than the phenomena of nature. Indeed, in 1277 Bishop Tempier of Paris, acting on the instructions of Pope John XXI, published a list of 219 errors or heresies that were to be condemned. Among the heresies was the idea that nature follows laws, because this conflicts with God’s omnipotence. Interestingly, Pope John was killed by the effects of the law of gravity a few months later when the roof of his palace fell in on him. ~ Stephen Hawking,
982:In running over the pages of our history for seven hundred years, we shall scarcely find a single great event which has not promoted equality of condition. The Crusades and the English wars decimated the nobles and divided their possessions: the municipal corporations introduced democratic liberty into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the invention of fire-arms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of battle; the art of printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post-office brought knowledge alike to the door of the cottage and to the gate of the palace; and Protestantism proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to heaven. The discovery of America opened a thousand new paths to fortune, and led obscure adventurers to wealth and power. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,
983:For instance, in one play the palace of Lord Hosokawa, in which was preserved the celebrated painting of Dharuma by Sesson, suddenly takes fire through the negligence of the samurai in charge. Resolved at all hazards to rescue the precious painting, he rushes into the burning building and seizes the kakemono, only to find all means of exit cut off by the flames. Thinking only of the picture, he slashes open his body with his sword, wraps his torn sleeve about the Sesson and plunges it into the gaping wound. The fire is at last extinguished. Among the smoking embers is found a half- consumed corpse, within which reposes the treasure uninjured by the fire. Horrible as such tales are, they illustrate the great value that we set upon a masterpiece, as well as the devotion of a trusted samurai. ~ Kakuz Okakura,
984:Do you train Fabrikators at the Little Palace?” asked Wylan.
Jesper scowled. Why did he have to go and start that?
“Of course. There’s a school on the palace grounds.”
“What if a student were older?” said Wylan, still pushing.
“A Grisha can be taught at any age,” said Genya. “Alina Starkov didn’t discover her power until she was seventeen years old, and she… she was one of the most powerful Grisha who ever lived.” Genya pushed at Wylan’s left nostril. “It’s easier when you’re younger, but so is everything. Children learn languages more easily. They learn mathematics more easily.”
“And they’re unafraid,” said Wylan quietly. “It’s other people who teach them their limits.” Wylan’s eyes met Jesper’s over Genya’s shoulder, and as if he was challenging both Jesper and himself. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
985:Sometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup d’etat by the second rank—troupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth men—I dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Minister’s Humber—comedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stooges— —and—march— —an army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-handmen—storming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet-mallet—stand-ins ~ Tom Stoppard,
986:I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. ~ C S Lewis,
987:That’s what Hringkälla celebrates,” continued Brum. “And every year if there are worthy initiates, the drüskelle gather at the sacred ash, where they may once more hear the Voice of God.” Djel says you’re a fanatic, drunk on your own power. Come back next year. “People forget this is a holy night,” Brum muttered. “They come to the palace to drink and dance and fornicate.” Nina had to bite her tongue. Given Brum’s interest in the dip of her neckline, she doubted his thoughts were particularly holy. “Are those things so very bad?” she asked teasingly. Brum smiled and squeezed her arm. “Not in moderation.” “Moderation isn’t one of my specialties.” “I can see that,” he said. “I like the look of a woman who enjoys herself.” I’d enjoy choking you slowly, she thought as she ran her fingers over his arm. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
988:More than the choking heat, more than the blinding flames that rise up into the night sky, more than the endlessly leaping colours that change shape with every moment, more than all of these is the transforming power of fire. Fire takes solid wooden beams and reduces them to charcoal. It licks at everything with a scarlet tongue and leaves it black. It spreads like the folds of a golden robe over human bodies and what is left is gray and chalky: ash, blown up and up by every breath of wind only to fall like dust on the ground. When it is burning most fiercely, it seems that it might go on forever and devour everything in its path. It does not cower and withdraw in front of princes. Palace and hovel alike are good fuel and nothing more. It is unstoppable. And when it has moved, what remains is desolation. ~ Ad le Geras,
989:Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell.

Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,the domain
Of Cynthia,the wide palace of the sun,
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,
The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters:Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness.
Blue! gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers
Forget-me-not,the blue-bell,and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ John Keats, Answer To A Sonnet By J.H.Reynolds
,
990:Someone, he added, ought to draw up a catalogue of types of buildings listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less then normal size – the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, lockkeepers's lodge, the pavilion for viewing the landscape, the children's bothy in the garden – are those that offer us at least a semblance of peace, whereas no one in his right mind could truthfully say that he liked a vast edifice such as the Palace of Justice in the old Gallows Hill in Brussels. At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins. ~ W G Sebald,
991:As for the scenes we shared in the Piazza Unita that day in 1897, I can hear the music still, but all the rest is phantom. The last passenger liner sailed long ago. The schooners, steamboats and barges have disappeared. No tram has crossed the piazza for years. The Caffe Flora changed its name to Nazionale when the opportunity arose, and is now defunct. The Governor's Palace is now only the Palace of the Prefect and the Lloyd Austriaco headquarters, having metamorphosed into Lloyd Triestino when the Austrians left, are now government offices: wistfully the marble tritons blow their their horns, regretfully Neptune and Mercury linger upon their entablatures. Those silken and epauletted passengers, with all they represented, have vanished from the face of Europe, and I am left all alone listening to the band. ~ Jan Morris,
992:Their champion, Goliath of Gath,” said Shammah. Goliath continued his rant, “I DEFY THE RANKS OF ISRAEL THIS DAY! CHOOSE FOR YOURSELVES A CHAMPION TO FIGHT ME! IF HE WINS, THE PHILISTINES WILL BE YOUR SERVANTS. IF I WIN, YOU WILL BE OUR SERVANTS!” Abinadab muttered, “He has taunted us these forty days with the same challenge.” “Forty days?” said David. How had he failed to hear about it, he wondered. “Is there no one to stand up to this blasphemer?” Shammah snickered, “Easy for you to say from the comfort of your palace luxury.” Abinadab threw in, “The man who kills him, the king will laud with tax exemption and great riches.” The next words that came from Abinadab struck David in the chest like an iron rod. “The king has even offered up the hand of one of his daughters to the soul who triumphs over this titan. ~ Brian Godawa,
993:According to an ancient Chinese legend, one day in the year 240 B.C., Princess Si Ling-chi was sitting under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her teacup. When she tried to remove it, she noticed that the cocoon had begun to unravel in the hot liquid. She handed the loose end to her maidservant and told her to walk. The servant went out of the princess's chamber, and into the palace courtyard, and through the palace gates, and out of the Forbidden City, and into the countryside a half mile away before the cocoon ran out. (In the West, this legend would slowly mutate over three millennia, until it became the story of a physicist and an apple. Either way, the meanings are the same: great discoveries, whether of silk or of gravity, are always windfalls. They happen to people loafing under trees.) ~ Jeffrey Eugenides,
994:I had meant my promise to George. I had said that I was, before anything else, a Boleyn and a Howard through and through; but now, sitting in th shadowy room, looking out over the gray slates of the city, and up at the dark clouds leaning on the roof of Westminster Palace, I suddenly realized that George was wrong, and that my family was wrong, and that I had been wrong-- for all my life. I was not a Howard before anything else. Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love, I didn't want the rewards for which Anne had surrendered her youth. I didn' want the arid glamour of George's life, I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire. ~ Philippa Gregory,
995:Be Drunken, Always. That is the point; nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green grass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkenness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Be Drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. ~ Charles Baudelaire,
996:O Fish
The city is asleep.
Midnight. The enormous sky is full of stars.
Only a bright fish is coming out of the mirror.
My eyes see only him.
With silence unbroken my eyes say:
O fish, are you Harun ar-Rashid, in your nightgown
Are you wandering- from the palace to the thatched cottage,
Watching how the wheel of stars is whirling round and round?
O fish, where are you going?
The city is asleep.
Only a born-blind singer along with thieves, harlots, and police is awake,
And a strange silent fish. O moving fish.
My eyes see only him.
With silence unbroken my eyes say:
O fish, are you the very eyes of mine?
Midnight. The wheel of nature is whirling round and round on the waterfall.
O fish, where are you going?
Translation by S M Maniruzzaman
~ Abdul Mannan Syed,
997:Sea Song
A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mastAnd bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While, like the eagle free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.
'O for a soft and gentle mind!'
I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the snoring breeze
And white waves heaving highAnd white waves heaving high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free;
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.
There's tempest in yon hornèd moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;
And hark the music, mariners!
The wind is piping loudThe wind is piping loud, my boys,
The lightning flashing free;
While the hollow oak our palace is,
Our heritage the sea.
~ Allan Cunningham,
998:Sometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup d’etat by the second rank—troupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth men—I dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Minister’s Humber—comedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stooges— —and—march— —an army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-handmen—storming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet-mallet—stand-ins of the world stand up!— ~ Tom Stoppard,
999:What led Germany to this strange pass was itself strange. After the war, many were happy to wipe away the old order and rid themselves of the kaiser. But when the old monarch at last left the palace, the people who had clamored for his exit were suddenly lost. They found themselves in the absurd position of the dog who, having caught the car he was so frantically chasing, has no idea what to do with it-- so he looks about guiltily and then slinks away. Germany had no history of democracy and no idea how it worked, so the country broke apart into a riot of factions, with each faction blaming the others for everything that went wrong. This much they knew: under the kaiser there had been law and order and structure; now there was chaos. The kaiser had been the symbol of the nation; now there were only petty politicians. ~ Eric Metaxas,
1000:Suppose that the people that they speak of now as 'superstitious' and 'half-savages' should turn out to be in the right, and very wise, while we are all wrong and great fools! It would be something like the man who lived in the Bright Palace. The Palace had a hundred and one doors. A hundred of them opened into gardens of delight, pleasure-houses, beautiful bowers, wonderful countries, fairy seas, caves of gold and hills of diamonds, into all the most splendid places. But one door led into a cesspool, and that was the only door that the man ever opened. It may be that his sons and his grandsons have been opening that one door ever since, till they have forgotten that there are any others, so if anyone dares to speak of the ways to the garden of delight or the hills of gold he is called a madman, or a very wicked person. ~ Arthur Machen,
1001:English version by Willis Barnstone No one knows my invisible life. Pain and madness for Rama. Our wedding bed is high up in the gallows. Meet him? If the dark healer comes, we'll negotiate the hurt. I love the man who takes care of cows. The cowherd. Cowherd and dancer. My eyes are drunk, worn out from making love with him. We are one. I am now his dark color. People notice me, point fingers at me. They see my desire, since I'm walking about like a lunatic. I'm wiped out, gone. Yet no one knows I live with my prince, the cowherd. The palace can't contain me. I leave it behind. I couldn't care less about gossip or my royal name. I'll be with him in all his gardens. [1508.jpg] -- from To Touch the Sky: Poems of Mystical, Spiritual & Metaphysical Light, Translated by Willis Barnstone

~ Mirabai, No one knows my invisible life
,
1002:Elegiac I.
From thy far sources, 'mid mountains airily climbing,
Pass to the rich lowland, thou busy sunny river;
Murmuring once, dimpling, pellucid, limpid, abundant,
Deepening now, widening, swelling, a lordly river.
Through woodlands steering, with branches waving above thee,
Through the meadows sinuous, wandering irriguous;
Towns, hamlets leaving, towns by thee, bridges across thee,
Pass to palace garden, pass to cities populous.
Murmuring once, dimpling, ’mid woodlands wandering idly,
Now with mighty vessels loaded, a mighty river.
Pass to the great waters, though tides may seem to resist thee,
Tides to resist seeming, quickly will lend thee passage,
Pass to the dark waters that roaring wait to receive thee;
Pass them thou wilt not, thou busy sunny river.
~ Arthur Hugh Clough,
1003:Here at the palace, Hitler encountered suffocating palace etiquette for the first time. The noble Italian chief of protocol bowed before him and then led his guests up the long, shallow flight of stairs, striking every plush red-carpeted tread solemnly with a gold-encrusted staff. He was accustomed to this measured tread, but Hitler was not: the nervous foreign visitor fell out of step, found himself gaining on the uniformed nobleman ahead, stopped abruptly, causing confusion and clatter on the steps behind, then started again, walking more quickly until he was soon alongside the Italian again. The latter affected not to notice, but perceptibly quickened his own pace, his lacquered slippers and silken stockings flashing, until the whole throng was trotting up the last few stairs in an undignified Charlie Chaplin gallop. There ~ David Irving,
1004:Monuments of murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, compared with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, or by thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and brambles and long waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero,—here were his tessellated floors; here, “Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,” hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar on pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its master,—the Golden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright, timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the Golden House is vanished, but the wild flower may have kin to those which the stranger's hand scattered over the tyrant's grave; see, over this soil, the grave of Rome, Nature strews the wild flowers still! ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton,
1005:Don’t look down,’ Perabo warned them when they almost reached the top and the view from the archways became imposing.

Froi sensed Perabo was instructing himself more than the others.

‘You obviously haven’t been imprisoned on the roof of a castle in the Citavita, Perabo,’ Lirah said.

‘Or hung upside down over a balconette staring down into the gravina, waiting to die,’ Gargarin added.

‘Nothing worse than being chained to the balconette with your head facing down over that abyss,’ Arjuro joined in, not one to be outdone in the misery stakes.

‘Try balancing on a piece of granite between the godshouse and the palace with nothing beneath you but air,’ Froi said.

Perabo stopped and took a deep breath and looked as if he was going to be sick.

‘Don’t look down, Perabo,’ Froi advised. ~ Melina Marchetta,
1006:In May 1992, I went to Ixtapa with my son, Sam, who was then two and a half. At the time, my best friend of twenty years, named Pammy, had been battling breast cancer for two years. I also had a boyfriend with whom I spoke two or three times a day, whom I loved and who loved me. Then, in early November of that year, the big eraser came down and got Pammy, and it also got the boyfriend, from whom I parted by mutual agreement. The grief was huge, monolithic. All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly and as privately as possible. But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. ~ Anne Lamott,
1007:Amongst the grandeur of Hua Shan
I climb to the Flower Peak,
and fancy I see fairies and immortals
carrying lotus in their
sacred white hands, robes flowing
they fly filling the sky with colour
as they rise to the palace of heaven,
inviting me to go to the cloud stage
and see Wei Shu-ching, guardian angel
of Hua Shan; so dreamily I go with them
riding to the sky on the back
of wild geese which call as they fly,
but when we look below at Loyang,
not so clear because of the mist,
everywhere could be seen looting
armies, which took Loyang, creating
chaos and madness with blood
flowing everywhere; like animals of prey
rebel army men made into officials
with caps and robes to match.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, Climbing West Of Lotus Flower Peak
,
1008:The giants have become an unruly elite of privilege and power,” Anu proclaimed. “They have conspired in revolution and have proven themselves unworthy of their status and authority. As of this day, the gods have removed the giants from leadership over you, and their organized activities have become illegal. The surviving Nephilim will no longer be allowed to congregate, and the Rephaim are considered outlaws for their conspiracy in the riots. They will no longer reign over you. Any giants that are found outside the employ of the palace or temple authority are considered criminals and will be executed. We gods have remained too distant and aloof from our people. But we will now leave our heavenly abode in the cosmic mountain and will reside in the cities of our patronage. We will protect you and shepherd you with our undivided attention. ~ Brian Godawa,
1009:Kammy could see the palace built into the cliff face. It was a majestic construction. Its white walls stretched up into a cluster of turrets and towers. Its façade was broken by gigantic windows that reflected a rainbow of colours. The palace was flanked by two waterfalls that filled the chasm running far below them; a chasm that was bridged by a staircase of monstrous size. But Kammy hardly noticed how far she would fall should her grip fail. The giant structure that speared out of the palace and up into the sky commanded all of her attention. It burned her eyes so she could hardly look at it, but at the same time she could not look away. It looked like a white diamond. Each of its countless edges sent off shards of brilliant light. It dwarfed anything that Kammy had ever known and she had never felt as alive as she did in that moment. ~ Natalie Crown,
1010:Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies,
or sighs,
or rocks,
or sings,
or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken! ~ Charles Baudelaire,
1011:King Saul stood opposite him staring at his sworn enemy, now held in chains in the prison outside the royal palace. They were alone. He noticed a restlessness and a slight tremor in the arms and head of his captive, accompanied by a perpetual grin that looked more painful than humorous and resulted in occasional blurts of maniacal laughter. These Amalekites were not merely evil, they were stricken with a madness because of their diet of human flesh. They were cannibals. They were also very hard to kill. They engaged in dark rituals and howled when they fought because they were known to be possessed by the siyyim and iyyim, howling desert demons. They worshipped the satyr goat god Azazel and the goddess Lilith, connected with their Edomite and Seirim past. Saul was king of Israel and Yahweh had commanded him to wipe out the Amalekites. They ~ Brian Godawa,
1012:The Tomb of Lanes Marcus, the Lanes whom you loved is not here
in this tomb where you visit and weep for hours.
The Lanes whom you loved is nearer, Marcus,
when you close yourself in your room and gaze on his portrait;
that image preserved all that was worthy in him;
that image preserved all that you loved. Do you remember, Marcus, when you brought
from the proconsul’s palace the famous painter from Cyrene,
and as soon as he laid eyes on your friend,
he tried to persuade you with his artist’s cunning
that he should draw him, without question, as Hyacinth
(that way the portrait would garner more fame)? But your Lanes didn’t put his beauty on loan like that;
firmly opposing the man, he demanded to be portrayed
not as Hyacinth, nor as anyone else,
but as Lanes, son of Rhametichus, an Alexandrian. ~ Constantinos P Cavafy,
1013:Crossing the Swamp"

Here is the endless
wet thick
cosmos, the center
of everything—the nugget
of dense sap, branching
vines, the dark burred
faintly belching
bogs. Here
is swamp, here
is struggle,
closure—
pathless, seamless,
peerless mud. My bones
knock together at the pale
joints, trying
for foothold, fingerhold,
mindhold over
such slick crossings, deep
hipholes, hummocks
that sink silently
into the black, slack
earthsoup. I feel
not wet so much as
painted and glittered
with the fat grassy
mires, the rich
and succulent marrows
of earth—a poor
dry stick given
one more chance by the whims
of swamp water—a bough
that still, after all these years,
could take root,
sprout, branch out, bud—
make of its life a breathing
palace of leaves. ~ Mary Oliver,
1014:Piazza San Marco might seem like the one place in Venice that is always busy, but I can tell you it’s not so. As it grows later, the crowds thin and the cafés empty; the tourists go back to their hotels, footsore after a day of walking the calli; the street hawkers disappear too, the music stops, the chairs and tables are packed away. That doesn’t stop you dancing, however, not if that’s the mood you’re in and your partner won’t admit to tiring. It wasn’t a warm night but our bodies had heat in them. We made our own music, like Coco and Silvio once had, dancing past the bell tower and beside the Doge’s Palace right to the banks of the Grand Canal. We stepped together until my feet felt bruised and my shoulders ached. We danced when everyone else was sleeping and there wasn’t a soul to see it. We continued until Angelo decided it was time to be still. ~ Anonymous,
1015:Tomb Of Lanis
The Lanis you loved, Markos, isn't here
in this tomb you come to weep by, lingering hours on end.
The Lanis you loved is closer to you
when you're in your room at home and you look at his portrait—
the portrait that still keeps something of what was valuable in him,
something of what it was you used to love.
Remember, Markos, that time you brought in
the famous Kyrenian painter from the Proconsul's palace?
What artistic subtlety he used trying to persuade you both,
the minute he saw your friend,
that he absolutely must do him as Hyacinth.
In that way his portrait would come to be better known.
But your Lanis didn't hire out his beauty like that:
reacting strongly, he told him to portray
neither Hyacinth nor anyone else,
but Lanis, son of Rametichos, an Alexandrian.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
1016:I love you. Is that reason enough?”
Maybe. Maybe it would have been. But as the music drained from the air, Kestrel saw Arin on the fringes of the crowd. He watched her, his expression oddly desperate. As if he, too, were losing something, or it was already lost.
She saw him and didn’t understand how she had ever missed his beauty. How it didn’t always strike her as it did now, like a blow.
“No,” Kestrel whispered.
“What?” Ronan’s voice cut into the quiet.
“I’m sorry.”
Ronan swiveled to find the target of Kestrel’s gaze. He swore.
Kestrel walked away, pushing past slaves bearing trays laden with glasses of pale gold wine. The lights and people blurred in her stinging eyes. She walked through the doors, down a hall, out of the palace, and into the cold night, knowing without seeing or hearing or touching him that Arin was at her side. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1017:David’s procession had journeyed through the other side of the city, allowing the opportunity for those who were fortunate to get a glimpse of their future prince. He was clothed like a warrior priest. His long flowing hair was gathered beneath his headdress of gold and ivory. He wore new royal robes of many colored embroidered Phoenician cloth. He wore rings and a necklace of gold and silver embedded with gems. He carried an ornamental bronze sword sheathed to his hip and wore an ephod of linen beneath his robes. A pack of minstrels also led him to the palace with their playing. They arrived at the front entrance to meet Michal’s entourage. When David saw her, his loins burned for her. They had hidden their love for such a long time. They had shared souls in their singing, now they would share their bodies. They would play a concert for their king, Yahweh. ~ Brian Godawa,
1018:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear...
...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
1019:He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and he returned his gaze to the window. "She's my alpha," he murmured, with a haunting sadness in his voice.

Alpha.

Cress leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, "Like the star?"

"What star?"

She stiffened, instantly embarrassed, and scooted back from him again. "Oh. Um. In a constellation, the brightest star is called the alpha. I thought maybe you meant that she's...like...your brightest star." Looking away, she knotted her hands in her lap, aware that she was blushing furiously now and this beast of a man was about to realize what an over-romantic sap she was.

But instead of sneering or laughing, Wolf sighed, "Yes," he said, his gaze climbing up to the full moon that had emerged in the blue evening sky. "Exactly like that. ~ Marissa Meyer,
1020:... they walked to the Mahamega grove in the centre of which was a sacred, thousand-five-hundred-year-old Bodhi tree.

Bhikshus, devotees and many others were circumambulating the tree, offering flowers to it and paying it obeisance. The Prince paid his respects to it. He said to the other two, “Kings and kingdoms disappear but this tree is proof that righteousness is eternal.”

Looking around, he saw three grooms holding horses that were ready to start out. He went up to them and the grooms greeted him joyfully. He asked them something then turned to Vandiyathevan. “The palace which was burnt down last night was Mahasena's. These people were afraid that we might have been burnt too. They are extremely happy to see us.”

“It might be true that a thousand-five-hundred-year-old tree still stands. But righteousness has long been dead,” said Vandiyathevan. ~ Kalki,
1021:Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, ploughs and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialized task will do it best. ~ Xenophon,
1022:But we’re not outnumbered!” a voice called out from behind the soldiers. Lampton and his soldiers turned toward the voice and they saw it wasn’t alone. Slowly emerging from behind the Charming Palace and from the streets surrounding the capital were hundreds and hundreds of civilians. The men and women carried pots and pans, pitchforks and hoes, rolling pins and knives, scissors and shears, mops and buckets. They were bakers and farmers, locksmiths and seamstresses, teachers and butchers, maids and butlers—and they all had come to stand proudly with the soldiers of their kingdom. “What’s going on?” Xanthous asked the civilians. “We’ve come to join the fight!” a farmer declared, and all the men and women of his party cheered. “This is our home, too!” a seamstress yelled. “We won’t let our kingdom fall into the hands of anyone else but our king and queen,” a butcher shouted. ~ Chris Colfer,
1023:That to the adolescent is the authentic poetic note and whoever is the first in his life to strike it, whether Tennyson, Keats, Swinburne, Housman or another, awakens a passion of imitation and an affectation which no subsequent refinement or sophistication of his taste can entirely destroy. In my own case it was Hardy in the summer of 1923; for more than a year I read no one else and I do not think that I was ever without one volume or another or the beautifully produced Wessex edition in my hands: I smuggled them into class, carried them about on Sunday walks, and took them up to the dormitory to read in the early morning, though they were far too unwieldy to be read in bed with comfort. In the autumn of 1924 there was a palace revolution after which he had to share his kingdom with Edward Thomas, until finally they were both defeated by Elliot at the battle of Oxford in 1926. ~ W H Auden,
1024:The frenzy of the cheering at the Cow Palace was reminiscent of Nazi times. . . . They [the Goldwater supporters] are the middle class gone rampant: the technocrats, the white collar workers impelled by an almost fanatical zeal. They are the result of a generation of liberal debunking, of the smug self-righteousness of so many intellectuals. . . . They have a faith not a party. The delegates walking around with stamp out Huntley and Brinkley* buttons are a new phenomenon. The delegate who said to me I am sorry the button is not big enough to include Howard K. Smith and all Eastern newspapers was a new form of delegate. This group once organized will be hard to dislodge. It will try to become the residuary legatee of all crises that are likely over the next decade. . . . The Goldwater victory is a new phenomenon in American politics—the triumph of the ideological party in the ~ Niall Ferguson,
1025:running to and fro with trays of refreshments. Odo, who knew that his mother lived in the Duke's palace, had vaguely imagined that his father's death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence and mourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairs and down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance music below and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors. The thought that his father's death had made no difference to any one in the palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of the other impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, and he passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrelling over cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumed finery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds sat disconsolately at supper. "Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, springing ~ Edith Wharton,
1026:Sophos, you sleep with a knife under your pillow? I'm hurt."
"I'm sorry," said Sounis, afraid that he had made contact with his wild swing.
"I was joking. Wake up the rest of the way, would you?"
"Gen, it's the middle of the night."
"I know," said the king of Attolia.
Sounis tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He was sitting up in his bed. The sky was still entirely dark, and he couldn't have been asleep for long. He suspected that he had just dropped off. The bare knife was still in his hand, he realized, and he rooted under his pillow for the sheath.
"Don't you trust my palace security?"
"Yes, of course," Sounis said, trying to think of some other reason besides mistrust to sleep with a knife. He heard Eugenides laugh.
"My queen and I sleep with a matched set under our pillows, as well as handguns in pockets on the bedposts. Don't be embarrassed. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
1027:Man was always being jerked around between different people's ideas of god, depending on who'd won the most recent war, or palace coup, or political battle. This meant mankind was always being asked to accept deities foreign to his own nature. I mean, if your prophet was sexually insecure, or if his later interpreters were, that religion demanded celibacy or repression or hatred of women; if the prophet was a homophobe, he preached prosecution of homosexuals; and if he was both lecherous and greedy, he preached polygeny. If he was luxurious, he preached give-me-money-and-God-will-make-you-rich; if he felt put upon he preached God-of-Vengeance, let's kill the other guy; and no matter how much well-meaning ecumenicists pretended all the gods were one god under different aspects, they weren't any such thing, because every prophet created God in his own image, to confront his own nightmares. ~ Sheri S Tepper,
1028:She swallowed, watching as the servants and Harry and Bert trooped out of the room. Lad, apparently not the brightest dog in the world, sat down next to Mickey O’Connor and leaned against his leg.

Mr. O’Connor looked at the dog, looked at the damp spot growing on his breeches where the dog was leaning, and sighed. “I find me life is not as quiet as it used to be afore ye came to me palace, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”

Silence lifted her chin. “You’re a pirate, Mr. O’Connor. I cannot believe your life was ever very quiet.”

He gave her an ironic look. “Aye, amazin’, isn’t it? Yet since yer arrival me servants no longer obey me and I return home to find me kitchen flooded.” He crossed to a cupboard and took down a china teapot, a tin of tea, and a teacup. “And me dog smells like a whorehouse.”

Silence glanced guiltily at Lad. “The only soap we could find was rose scented. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,
1029:By the way, where are all the men?” I asked.
“The ones who aren’t busy bothering the serving girls are practicing their battle skills with Lord Aetes’ guards. There’s a training ground, but it’s a fair distance from the citadel. I think the palace weapons bearers get more exercise than the men, carrying their gear there and back.”
“Except for one lazybones who’s hiding in the queen’s garden instead of doing his proper work. Poor Iolaus! This is the thanks he gets for hiring you.” I was teasing, and Milo knew it.
“And what about a weapons bearer so lazy that he’d rather turn into a girl than do his job?” Milo countered, laughing.
I stood up. “A girl who can carry two amphorae of wine to your one,” I said.
“One to my three, you mean!” Milo declared, getting into the spirit. “But you’ll have to find them first.” He made a taunting face at me and darted into the palace. ~ Esther M Friesner,
1030:Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress of Russia, was only thirty-two but was already a physical wreck after ten physically and mentally draining years of pregnancy and childbirth. Her always precarious mental state was severely undermined by the discovery of Alexey’s condition and she tormented herself that she of all people had unwittingly transmitted haemophilia to her much-loved and longed-for son.* Her already melancholic air henceforth became an inexplicably tragic one to those not privy to the truth. The whole focus of the family now dramatically shifted, to protecting Alexey against accident and injury – to literally keeping him alive within their own closely controlled domestic world. Nicholas and Alexandra therefore abandoned their newly refurbished apartments in the Winter Palace and ceased staying in town for the court season. Tsarskoe Selo and Peterhof would from now on be their refuge. ~ Helen Rappaport,
1031:Argus
When wise Ulysses, from his native coast
Long kept by wars, and long by tempests toss'd,
Arrived at last, poor, old, disguised, alone,
To all his friends, and ev'n his Queen unknown,
Changed as he was, with age, and toils, and cares,
Furrow'd his rev'rend face, and white his hairs,
In his own palace forc'd to ask his bread,
Scorn'd by those slaves his former bounty fed,
Forgot of all his own domestic crew,
The faithful Dog alone his rightful master knew!
Unfed, unhous'd, neglected, on the clay
Like an old servant now cashier'd, he lay;
Touch'd with resentment of ungrateful man,
And longing to behold his ancient lord again.
Him when he saw he rose, and crawl'd to meet,
('Twas all he could) and fawn'd and kiss'd his feet,
Seiz'd with dumb joy; then falling by his side,
Own'd his returning lord, look'd up, and died!
~ Alexander Pope,
1032:Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century alone, how many subdivisions I've had to open?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now.

More security ghouls," he moaned. "Traffic problems at the judgment pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!"

Charon wants a pay raise," I blurted, just remembering the fact. As soon as I said it, I wished I could sew up my mouth.

Don't get me started on Charon!" Hades yelled. "He's been impossible ever since he discovered Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and I've got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving. No, godling. I need no help getting subjects! I did not ask for this war. ~ Rick Riordan,
1033:These ears aren't to be trusted.
The keening in the night, didn't you hear?
Once I believed all the stories didn’t have endings,
but I realized the endings were invented, like zero,
had yet to be imagined.
The months come around again,
and we are in the same place;
full moons, cherries in bloom,
the same deer, the same frogs,
the same helpless scratching at the dirt.
You leave poems I can’t read
behind on the sheets,
I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost.
you may be imprisoned in an underwater palace;
I'll come riding to the rescue in disguise.
Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle.
I've inhaled the spells of willow trees,
spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers.
Sleep easy, from behind the closet door
I'll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.

(from, The Fox-Wife's Invitation) ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey,
1034:A small grove of linden trees grew on the far side of the lake, below the palace. Dortchen made her way there carefully, not wanting to be seen so close to the King's residence. The trees were in full blossom, bees reeling drunkenly from the pale-yellow flowers that hung down in clusters below the heart-shaped leaves. Dortchen harvested what she could reach, breathing the sweet scent deeply, then picked handfuls of the wild roses that grew in a tangled hedge along the path. She would crystallise the petals with sugar when she got home, or make rose water to sell in her father's shop.
She plucked some dandelions she found growing wild in a clearing, and then some meadowsweet, and at last reached the ancient old oak tree she knew from her last foray into the royal park. Here she found handfuls of the sparse grey moss, and she hid it deep within her basket, beneath the flowers and herbs and leaves. ~ Kate Forsyth,
1035:The capitalist who does no useful work has the economic power to take from a thousand or ten thousand workingmen all they produce, over and above what is required to keep them in working and producing order, and he becomes a millionaire, perhaps a multi-millionaire. He lives in a palace in which there is music and singing and dancing and the luxuries of all climes. He sails the high seas in his private yacht. He is the reputed “captain of industry” who privately owns a social utility, has great economic power, and commands the political power of the nation to protect his economic interests. He is the gentleman who furnishes the “political boss” and his swarm of mercenaries with the funds with which the politics of the nation are corrupted and debauched. He is the economic master and the political ruler and you workingmen are almost as completely at his mercy as if you were his property under the law. ~ Chris Hedges,
1036:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear...
   ...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings,
1037:The Golden Rose
A POOR lost princess, weary and worn,
Came over the down by the wind-washed moor,
And the king looked out on her grace forlorn,
And he took her in at his palace door.
He made her queen, he gave her a crown,
Bidding her rest and be glad and gay
In his golden town, with a golden gown,
And a new gold lily every day.
But the crown is heavy, the gold gown gray,
And the queen's pale breast is like autumn snows;
For he brings a gold lily every day,
But no king gathers the golden rose.
One came at last to the palace keep
By worlds of water and leagues of land,
Gray were his garments, his eyes were deep,
And he held the golden rose in his hand.
She left gold gown, gold town, gold crown,
And followed him straight to a world apart,
And he left her asleep on the wind-washed down,
With the golden rose on her quiet heart.
~ Edith Nesbit,
1038:The revolution of 1917 is a revolution of trains. History proceeding in screams of cold metal. The tsar’s wheeled palace, shunted into sidings forever; Lenin’s sealed stateless carriage; Guchkov and Shulgin’s meandering abdication express; the trains criss-crossing Russia heavy with desperate deserters; the engine stoked by ‘Konstantin Ivanov’, Lenin in his wig, eagerly shovelling coal. And more and more will come: Trotsky’s armoured train, the Red Army’s propaganda trains, the troop carriers of the Civil War. Looming trains, trains hurtling through trees, out of the dark. Revolutions, Marx said, are the locomotives of history. ‘Put the locomotive into top gear’, Lenin exhorted himself in a private note, scant weeks after October, ‘and keep it on the rails.’ But how could you keep it there if there really was only one true way, one line, and it is blocked? ‘I have gone where you did not want me to go.’ In ~ China Mi ville,
1039:When ye look at me I am an idle, idle man; when I look at myself I am a busy, busy man. Since upon the plain of uncreated infinity I am building, building the tower of ecstasy, I have no time for building houses. Since upon the steppe of the void of truth I am breaking, breaking the savage fetter of suffering, I have no time for ploughing family land. Since at the bourn of unity ineffable I am subduing, subduing the demon-foe of self, I have no time for subduing angry foe-men. Since in the palace of mind which transcends duality I am waiting, waiting for spiritual experience as my bride, I have no time for setting up house. Since in the circle of the Buddhas of my body I am fostering, fostering the child of wisdom, I have no time for fostering snivelling children. Since in the frame of the body, the seat of all delight, I am saving, saving precious instruction and reflection, I have no time for saving wordly wealth. ~ Milarepa,
1040:They heard the front door shut. They suddenly noticed that Edna was not with them anymore. She had gotten up and must have left their chambers. Enoch called out, “Edna?” No one answered him. “That is strange,” said Enoch. “She has never done that before.” Methuselah guessed that his mother believed the prophecy, more than the “sage” who had received it. She was probably making preparations to leave the city, preparations that included Methuselah’s young friend, the other Edna, and her parents. She had discussed the possibility with her son in the past. “She is warning others,” he surmised. “What others?” challenged Enoch. “Edna and her parents?” offered Methuselah. “How does she know about this girl of yours?” “She is not my ‘girl,’ father,” said Methuselah. “I have told mother all about her. She knows we are close, and she is going to help them. She will go after Edna’s parents first, to bring them to the palace. ~ Brian Godawa,
1041:Oooo, what is that?” Red yelled when she saw the palace. “That’s Buckingham Palace,” Alex said. “It’s where the monarchy resides.” Red was mesmerized. “What a stylish and tasteful place! Look at that beautiful statue out front of it in the middle of the street! That looks exactly like the statue I wanted to build in celebration of Charlie’s and my wedding!” Red left the others and flew down to the gate. She peered through the bars at the palace in delight. She had to hang on to the bars tightly because the fairy dust was making her drift back to the sky. One of the palace guards on duty saw Red and stared at her in disbelief. It wasn’t every day he saw a floating woman at the gate. “Yoo-hoo!” Red called to him. “I just love your hat! Please tell the current monarch that Queen Red of the Center Kingdom says hello —” Conner flew to the gate and pulled Red’s hands off the bars. “Red, come on. You’re gonna get left behind! ~ Chris Colfer,
1042:Water splashes and runs in a film across the glass floor suspended above the mosaics. The Hacı Kadın hamam is a typical post-Union fusion of architectures; Ottoman domes and niches built over some forgotten Byzantine palace, years and decades of trash blinding, gagging, burying the angel-eyed Greek faces in the mosaic floor; century upon century. That haunted face was only exposed to the light again when the builders tore down the cheap apartment blocks and discovered a wonder. But Istanbul is wonder upon wonder, sedimented wonder, metamorphic cross-bedded wonder. You can’t plant a row of beans without turning up some saint or Sufi. At some point every country realizes it must eat its history. Romans ate Greeks, Byzantines ate Romans, Ottomans ate Byzantines, Turks ate Ottomans. The EU eats everything. Again, the splash and run as Ferid Bey scoops warm water in a bronze bowl from the marble basin and pours it over his head. ~ Ian McDonald,
1043:To The Seasons
Having overcome the accidents of Winter, Summer, Spring, and the Rains,
I welcome at my heart’s evening the void, the null, the absolute zero
No longer prey to the whimsy of the seasons, I rejoice
In freedom from function,
liberty from thought, lightness of death
No longer wronged by the contingent, the wails of the grieving,
Laughter and shrieks of the whirling months, I yield at most
To the malaise of old age, to the body’s loss of humors
Markings in a dead script on a calendar no longer in use
In a ruined palace my moving finger points to rusty locks hanging
From rows of the chained doors of long deserted chambers
Dimmed is the former chiaroscuro, my heart is monochrome
A late autumn landscape with gray fog shading into a pallid moon
In my ears the ageless sea confirms what I already know
I have for company only the void, the vacuum, the zero
~ Buddhadeb Bosu,
1044:Be Drunk
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it--it's the
only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks
your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually
drunk.
But on what?Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be
drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of
a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again,
drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave,
the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything
that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is
singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and
wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:"It is time to be
drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be
continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
~ Charles Baudelaire,
1045:Get Drunk
Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"
184
~ Charles Baudelaire,
1046:In The Shadow Of The Palace
LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of
Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit
in the newspapers office.
Let us sit among the telegrams-clickety-click-the kaiser's crown goes into the
gutter and the Hohenzollern throne of a thousand years falls to pieces a one-hoss
shay.
It is a fog night out and the umbrellas are up and the collars of the raincoats-and
all the steamboats up and down the Baltic sea have their lights out and the
wheelsmen sober.
Here the telegrams come-one king goes and another-butter is costly: there is no
butter to buy for our bread in Stockholm-and a little patty of butter costs more
than all the crowns of Germany.
Let us go out in the fog, John, let us roll up our raincoat collars and go on the
streets where men are sneering at the kings.
~ Carl Sandburg,
1047:The lion snorted. 'You treat all as a game. That is why they sent for me - Malcador cannot trust you. No one can trust you. Your Legion is a rabble that would brawl among themselves if you were not there to smack their heads together.' 'If only they were more like yours,' said Russ, mockingly. 'Yes,' replied the Lion, exasperated. 'Yes. Is that so hard to imagine?'

Russ loosened his arms, letting Krakenmaw swing lazily before him. 'I know why you do this. I know why you conquer, world after world, driving your sons after every campaign Malcador finds for you. But our father won't do it, brother. He won't choose a favourite. And if He did, it wouldn't be you - it would be Sanguinius, or Rogal, or Horus. So you're wasting yourself, trying to be noticed. It doesn't work like that.'

The Lion let slip a scornful laugh. 'Not all of us are so without friends in the Palace, Leman, and you have no idea who our father favours. ~ Chris Wraight,
1048:Helen was bewildered to find herself surrounded by air as warm as the breath of summer. Slowly she walked into a large gallery, constructed of thousands of flashing, glittering glass panes in a network of wrought-iron ribs.
It was a glasshouse, she realized in bewilderment. On a rooftop. The ethereal construction, as pretty as a wedding cake, had been built on a sturdy brickwork base, with iron pillars and girders welded to vertical struts and diagonal tiers.
"This is for my orchids," she said faintly.
Rhys came up behind her, his hands settling at her waist. He nuzzled gently at her ear. "I told you I'd find a place for them."
A glass palace in the sky. It was magical, an inspired stroke of romantic imagination, and he had built it for her. Dazzled, she took in the view of London at sunset, a red glow westering across the leaden sky. The clouds were torn in places, gold light spilling through the fire-colored fleece. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
1049:The airport in Sofia was a tiny place; I'd expected a palace of modern communism, but we descended to a modest area of tarmac and strolled across it with the other travelers. Nearly all of them were Bulgarian,
I decided, trying to catch something of their conversations. They were
handsome people, some of them strikingly so, and their faces varied
from the dark-eyed pale Slav to a Middle-Eastern bronze, a kaleidoscope
of rich hues and shaggy black eyebrows, noses long and flaring, or
aquiline, or deeply hooked, young women with curly black hair and noble
foreheads, and energetic old men with few teeth. They smiled or laughed and talked eagerly with one another; one tall man gesticulated to his companion with a folded newspaper. Their clothes were distinctly not Western, although I would have been hard put to say what it was about the cuts of suits and skirts, the heavy shoes and dark hats, that was unfamiliar to me. ~ Elizabeth Kostova,
1050:Why, Uruvi always wondered, would Queen Madri consign herself to the flames, when no queen before her had joined their husband in the funeral pyre? Moreover, why would the mother of tiny, helpless six-month-old twins, Nakul and Sahadeva, kill herself and leave them orphaned and under the care of her husband’s first wife? It was strange. Had Madri, too, been mortally wounded like her husband, King Pandu, when they had been attacked? Had she been able to talk to Kunti before she died? Had Shakuni played up the curse of the sage to his advantage after all? If he could instigate Duryodhana to burn the Pandavas and the Queen Mother in the lac palace, he would not have any qualms in murdering King Pandu too. The only person who probably knew the truth was Kunti—but she was an evasive lady who knew how to keep her secrets. Uruvi recalled how she had pestered her on her wedding day about whether she had any regrets, but had got nothing out of her. ~ Kavita Kan,
1051:When ye look at me I am an idle, idle man; when I look at myself I am a busy, busy man. Since upon the plain of uncreated infinity I am building, building the tower of ecstasy, I have no time for building houses. Since upon the steppe of the void of truth I am breaking, breaking the savage fetter of suffering, I have no time for ploughing family land. Since at the bourn of unity ineffable I am subduing, subduing the demon-foe of self, I have no time for subduing angry foe-men. Since in the palace of mind which transcends duality I am waiting, waiting for spiritual experience as my bride, I have no time for setting up house. Since in the circle of the Buddhas of my body I am fostering, fostering the child of wisdom, I have no time for fostering snivelling children. Since in the frame of the body, the seat of all delight, I am saving, saving precious instruction and reflection, I have no time for saving wordly wealth. ~ Jetsun Milarepa, Songs of Milarepa,
1052:It was through this viewer that he got his first reply from Tralfamadore. The reply was written on Earth in huge stones on a plain in what is now England. The ruins of the reply still stand, and are known as Stonehenge. The meaning of Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above, is: "Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed."

Stonehenge wasn't the only message old Salo had received.

There had been four others, all of them written on Earth.

The Great Wall of China means in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above: "Be patient. We haven't forgotten about you."

The Golden House of the Roman Emperor Nero meant: "We are doing the best we can."

The meaning of the Moscow Kremlin when it was first walled was: "You will be on your way before you know it."

The meaning of the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, is: "Pack up your things and be ready to leave on short notice. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
1053:So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens - four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,
1054:Because it was raining outside the palace
Because there was no rain in her vicinity

Because people kept asking her questions
Because nobody ever asked her anything

Because marriage robbed her of her mother
Because she lost her daughters to the same tradition

Because her son laughed when she opened her mouth
Because he never delighted in anything she said

Because romance carried the rose inside a fist
Because she hungered for the fragrance of the rose

Because the jewels of her life did not belong to her
Because the glow of gold and silk disguised her soul
Because nothing she could say could change the melted music of her space

Because the privilege of her misery was something she could not disgrace
Because no one could imagine reasons for her grief
Because her grief required no magination

Because it was raining outside the alace
Because there was no rain in her vicinity. ~ June Jordan,
1055:A jade cup was broken because old age came
too soon to give fulfilment to hopes; after drinking
three cups of wine I wiped my sword and
started to dance under an autumn moon first
singing in a high voice then unable to halt
tears coming; I remember the day when first
I was summoned to court and I was feasted splendidly
writing poems in praise of the Emperor, making
jokes with officials around several times changing
my horse, taking the best from the
imperial stables; with my whip studded with
jade and coral presented to me by the Emperor,
my life was free and easy, people calling me
the "Banished Immortal." Hsi Shih was good
at smiling as well as frowning, useless
for ordinary girls to try and imitate her.
Surely it was only her loveliness the king adored,
but unfortunately jealousy within the palace
led to her death.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, Song Of The Jade Cup
,
1056:And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski; some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked:
'You know what's so dreadful about dying is that you're completely on your own'; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions... ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
1057:His jaw tensed as the Corporalnik finished her work. When the skin had knitted together, the Darkling dismissed her with a wave. She hovered briefly, then slipped away, fading into nothing.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” he said. No greeting, no preamble.

I waited.

“The night that Baghra told you what I intended, the night you fled the Little Palace, did you hesitate?”

“Yes.”

“In the days after you left, did you ever think of coming back?”

“I did,” I admitted.

“But you chose not to.”

I knew I should go. I should at least have stayed silent, but I was so weary, and it felt so easy to be here with him. “It wasn’t just what Baghra said that night. You lied to me. You deceived me. You … drew me in.” Seduced me, made me want you, made me question my own heart.

“I needed your loyalty, Alina. I needed you bound to me by more than duty or fear.” His fingers tested the flesh where his wound had been ~ Leigh Bardugo,
1058:The cleaning woman could contain herself no longer, As far as I'm concerned, that's the boat for me, And who are you, asked the man, Don't you remember me, No, I don't, I'm the cleaning woman, Cleaning what, The king's palace, The woman who opened the door for petitions, The very same, And why aren't you back at the king's palace cleaning and opening doors, Because the doors I really wanted to open have already been opened and because, from now on, I will only clean boats, So you want to go with me in search of the unknown island, I left the palace by the door of decisions, In that case, go and have a look at the caravel, after all this time, it must be in need of a good wash, but watch out for the seagulls, they're not to be trusted, Don't you want to come with me and see what your boat is like inside, You said it was your boat, Sorry about that, I only said it because I liked it, Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking. ~ Jos Saramago,
1059:I read the miserable story of the play in which she was the one true loving soul. It obviously described the spread of an epidemic brain fever which, like typhoid, was perhaps caused by seepings from the palace graveyard into the Elsinore water supply. From an inconspicuous start among sentries on the battlements the infection spread through prince, king, prime minister and courtiers causing hallucinations, logomania and paranoia resulting in insane suspicions and murderous impulses. I imagined myself entering the palace quite early in the drama with all the executive powers of an efficient public health officer. The main carriers of the disease (Claudius, Polonius and the obviously incurable Hamlet) would he quarantined in separate wards. A fresh water supply and efficient modern plumbing would soon set the Danish state right and Ophelia, seeing this gruff Scottish doctor pointing her people toward a clean and healthy future, would be powerless to withhold her love. ~ Alasdair Gray,
1060:December 27, Noon.

America,

I might as well tell you this since your maids will tell you anyway. I've been thinking of the little things you do. Sometimes you hum when you walk around the palace. Sometimes when I come up to your room, I hear the melodies you've saved up in your heart spill out the doorway. The palace seems empty without them.

I also miss your smell. I miss your perfume drifting off your hair when you turn to laugh at me or your scent radiating on your skin when we walk through the garden. It's intoxicating.

So I went to your room to spray your perfume on my handkerchief, another silly little trick to make me feel like you were here. And as I was leaving your room, Mary caught me. I'm not sure what she was looking after since you're not here; but she saw me, shrieked, and a guard came running in to see what was wrong. He had his staff gripped, and his eyes flashed threateningly. I was nearly attacked. All because I missed your smell. ~ Kiera Cass,
1061:December 27, noon

America,

I might as well tell you this since your maid will tell you anyway. I’ve been thinking of the little things you do. Sometimes you hum or sing when you walk around the palace. Sometimes when I come up to your room, I hear the melodies you’ve saved up in your heart spilling out the doorway. The palace seems empty without them.

I also miss your smell. I miss your perfume drifting off your hair when you turn to laugh at me or your scent radiating on your skin when we walk through the garden. It’s intoxicating.

So I went to your room to spray your perfume on my handkerchief, another silly trick to make me feel like you were here. And as I was leaving your room, Mary caught me. I’m not sure what she was looking after since you’re not here; but she saw me, shrieked, and a guard came running in to see what was wrong. He had his staff gripped, and his eyes flashed threateningly. I was nearly attacked. All because I missed your smell. ~ Kiera Cass,
1062:Christmas Welcome
Under the wintry skies,
Sundered from home and kin,
With patience and love in her eyes,
Mary is journeying.
The angels keep watch and ward,
And Joseph is there to guard,
But – ‘there is no room at the inn.”
No room in the inns of Life,
No place for Christ the King,
Through the Heavens with joy are rife,
Where worshipping angels sing,
In palace, and street and mart,
In the worlds great pagan heart
There is no welcoming.
But in far cathedrals dim,
Where Christmas lilies bloom
‘Mid incense and holy hymn,
And tapers lighting the gloom,
Where the Christmas crib is laid,
And children come, unafraid
His own are finding Him room.
Here the humble ones of the earth,
The poor, and the sorely tried
Are waiting the dear Lord’s birth,
And their arms are open wide,
And Mary will find them grace
Who makes for Her child a place
In their hearts, this Christmas-tide.
~ Alice Guerin Crist,
1063:Charles Baudelaire: Get Drunk
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.

But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: 'It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'
-- Charles Baudelaire, tr. Michael Hamburger ~ Charles Baudelaire,
1064:Close your eyes, Maxon."
"What?"
"Close your eyes."
He frowned at me but obeyed. I waited until his eyes were shut and his face looked relaxed before I started.
"Somewhere in this palace, there is a woman who will be your wife."
I saw his mouth twitch, the beginnings of a hopeful smile.
"Maybe you don't know which face it is yet, but think of the girls in that room. Imagine the one who loves you the most. Imagine your 'dear.'"
His hand was resting next to mine on the seat, and his fingers grazed mine for a second. I shied away from the touch.
"Sorry," he mumbled, looking my way.
"Keep 'em closed!"
He chuckled and went back to his original position.
"This girl? Imagine that she depends on you. She needs you to cherish her and make her feel like the Selection didn't even happen. Like if you were dropped on your own out in the middle of the country to wander around door to door, she's still the one you would have found. She was always the one you would have picked. ~ Kiera Cass,
1065:making his own plans for Michal when he returned to the court. He was best friends with Jonathan, but he had fallen in love with Michal. They stole every moment they could to be together. They would sing praises and hymns to Yahweh. She was enamored with his playing, and he was mesmerized by her voice. They felt as if their souls were one. Their bodies craved to consummate that oneness of spirit. The only problem was that David was a palace servant without noble status and would never be allowed to marry her. They were simply in two different worlds. And it was driving him crazy. He would do anything, anything to win her hand. This time, he had decided to wait on the Lord. He had made so many mistakes with young women in the past. He wanted to turn over a new leaf, and this time do it right. It made him seek Yahweh more earnestly. He would spend so much time and effort trying to seek Yahweh’s face that his knees would become bloody from scraping the ground, and his legs would lose their circulation. ~ Brian Godawa,
1066:But, Andromeda-" Peri exclaimed. "You are the 'most' important person in this scheme!"
"I- what?" she said. "You must be joking!"
Peri shook his massive head. "On the contrary. You are the only person here who has actually been inside the Palace. You know everything there is to know about it. Without that, we can't even begin to mount an attack, now, can we?"
"At least not the kind of attack we can manage with as few people as we have, and as untrained or half trained," Adam agreed. "You are the key to our plan."
Of all the things she had heard today this was the most astonishing. She was important. She was vital. She who had never been anything to anyone-
"Besides," Gina said with a grin, "I can teach you to use something that you won't have to get in close to use. A sling. Believe me, I've seen a good sling-man take down seasoned fighters many a time."
Andie raised her chin and looked into Peri's eyes. "Then you have me," she said, but could not help adding, "for what it's worth. ~ Mercedes Lackey,
1067:A Vote (Excerpt)
This only grant me: that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone;
Th' ignote are better than ill-known,
Rumour can ope the grave.
Acquaintance I would hug, but when 't depends
Not from the number, but the choice of friends.
Books should, not bus'ness, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night.
My house a cottage, more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.
My garden painted o'er
With Nature's hand, not Art's, and pleasures yield
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports and happy state
I would not fear, nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have liv'd to-day.
~ Abraham Cowley,
1068:Those diversions sparked her life with momentary excitement. Without them, Charis felt she would be driven mad by the unrelenting sameness of life in the palace. Now and again she imagined that she would like to run away, to disguise herself and travel the tumbled hills, to see life among the simple herdsmen and their families; or perhaps she would take a boat and sail the coasts, visiting tiny, sun-baked fishing villages and learning the rhythm of the sea.

Unfortunately, making good either of those plans would mean taking action, and the only thing more palpable than the boredom she endured was the inertia that enclosed her like a massive fist. The weighty impossibility of changing her life in any but the most insignificant detail insured that she would not try.

She sighed again and returned to the corridor, pausing to pick a sunshade from a nearby bush, idly plucking the delicate yellow petals and dropping them one by one, like days, fluttering from her hand. (pg.16., chapter 1, Taliesin) ~ Stephen R Lawhead,
1069:I was having my dinner in Glendon Lodge, in the grounds of the City Hospital, and the receptionist came out and she said, ‘Dean, there’s a phone call for you.’ I said, ‘Who is it?’ She said, ‘It’s Diane.’ And I’ve got a sister Diane. And I said, ‘Oh, tell her I’m having me dinner, to call back later.’ She went away, she came back and she said, ‘Oh, she can’t call back.’ So I went in – finished, stopped my dinner – went and spoke on the phone and then I said, ‘Oh, hello my duck’ – I’d had a tracheotomy so I could talk then. And she said, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’ I said, ‘Yeah, Diane.’ And she said, ‘No, you’re talking to Princess Diana from Kensington Palace.’ Unbelievable. And then she said, ‘Are you OK, is the family OK?’ And before she went she said, ‘Is there anything you need?’ I said, ‘Yeah, there is. When you visited me I was unconscious, but now I’m conscious can you come and visit me?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come and visit you but I don’t want no reporters or nothing, just a casual visit. ~ Tim Clayton,
1070:The Church of Rome is the only brace in this rotten world. The only giver and retainer of form. By enshrining the traditional element "handed down" in its dogmas, as in an icy palace, it abstains and bestows upon its children the license to play round this icy palace, which has spacious grounds, to indulge irresponsibility, even to pardon the forbidden, or to enact it. By instituting sin, it forgives sins. It sees that there is no man without flaw: that is the wonderfully humane thing about it. Its flawless children become saints. By that alone, it concedes the flawed nature of mankind. It concedes sinfulness to such a degree even that it refuses to see beings as human if they are not sinful: they will be sainted or holy. In so doing the Church of Rome shows its most exalted tendacy, namely to forgive. There is no more nobler tendency than forgiveness. And by the same token, there is none more vulgar than to seek revenge. There is no nobility without generosity, just as there is no vengefulness without vulgarity. ~ Joseph Roth,
1071:There, by the Golden Gate, in the heart of a mighty concourse, waited the lords of Byzantium: the lesser Caesars and Despots and Sebastocrators, the Grand Logothete in his globular headgear, the Counts of the palace, the Sword Bearer, the Chartophylas, the Great Duke, the thalassocrats and polemarchs, the Strateges of the Cretan archers, of the hoplites and the peltasts and the cataphracts; the Silentiaries, the Count of the Excubitors, the governors of the Asian Themes, the Clissourarchs, the Grand Eunuch, and (for by now all Byzantine history had melted into a single anachronistic maelstrom) the Prefects of Sicily and Nubia and Ethiopia and Egypt and Armenia, the Exarchs of Ravenna and Carthage, the Nomarch of Tarentum, the Catapan of Bari, the Abbot of Studium. As a reward for bringing good tidings, I had by this time assumed the Captaincy of the Varangian Guard; and there they were, beyond the galleons and the quinqueremes in corruscating ranks of winged helmets, clashing their battle axes in homage. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor,
1072:A Vote (Excerpt)
...
This only grant me: that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone;
Th' ignote are better than ill-known,
Rumour can ope the grave.
Acquaintance I would hug, but when 't depends
Not from the number, but the choice of friends.
Books should, not bus'ness, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night.
My house a cottage, more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.
My garden painted o'er
With Nature's hand, not Art's, and pleasures yield
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports and happy state
I would not fear, nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have liv'd to-day.
~ Abraham Cowley,
1073:Who could accomplish what you've accomplished in establishing under the Throne of Glory a level for all who were righteous in spirit? This is the range of pure soul gathered in the bond of all that's vital. For those who've worked to exhaustion -- this is the place of their strength's renewal, where the weary will find repose; these are the children of calm, of pleasure that knows no bound in the mind: this is the World to Come, a place of position and vision for souls that gaze into the mirrors of the palace's servants, before the Lord to see and be seen. They dwell in the halls of the king, and stand alongside his table taking delight in the sweetness of intellect's fruit which offers them majesty's savor. This is the rest and inheritance that knows no bounds in its goodness and beauty, flowing with milk and honey; this is its fruit and deliverance. [2610.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition, Edited by Peter Cole

~ Solomon ibn Gabirol, Who could accomplish what youve accomplished
,
1074:When you do things from your soul, you feel a river
moving in you, a joy.
When actions come from another section, the feeling
disappears.
Don't let others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.
Reach for the rope of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will.
Because of willfulness people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,
fish sizzle in the skillet.
The anger of police is willfulness. You've seen a magistrate
inflict visible punishment.
Now see the invisible. If you could leave your selfishness, you
would see how you've been torturing your soul. We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?
Don't insist on going where you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring. Your living pieces will form a harmony.
There is a moving palace that floats in the air with balconies and clear water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained under a single tent.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Moving Water
,
1075:The Vote (Excerpt)
. . . . . . . . .
This only grant me: that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone;
Th' ignote are better than ill-known,
Rumor can ope the grave.
Acquaintance I would hug, but when 't depends
Not from the number, but the choice of friends.
Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.
My house a cottage more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.
My garden painted o'er
With nature's hand, not art's, and pleasures yield
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports and happy state
I would not fear, nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day.
~ Abraham Cowley,
1076:Live, and be prosperous: and farewell, good fellow. Juliet! ...O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquered; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favor can I do to thee, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; And never from this palace of dim night Depart again: here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids...Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace. and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death... Here's to my love!...Thus with a kiss I die. ~ William Shakespeare,
1077:Underground System
Set the foot down with distrust upon the crust of the
world—it is thin.
Moles are at work beneath us; they have tunneled the
sub-soil
With separate chambers; which at an appointed knock
Could be as one, could intersect and interlock. We walk
on the skin
Of life. No toil
Of rake or hoe, no lime, no phosphate, no rotation of
crops, no irrigation of the land,
Will coax the limp and flattened grain to stand
On that bad day, or feed to strength the nibbled root's of
our nation.
Ease has demoralized us, nearly so, we know
Nothing of the rigours of winter: The house has a roof
against—the car a top against—the snow.
All will be well, we say, it is a bit, like the rising of the
sun,
For our country to prosper; who can prevail against us?
No one.
The house has a roof; but the boards of its floor are
rotting, and hall upon hall
The moles have built their palace beneath us, we have
not far to fall.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,
1078:Little Cinder

Girl, they can't understand you.
You rise from the as-heap in a blaze
and only then do they recognize you
as their one true love.

While you pray beneath your mother's
tree you carrve a phoenix into your palm
wth aa hazel twig and coal;
every night she devours more of you.

You used to believe in angels.
Now you believe in the makeover;
if you can't get the grime off your face
and your foot into a size six heel

who will ever bother to notice you?
The kettle and the broom sear in your grasp,
snap into fragments. The turtledoves sing,
"There's blood within the shoe."

You deserve the palace, you think, as you signal
the pigeons to attack, approve the barrel filled with red-hot nails.
Its great hearth beckons, and the prince's flag
rises crimson in the angry sun.

He will love you for the heat you generate,
for the flames you ignite around you,
though he encase your tiny feet in glass
to keep them from scorching the ground. ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey,
1079:His hand reached out and really touched the sky, The blue dome wasn't sky at all- it was ceiling. The realization struck him like a thunderbolt. He was in a giant room. What he had thought were tree trunks were the legs of chairs. The horizon was a wall. That strange formation to the south was actually a bed. There was a dressing table, a cupboard, a wardrobe. The 'hill' he'd used as a launch pad was a crumpled garment somebody had left lying on the floor. Not a giant room. Not a giant room at all! Henry had shrunk. It all came together now. The strange perspectives. The missing biofilter on the portal control. He had reached the palace all right- he was in somebody's bedroom- but he had undergone a transformation in the process. He fluttered down to the dressing table and examined himself in the towering mirror. He was a fairy creature. Except for the patterns on his wings, he looked like Pyrgus had looked like the first time they met. He was a fairy creature who could fly! He felt like dancing with delight.
Then he saw the spider. ~ Herbie Brennan,
1080:Jonathan stood next to David as his shoshbin, his esteemed groomsman, to be witness. Earlier, David had signed a ketubbah with King Saul. It was a marriage contract with the father that established their legal union and responsibilities. The father released his daughter from under his authority and the groom promised to take care of her with honor and respect. It included an accounting of the bride’s inventory of assets, which in this case was quite extravagant because of her royalty. And it included a listing of the dowry owed by the father to the groom and the bride price owed by the groom to the father. Saul winced at the disgusting memory of his foolish bride price of one hundred Philistine foreskins. It had been an attempt to endanger the young suitor. But it had come back to kick him in the goads. By Asherah, he would never make that mistake again. All that was left was for their chuppah, or sexual consummation of the bride and groom. The bridal parties left the couple to enter the palace alone and find their way to their bed chamber. ~ Brian Godawa,
1081:Darwin’s transcendantly democratic insight that all humans are descended from the same non-human ancestors, that we are all members of one family, is inevitably distorted when viewed with the impaired vision of a civilization permeated by racism. White supremacists seized on the notion that people with high abundances of melanin in their skin must be closer to our primate relatives than bleached people. Opponents of bigotry, perhaps fearing that there might be a grain of truth in this nonsense, were just as happy not to dwell on our relatedness to the apes. But both points of view are located on the same continuum: the selective application of the primate connection to the veldt and the ghetto, but never, ever, perish the thought, to the boardroom or the military academy or, God forbid, to the Senate chamber or the House of Lords, to Buckingham Palace or Pennsylvania Avenue. This is where the racism comes in, not in the inescapable recognition that, for better or worse, we humans are just a small twig on the vast and many-branched tree of life. ~ Carl Sagan,
1082:When the Queen of Sheba thought to honor Solomon, she loaded forty mules with gold bricks, but

when her caravan reached the wide plain leading to Solomon's palace, they noticed that

the top layer of the plateau was pure gold! For forty days they journeyed on gold. What

foolishness to take gold bars to Solomon when the very dirt there is gold! You that think to

offer your intelligence to God, reconsider. Intelligence on the way is less than road dust.

The embarrassing commonness of what they bring slows them down. They argue. They

discuss turning back, but they continue, carrying out the orders of their queen. Solomon

laughs when he sees them unloading. "When have I asked you for a sop for my soup? I do not

want gifts from you. I want you ready for the gifts I give. You worship a planet that creates

gold. Worship instead the one who creates universes. You worship the sun, which is only

a cook. Think of a solar eclipse. What if you get attacked at midnight? Who will help you

then? ~ Rumi,
1083:Though Owen was twenty-four years old, he felt like an old man. His cares and responsibilities were an unshakable burden. He was sick at heart, sick in his soul, and the only force that kept him going was the slender hope of escaping the daily misery his life had become. The thought of seeing Evie again—no, seeing Elysabeth again—both worried him and rekindled sparks of warmth inside his cold iron heart. He had not spoken to her once since the day they had said good-bye at the cistern in the king’s palace seven years ago. He occasionally received letters from her, flowery prose talking about the wonders of Atabyrion and the antics of her two children. He never answered—he could not bring himself to—but he had finally written to tell her of her grandfather’s failing health. He owed her that much, a chance to see her grandfather before he passed. Besides, Owen felt a debt of duty and gratitude to Duke Horwath, enough for him to summon the courage to face the girl he had loved and lost. That she was happy in her marriage to Iago made it worse somehow. ~ Jeff Wheeler,
1084:I brought him here,” he said, eager to claim credit for whatever had so overjoyed his king. “I caught him making a sacrifice to Lord Hades at your shrine, my lord Theseus, and when I tried to stop him--”
Theseus’s laughter crushed Telys’s weak attempt at boasting. “We all know what happened when you tried to stop him, you clown,” he said, wiping his eyes. “The whole palace is talking about how you were bested by a mere boy. Well, the truth is even better.”
He was off the throne and across the floor in an instant, scattering everyone who stood between him and me. He bounded behind me, grabbed the waist of my tunic with both hands, and yanked it back, hard. I’d relied on the looseness of my clothing to hide my breasts, small as they were, but now the thin cloth pulled taut against every line of my body. I might as well have been wearing nothing at all. I heard the onlookers gasp.
“Why aren’t you smiling, Telys?” Theseus leered as he confronted the horror-struck young guard. “You ought to be glad. You weren’t beaten by a boy after all. ~ Esther M Friesner,
1085:Alec Kirkbride later graphically described the events in Amman on 18 July:

"A couple of thousand Palestinian men swept up the hill toward the main [palace] entrance... screaming abuse and demanding that the lost towns should be reconquered at once... The king[of Jordan] appeared at the top of the main steps of the building; he was a short dignified figure wearing white robes and headdress. He paused for a moment, surveying the seething mob before, then walked down the steps to push his way through the line of guardsmen into the thick of the demonstrators. He went up to a prominent individual, who was shouting at the top of his voice, and dealt him a violent blow to the side of the head with the flat of his hand. The recipient of the blow stopped yelling... and the king could be heard roaring: 'so you want to fight the Jews, do you? Very well, there is a recruiting office for the army at the back of my house... go there and enlist! The rest of you, get the hell down the hillside!'

Most of the crowd got the hell down the hillside, indeed... ~ Benny Morris,
1086:Artists and artisans both demonstrate with perfect clarity that a person is least able to appropriate for himself those things which are most peculiarly his. His works leave him as birds do the best in which they were hatched.

In this respect an architect's fate is the strangest of all. How often he employs his whole intellect and warmth of feeling in the creation of rooms from which he must exclude himself. Royal halls owe their splendor to him, and he may not share in the enjoyment of their finest effects. In temples he draws the line between himself and the holy of holies; the steps he built to ceremonies that lift up the heady, he may no longer climb; just as the goldsmith worships only from afar the monstrance which he wrought in the fire and set with jewels. With the keys of the palace the architect hands over all it's comforts to the wealthy man, and has not the least part in them. Surely in this way art must little by little grow away from the artist, if the work, like a child provided for, no longer teaches back to touch its father. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
1087:The forge and dove shall break the cage. Wasn’t that the prophecy line? That meant Piper and he would have to figure out how to break into that magic rock prison, assuming they could find it. Then they’d unleash Hera’s rage, causing a lot of death. Well, that sounded fun! Leo had seen Tía Callida in action; she liked knives, snakes, and putting babies in roaring fires. Yeah, definitely let’s unleash her rage. Great idea. Festus kept flying. The wind got colder, and below them snowy forests seemed to go on forever. Leo didn’t know exactly where Quebec was. He’d told Festus to take them to the palace of Boreas, and Festus kept going north. Hopefully, the dragon knew the way, and they wouldn’t end up at the North Pole. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Piper said in his ear. “You were up all night.” Leo wanted to protest, but the word sleep sounded really good. “You won’t let me fall off?” Piper patted his shoulder. “Trust me, Valdez. Beautiful people never lie.” “Right,” he muttered. He leaned forward against the warm bronze of the dragon’s neck, and closed his eyes. ~ Rick Riordan,
1088:This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency? The ugliness of American decoration, American entertainment, American literature - is not this the visible expression of the impoverishment of the European masses, a manifestation of all the backwardness, deprivation, and want that arrived here in boatloads from Europe? The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof. The European traveler, viewing with distaste a movie palace or a Motorola, is only looking into the terrible concavity of his continent of hunger inverted startlingly into the convex. Our civilization, deformed as it is outwardly, is still an accomplishment; all this had to come to light. ~ Mary McCarthy,
1089:Riot Eve
haven’t, thank God, become a perpetrator.
never caused the death of others, though I must utter these words.
hold myself back, as the shrewd son of my father.
see it like this: a lion will attack a gazelle.
We have one life. Why spend it being feebly decent?
We see but one night; we contain others.
I ask myself if this path and all those terrible detours were really necessary.
There is a reason for everything, and our catastrophe.
Imagine then that a father returns and doesn’t speak about any of this.
He carries me on his shoulders during the long walk in the forest.
Imagine a man - so polite, so clean;
his swiftness, his warmth, his murderous ideas.
Look, nothing in this world is perfect.
This is the condition, now growing darker.
History has shown us: the Black Death, the Borgias...
I await the real wooden anger that shapes me.
The gardens have roared for days.
The wind bends the trees. It is like a sign.
I hear of a palace rising.
It is just after midnight, and I will obey you.
~ Emma Lew,
1090:A tall, thin, middle-aged man with a long, gray Jovian beard stood outside the Hermitage Museum with an expression of absolute shattered regret. Tatiana instantly reacted to his face. What could make a man look this way? He was standing next to the back of a military truck, watching young men carry wooden crates down the ramp from the Winter Palace. It was these crates the man looked at with such profound heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love. “Who is that man?” she asked, tremendously affected by his expression. “The curator of the Hermitage.” “Why is he looking at the crates that way?” Alexander said, “They are his life’s sole passion. He doesn’t know if he is ever going to see them again.” Tatiana stared at the man. She almost wanted to go and comfort him. “He’s got to have more faith, don’t you think?” “I agree, Tania.” Alexander smiled. “He’s got to have a little more faith. After the war is over, he will see his crates again.” “The way he is looking at them, after the war is over he is going to bring them back single-handedly,” declared Tatiana. ~ Paullina Simons,
1091:A brief survey of Mere Christianity supplies the following list: becoming a Christian (passing over from life to death) is like joining a campaign of sabotage, like falling at someone’s feet or putting yourself in someone’s hands, like taking on board fuel or food, like laying down your rebel arms and surrendering, saying sorry, laying yourself open, turning full speed astern; it is like killing part of yourself, like learning to walk or to write, like buying God a present with his own money; it is like a drowning man clutching at a rescuer’s hand, like a tin soldier or a statue coming alive, like waking after a long sleep, like getting close to someone or becoming infected, like dressing up or pretending or playing; it is like emerging from the womb or hatching from an egg; it is like a compass needle swinging to north, or a cottage being made into a palace, or a field being plowed and resown, or a horse turning into a Pegasus, or a greenhouse roof becoming bright in the sunlight; it is like coming around from anesthetic, like coming in out of the wind, like going home. ~ Holly Ordway,
1092:She sat back, eyeing the flames now leaping upward to lick at the wooden beams of the ceiling. "If this fire gets out of hand, or if the guards take too long to come, you and I may be in a lot of trouble."
"We are already in a lot of trouble."
"That was my reasoning, too. Of course, if that happens and the fire gets too big before the mighty citizens of Ringhmon stop it, it'll also gut this little palace and destroy everything inside it. Including the enormously expensive Model Six that I just fixed, which they'll be responsible for paying fo, and probably the other Model Six that they openly own." She shrugged, trying to appear unworried. "That'll teach them to kidnap me. But that won't happen. We'll be fine."
"You say that and yet you are frightened."
"Yes, I'm frightened! I admit it! Happy? No, wait, Mages are never happy. Just try not to die, all right? I don't want that to be my fault."
Alain thought through her words. "I will attempt not to die. Your plan appears to be sound, as well as potentially very destructive. I see that it is a mistake to offend you. ~ Jack Campbell,
1093:A Vow
I might not ever scale the mountain heights
Where all the great men stand in glory now;
I may not ever gain the world's delights
Or win a wreath of laurel for my brow;
I may not gain the victories that men
Are fighting for, nor do a thing to boast of;
I may not get a fortune here, but then,
The little that I have I'll make the most of.
I'll make my little home a palace fine,
My little patch of green a garden fair,
And I shall know each humble plant and vine
As rich men know their orchid blossoms rare.
My little home may not be much to see;
Its chimneys may not tower far above;
But it will be a mansion great to me,
For in its walls I'll keep a hoard of love.
I will not pass my modest pleasures by
To grasp at shadows of more splendid things,
Disdaining what of joyousness is nigh
Because I am denied the joy of kings.
But I will laugh and sing my way along,
I'll make the most of what is mine to-day,
And if I never rise above the throng,
I shall have lived a full life anyway.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
1094:Greetings to you, Legendary One : you are a haunted house, and nothing at all would be achieved by sending a delegation of scientists with all their little bits of apparatus to observe the strange phenomena to which you play martyred host. But midnight is not long enough for your adorable ghosts : even the whole day, even the hours of sleep are scarcely sufficient, between your walls a perpetual sound of trailing robes makes you deliciously uneasy, you are in love with this sound. O what queen then has the palace that takes your form the palace from whose vault there once issued a damnable song and a black knight ? Her arms, her beautiful white arms embrace your memory. Your memory ? why no, it is she herself defying time and its quagmires, she is returning through the crannies of your veins, she gives a long, slow smile, is about to speak, the air she sings and breathes is quite changed by some new sovereign thought, she is aroused, she speaks, her breast quivers, and I hear. It is the sound of her heart which marks the beat of all my dreams. Here I am, my love, I have not left you. ~ Louis Aragon,
1095:I want to see Milo,” I replied. “He’s going to come with me while I look around Delphi.”
“Milo?” the other soldier echoed as we left the sanctuary grounds.
“You know, the little Calydonian,” his comrade said. “How stupid are you? It’s not like he blends in with the rest of us. A good lad, but fretful. He was up half the night worrying about how he’d ever know whether Lady Helen would need him to run errands for her while we’re at Delphi.”
“Is that right?” I asked.
The soldier nodded. “Yes, Lady Helen. It was a great kindness you did, freeing him from slavery, but now gratitude’s made him enslave himself to you. You’ve got a fine servant in that boy.”
“Not forever,” I said. “Right now there’s no choice about it--he’s got no family, no way to feed himself--but once we get home I’ll apprentice him to one of the palace craftsmen. Then he can live his own life.”
“A jug of wine says he’ll only be happy if he can live it close to her,” the first soldier muttered to the other, but when I demanded he repeat his words to my face, he claimed he’d said nothing at all. ~ Esther M Friesner,
1096:The Greatest Thing In North America
This is the greatest thing in North America:
Europe is the greatest thing in North America!
High in the sky, dark in the heart, and always there
Among the natural powers of sunlight and of air,
Changing, second by second, shifting and changing the
light,
Bring fresh rain to the stone of the library steps.
Under the famous names upon the pediment:
Thales, Aristotle,
Cicero, Augustine, Scotus, Galileo,
Joseph, Odysseus, Hamlet, Columbus and Spinoza,
Anna Karenina, Alyosha Karamazov, Sherlock Holmes.
And the last three also live upon the silver screen
Three blocks away, in moonlight's artificial day,
A double bill in the darkened palace whirled,
And the veritable glittering light of the turning world's
Burning mind and blazing imagination, showing, day by
day
And week after week the desires of the heart and mind
Of all the living souls yearning everywhere
From Canada to Panama, from Brooklyn to Paraguay,
From Cuba to Vancouver, every afternoon and every night.
~ Delmore Schwartz,
1097:When Constantine converted to Christianity, there basically was no Christian architecture. Local Christian communities met in converted houses, and especially in the face of periodic imperial persecution, the religion had developed no specific architectural forms of its own. In the fourth century, therefore, as imperial patronage and ongoing processes of conversion caused large numbers of specialist churches to be built for the first time, the religion took over an old form of public building from the Graeco-Roman world: the basilica. This was a rectangular, shallow-vaulted building, usually equipped with aisles around an elevated central nave and an apse at one end. It had long been used for town council buildings and audience chambers across the Mediterranean world, with the apse being occupied by the presiding figure of power (or indeed the emperor in the case of a palace audience chamber). For Christianity, the apse worked nicely for the sacred space of the altar, and the basilica was a building form essentially designed for meetings, which worked, too, as a space for church services ~ Peter Heather,
1098:The Party
THE house is bright with lights and lights,
Like a palace in the Arabian Nights,
Lights in festoons and lights in clusters,
In chandeliers and crystal lustres;
And all the length of the stairs' broad way,
Tapestries green and pink and gray
Tell a story of ladies' bowers
Hung with apples and paved with flowers;
And beyond, an open arch discloses
An inner garden of palms and roses,
With lines of lilies against the walls,
And a fountain that falls - and waits - and falls.
And from the ballroom comes the beat
Of dance music and dancing feet,
And through the doorways of gold and glass
Figures of dancers pass and pass,
Lovely creatures in dripping laces,
And all have sad, unhopeful faces.
One person only yields to joy,
And he is a footman - a round-faced boy Stiff in a livery of black and green,
And he laughs at something heard or seen,
Laughs with a loud and lonely gladness,
Laughs perhaps at the dancers' sadness;
He only seemed for an instant gay,
And he was instantly sent away.
~ Alice Duer Miller,
1099:You want me to level, here it is: I need you. I need you because I love you. Three months without you will be hell. But even if we weren’t together, I would still need you. You’re a good fighter, you’ve worked as a bodyguard, and you know magic. We may not have many magic users, but we don’t know if those packs do, and if they hit us with magic, we have no way to counter.” He spread his arms. “But I love you and I don’t want you to be hurt. I’m not going to ask you to come with me. That would be like stepping in front of a moving train and saying, ‘Hey, honey, come stand next to me.’”

I hopped off the wall and stood next to him. “Anytime.”

He just looked at me.

“I’ve never killed a train before. It might be fun to try.”

“Are you sure?”

“One time I was dying in a cage inside a palace that was flying over a magic jungle. And some idiot went in there, chased the palace down, fought his way through hundreds of rakshasas, and rescued me.”

“I remember,” he said.

“That’s when I realized you loved me,” I said. “I was in the cage and I heard you roar. ~ Ilona Andrews,
1100:Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there, near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all day with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and velvets, and fair faces.  The large and spacious houses, with their oriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs, breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers, and complicated oaths.  They were upraised in the days “when men knew how to build.”  The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set with time, and their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down them quietly. Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is a magnificent carved oak staircase in one of the houses in Kingston.  It is a shop now, in the market-place, but it was evidently once the mansion of some great personage.  A friend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there to buy a hat one day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his pocket and paid for it then and there. ~ Jerome K Jerome,
1101:There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the king’s bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. He was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition—I would see to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the rest, it would be a king in commoner’s garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and be comforted. ~ Mark Twain,
1102:The Palace

The Palace is not infinite.

The walls, the ramparts, the gardens, the labyrinths, the staircases, the terraces, the parapets, the doors, the galleries, the circular or rectangular patios, the cloisters, the intersections, the cisterns, the anterooms, the chambers, the alcoves, the libraries, the attics, the dungeons, the sealed cells and the vaults, are not less in quantity than the grains of sand in the Ganges, but their number has a limit. From the roofs, towards sunset, many people can make out the forges, the workshops, the stables, the boatyards and the huts of the slaves.

It is granted to no one to traverse more than an infinitesimal part of the palace. Some know only the cellars. We can take in some faces, some voices, some words, but what we perceive is of the feeblest. Feeble and precious at the same time. The date which the chisel engraves in the tablet, and which is recorded in the parochial registers, is later than our own death; we are already dead when nothing touches us, neither a word nor a yearning nor a memory. I know that I am not dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand,
1103:Kestrel was stiff, her delicate shoes planted in the walkway’s gravel. She had lifted the hem of her storm-green skirts, the gesture of a lady, but he saw how she made fists of the fabric.
"I’m sorry,” he said, guessing what troubled her: the memory of the Firstwinter Rebellion. Her dead friends, Arin’s deception, the halls of the governor’s palace choked with corpses.
She gave him a narrow look. “Part of you isn’t sorry.”
He couldn’t deny it.
But she softened and said, “I’m not innocent either. I, too, feel sorry and not sorry about things I’ve done.” She let her dress’s hem fall to the stones and touched three fingers to the back of his hand.
Arin forgot, for a moment, where he was and what they were discussing. A marvel: that such a light touch could feel like a whole caress, that his body could ignite so easily.
Now she looked amused.
“Let’s leave.” He slid a hand beneath her loose hair and thumbed the slope of her neck, feeling the fluttery pulse there. Her expression changed, amusement melting into slow pleasure. He said, “Let’s not go in.”
“Arin.” She sighed. “We must go in. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1104:She smoothed her skirt around her knees. “This Scarlet … you’re in love with her, aren’t you?” He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and he returned his gaze to the window. “She’s my alpha,” he murmured, with a haunting sadness in his voice. Alpha. Cress leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “Like the star?” “What star?” She stiffened, instantly embarrassed, and scooted back from him again. “Oh. Um. In a constellation, the brightest star is called the alpha. I thought maybe you meant that she’s … like … your brightest star.” Looking away, she knotted her hands in her lap, aware that she was blushing furiously now and this beast of a man was about to realize what an over-romantic sap she was. But instead of sneering or laughing, Wolf sighed. “Yes,” he said, his gaze climbing up to the full moon that had emerged over the city. “Exactly like that.” With a quick twist to her heart, Cress’s fear of him began to subside. She’d been right back at the boutique. He was like the hero of a romance story, and he was trying to rescue his beloved. His alpha. ~ Marissa Meyer,
1105:Fragment
I WALK'D along a stream, for pureness rare,
Brighter than sun-shine; for it did acquaint
The dullest sight with all the glorious prey
That in the pebble-paved channel lay.
No molten crystal, but a richer mine,
Even Nature's rarest alchymy ran there,-Diamonds resolv'd, and substance more divine,
Through whose bright-gliding current might appear
A thousand naked nymphs, whose ivory shine,
Enamelling the banks, made them more dear
Than ever was that glorious palace' gate
Where the day-shining Sun in triumph sate.
Upon this brim the eglantine and rose,
The tamarisk, olive, and the almond tree,
As kind companions, in one union grows,
Folding their twining arms, as oft we see
Turtle-taught lovers either other close,
Lending to dulness feeling sympathy;
And as a costly valance o'er a bed,
So did their garland-tops the brook o'erspread.
Their leaves, that differ'd both in shape and show,
Though all were green, yet difference such in green,
Like to the checker'd bent of Iris' bow,
Prided the running main, as it had been-~ Christopher Marlowe,
1106:Two years after Midnight’s Children he published Shame, the second part of the diptych in which he examined the world of his origins, a work deliberately conceived to be the formal opposite of its precursor, dealing for the most part not with India but with Pakistan, shorter, more tightly plotted, written in the third person rather than the first, with a series of characters occupying the center of the stage one after the other instead of a single dominant narrator-antihero. Nor was this a book written with love; his feelings toward Pakistan were ferocious, satirical, personal. Pakistan was that place where the crooked few ruled the impotent many, where bent civilian politicians and unscrupulous generals allied with one another, supplanted one another, and executed one another, echoing the Rome of the Caesars, where mad tyrants bedded their sisters and made their horses into senators and fiddled while their city burned. But, for the ordinary Roman—and so also for the ordinary Pakistani—the murderous, psychotic mayhem inside the palace changed nothing. The palace was still the palace. The ruling class continued to rule. ~ Salman Rushdie,
1107:Lettice
I said to Lettice, our sister Lettice,
While drooped and glistened her eyelash brown,
'Your man's a poor man, a cold and dour man,
There's many a better about our town.'
She smiled securely - 'He loves me purely:
A true heart's safe, both in smile or frown;
And nothing harms me while his love warms me,
Whether the world go up or down.'
'He comes of strangers, and they are rangers,
And ill to trust, girl, when out of sight:
Fremd folk may blame ye, and e'en defame ye,
A gown oft handled looks seldom white.'
She raised serenely her eyelids queenly, 'My innocence is my whitest gown;
No harsh tongue grieves me while he believes me,
Whether the world go up or down.'
'Your man's a frail man, was ne'er a hale man,
And sickness knocketh at every door,
And death comes making bold hearts cower, breaking -'
Our Lettice trembled; - but once, no more.
'If death should enter, smite to the center
Our poor home palace, all crumbling down,
He cannot fright us, nor disunite us,
Life bears Love's cross, death brings Love's crown.'
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
1108:The first sorrow of autumn is the slow good-bye of the garden that stands so long in the evening—a brown poppy head, the stalk of a lily, and still cannot go.

The second sorrow is the empty feet of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers. The woodland of gold is folded in feathers with its head in a bag.

And the third sorrow is the slow good-bye of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers the minutes of evening, the golden and holy ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow is the pond gone black, ruined, and sunken the city of water—the beetle's palace, the catacombs of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow is the slow good-bye of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp. One day it's gone. It has only left litter—firewood, tent poles.

And the sixth sorrow is the fox's sorrow, the joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds, the hooves that pound; till earth closes her ear to the fox's prayer.

And the seventh sorrow is the slow good-bye of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window as the year packs up like a tatty fairground that came for the children. ~ Ted Hughes,
1109:I’m not for you,” I say desperately. “We are so different. Our lives are a thousand and one worlds apart. It wouldn’t work. And it’s dangerous.”
But his face only brightens. “Then you do feel the same.”
“We are not the same—and that is the whole point! I am not human, Aladdin. Everything that was once human in me was destroyed, and I was forged into something entirely different. I’m not here to help you—I was never here to help you, or any of my masters.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” I say bitterly. “It is what it is, and it has nothing to do with what you want.”
He walks around me, forcing me to face him. “You helped me get away from Darian in the desert. You got me into the palace when you could have let them find out who I really was. You taught me to dance, for sky’s sake! You’ve had a hundred opportunities to trick me and betray me, but you don’t. You’ve helped me when I didn’t wish for it.”
“A chicken doesn’t fly like other birds, but it is still a bird.”
“Zahra!” He spreads his hands, the wind ruffling his hair. “You do care. I see it when you think I’m not looking. ~ Jessica Khoury,
1110:Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now. And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices;--on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes. ~ Anthony Trollope,
1111:Kestrel, what are you doing?”
She had forgotten what she wore. “Nothing.”
He lifted his dark brows.
“It was a dare,” she said. “A senator’s daughter dared me to sneak out of the palace without an escort.”
“Try harder, Kestrel.”
She muttered, “I was tired of being closed up inside the palace.”
“That I believe. But I doubt it’s the whole truth.”
Arin’s eyes were narrow, inspecting her. His hand slid along the railing as he came close. He reached for the collar of the sailor’s coat. He drew it away from her neck.
The world went luscious, and slow, and still.
He bowed his head. Stitches scratched against her cheek. Arin buried his face in the hollow between her neck and the coat collar and breathed in. Warmth flooded her.
Kestrel imagined: his mouth parting against her skin. The teeth of his smile. And she imagined more, she saw what she would do, how she would forget herself, how everything would slip and unloop, like rich ribbon off its spool. The dream of this held her. She couldn’t move.
She felt him feel how she didn’t move. Arin hesitated. He lifted his head and looked down at her. The blacks of his eyes were huge. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1112:It took eleven weeks to organize the hunt for Osama bin Laden. When that hunt began in earnest, I was in eastern Afghanistan, in and around Jalalabad, where I had traveled on five trips over the years. An old acquaintance named Haji Abdul Qadir had just reclaimed his post as the provincial governor, two days after the fall of the Taliban. Haji Qadir was an exemplar of Afghan democracy. A well-educated and highly cultured Pathan tribal leader in his early sixties, a wealthy dealer in opium and weapons and other basic staples of the Afghan economy, he had been a CIA-supported commander in the fight against the Soviet occupation, the governor of his province from 1992 to 1996, and a close associate of the Taliban in their time. He personally welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and helped him establish a compound outside Jalalabad. Now he welcomed the American occupation. Haji Qadir was a good host. We walked in the gardens of the governor’s palace, through swayback palms and feathery tamarisks. He was expecting a visit from his American friends any day now, and he was looking forward to the renewal of old ties and the ritual exchange of cash for information. ~ Tim Weiner,
1113:I'm not resigned, Jean. I'm angry. We need to cease being powerless as soon as possible.'

'Right. So where do we start?'

'Well, I'm going back to the inn. I'm going to pour a gallon of cold water down my throat. I'm going to get into bed, put a pillow over my head and stay there until sunset.'

'I approve.'

'Good. Then we'll both be well rested when it comes time to get up and find a black alchemist. I want a second opinion on latent poisons. I want to know everything there is to know about the subject, and whether there are any antidotes we can start trying,'

'Agreed.'

'After that, we can add one more small item to our agenda for this Tal Verrar holiday of ours.'

'Kick the Archon in the teeth?'

'Gods yes,' said Locke, smacking a fist into an open palm. 'Whether or not we finish the Requin job first. Whether or not there really is poison! I'm going to take his whole bloody palace and shove it so far his are he'll have stone towers for tonsils.'

'Any plans to that effect?'

'No idea. I've no idea whatsoever. I'll reflect on it, that's for damn sure. But as for not being rash, well, no promises. ~ Scott Lynch,
1114:Whoever believes in the myth of ‘peaceful coexistence that marked the relationships between the conquered and the conquerors’ should reread the stories of the burned convents and monasteries, of the profaned churches, of the raped nuns, of the Christian or Jewish women abducted to be locked away in their harems. He should ponder on the crucifixions of Cordoba, the hangings of Granada, the beheadings of Toledo and Barcelona, of Seville and Zamora. (The beheadings of Seville, ordered by Mutamid: the king who used those severed heads, heads of Jews and Christians, to adorn his palace). Invoking the name of Jesus meant instant execution. Crucifixion, of course, or decapitation or hanging or impalement. Ringing a bell, the same. Wearing green, the colour of Islam, also. And when a Muslim passed by, every Jew and Christian was obliged to step aside. To bow. And mind to the Jew or the Christian who dared react to the insults of a Muslim. As for the much-flaunted detail that the infidel-dogs were not obliged to convert to Islam, not even encouraged to do so, do you know why they were not? Because those who converted to Islam did not pay taxes. Those who refused, on the contrary, did. ~ Oriana Fallaci,
1115:Buckingham Palace
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
"Well, God take care of him, all the same,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They've great big parties inside the grounds.
"I wouldn't be King for a hundred pounds,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the King's.
"He's much too busy a-signing things,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
Says Alice.
~ Alan Alexander Milne,
1116:That girl, the girl he had spent the afternoon with, the girl who had leapt off the sides of buildings and pole-vaulted off others, who had charmed Abu and shared an apple with him, was not some rich girl off for a jaunt or running away from home. She was a princess. The royal princess.
Jasmine.
Her eyes were black and hard. Her back was straight; her arms hung gracefully at her sides as if she had too much power even to need to put them on her hips or cross them in anger. Her diadem sparkled.
"The princess...?" Aladdin said faintly.
It was said that Jasmine was beautiful; it was said she was quick-witted. Both of these were without question true.
It was also said that she was a witch with a tiger for a familiar. It was said she tore her suitors to shreds- verbally and, vis-a-vis the tiger, occasionally literally.
"Princess Jasmine," Rasoul said immediately, lowering his eyes and bowing. "What are you doing outside the palace? And with this... Street Rat?"
"That is none of your concern," Jasmine said. She put her hands on her hips and marched right up into the captain's space as if he was no more to her than an irritating camel. "Do as I command. Release him. ~ Liz Braswell,
1117:You, er, want us to attack him?" said the guard miserably. Thick though the palace guard were, they were as aware as everyone else of the conventions, and when guards are summoned to deal with one man in overheated circumstances it's not a good time for them.The bugger's bound to be heroic, he was thinking. This guard was not looking forward to a future in which he was dead.
"Of course, you idiot!"
"But, er, there's only one of him" said the guard captain.
"And he's smilin'," said a man behind him.
"Prob'ly goin' to swing on the chandeliers any minute," said one of his collegues. "And kick over the table, and that."
"He's not even armed!" shrieked Wonse.
"Worse kind, that," said one of the guards, with deep stoicism."They leap up, see, and grab one of the ornamental swords behind the shield over the fireplace."
"Yeah," said another, suspiciously. " And then they chucks a chair at you."
"There's no fireplace! There's no sword! There's only him!Now take him!" screamed Wonse.
A couple of guard grabbed Vimes tentatively by the shoulders.
"You're not going to do anything heroic, are you?" whispered one of them.
"Wouldn't know where to start," he said. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1118:when Catherine the Great told her chancellor that she wanted to ride out in the great Empire of Russia and meet the happy peasants everyone kept telling her lived there, the chancellor—his name was Potemkin—understood immediately that shit-caked, disease-ridden serfs begging from frostbitten lips and extending three-fingered hands to their absolute monarch would not entirely fill her with joy. So he grabbed a couple of hundred minor nobles and dressed them as peasants and paid them off. Then he built a bunch of fake villages and rode Catherine through them, and she was delighted to see that agricultural labour was surprisingly easy and the soil of Russia was amazingly fertile even without much assistance from mankind. She was thrilled at the beauty of her subjects and at their surprisingly educated voices as they sang and tilled the soil. She went back to the palace and eventually died at the age of sixty-seven, still at least notionally unaware that she ruled an impoverished, brutal nation ripening towards a staggering violence. (She died of a stroke. There was, contrary to the prurient slander, no horse penis involved.) In short, I have been building Potemkin villages: faking it. ~ Nick Harkaway,
1119:The new prophets were men of a modest humane disposition: they brought life back to the village scale and the normal human dimensions; and out of this weakness they made a new kind of strength, not recognized in the palace or the marketplace. These meek, withdrawn, low-keyed, outwardly humble men appeared alone, or with a handful of equally humble followers, unarmed, unprotected. They did not look for institutional support: on the contrary, they dared to condemn and defy those in established positions, even predicting their downfall if they continued their established practices: "Mene, mene, tekel upharsin." "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting."

Even more intransigently than kings, the Axial prophets dared depart from customary usages and traditions, not only those of civilization, but the sexual cults, with their orgies and sacrifices that derived from neolithic practices. For them, nothing was sacred that did not lead to a higher life; and by higher they meant emancipated from both materialistic display and animal urgencies. Against the personified corporate power of kingship they stood for the precise opposite: the power of personality in each living soul. ~ Lewis Mumford,
1120:When The Watchman Saw The Light
Winter, summer, the watchman sat there looking out
from the roof of Atreus' palace.
Now he has good news to report. He's seen the fire light up
in the distance and he's happy; besides, the drudgery's over now:
it's hard to sit there night and day in heat and cold,
waiting for a fire to show
on the peak of Arachnaion.
Now the longed-for signal has appeared. Yet when happiness comes
it brings less joy than one expected.
But at least we've gained this much: we've rid ourselves
of hope and expectation. Many things will happen
to the house of Atreus: no need to be wise
to guess this now the watchman has seen the light.
So let's not exaggerate.
The light is good; and those coming are good,
their words and actions also good.
And let's hope all goes well.
But Argos can do without the house of Atreus.
Ancient houses are not eternal.
Of course many people will have much to say.
We should listen. But we won't be deceived
by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great.
Someone else indispensable and unique and great
can always be found at a moment's notice.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
1121:A study of advertising found that the average person in Shanghai saw three times as many advertisements in a typical day as a consumer in London. The market was flooded with new brands seeking to distinguish themselves, and Chinese consumers were relatively comfortable with bold efforts to get their attention. Ads were so abundant that fashion magazines ran up against physical constraints: editors of the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan once had to split an issue into two volumes because a single magazine was too thick to handle. My cell phone was barraged by spam offering a vast range of consumption choices. “Attention aspiring horseback riders,” read a message from Beijing’s “largest indoor equestrian arena.” In a single morning, I received word of a “giant hundred-year-old building made with English craftsmanship” and a “palace-level baroque villa with fifty-four thousand square meters of private gardens.” Most of the messages sold counterfeit receipts to help people file false expense reports. I liked to imagine the archetypal Chinese man of the moment, waking each morning in a giant English building and mounting his horse to cross his private garden, on the way to buy some fake receipts. ~ Evan Osnos,
1122:Believe me, together
     The bright gods come ever,
       Still as of old;
Scarce see I Bacchus, the giver of joy,
Than comes up fair Eros, the laugh-loving boy,
       And Phoebus, the stately, behold!

     They come near and nearer,
      The heavenly ones all
     The gods with their presence
      Fill earth as their hall!

     Say, how shall I welcome,
     Human and earthborn,
       Sons of the sky?
Pour out to mepour the full life that ye live!
What to ye, O ye gods! can the mortal one give?

     The joys can dwell only
      In Jupiter's palace
     Brimmed bright with your nectar,
      Oh, reach me the chalice!

     "Hebe, the chalice
     Fill full to the brim!
Steep his eyessteep his eyes in the bath of the dew,
Let him dream, while the Styx is concealed from his view,
     That the life of the gods is for him!"

     It murmurs, it sparkles,
      The fount of delight;
     The bosom grows tranquil
       The eye becomes bright.
      
~ Friedrich Schiller, Dithyramb
,
1123:Mother Nature
GOOD, kindly Mother Nature plays
No favorites, but smiles for all
Who care to tread her pleasant ways
And listen to the song birds' call.
The tulips and the violets grow
For all the world to gaze upon;
With beauty are the hills aglow
Not for a few, but everyone.
Her grass grows green for rich and poor,
For proud and humble, high and low;
Beside the toiler's cottage door
Her morning glories sweetly grow.
In palace or in tenement
Her sunbeams just as gayly dance;
No special charm to one is sent,
No favored few possess her glance.
Her skies are blue for one and all,
Her flowers for every mortal bloom;
Her rains upon all creatures fall,
For all the world is her perfume.
The rich man gets no sweeter smile
Than does the ragged barefoot boy;
Yes, all who live and love the while,
May Mother Nature's charms enjoy.
Ah, what a lesson we may learn
From kindly Mother Nature's ways!
A smiling face we seldom turn
To strangers, when we meet their gaze.
A kindly word we seldom speak
Except unto a favored few,
And some return we often seek
For every kindly deed we do.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
1124:Truth is elusive, subtle, manysided. You know, Priscilla, there’s an old Hindu story about Truth. It seems a brash young warrior sought the hand of a beautiful princess. Her father, the king, thought he was a bit too cocksure and callow. He decreed that the warrior could only marry the princess after he had found Truth. So the warrior set out into the world on a quest for Truth. He went to temples and monasteries, to mountaintops where sages meditated, to remote forests where ascetics scourged themselves, but nowhere could he find Truth. Despairing one day and seeking shelter from a thunderstorm, he took refuge in a musty cave. There was an old crone there, a hag with matted hair and warts on her face, the skin hanging loose from her bony limbs, her teeth yellow and rotting, her breath malodorous. But as he spoke to her, with each question she answered, he realized he had come to the end of his journey: she was Truth. They spoke all night, and when the storm cleared, the warrior told her he had fulfilled his quest. ‘Now that I have found Truth,’ he said, ‘what shall I tell them at the palace about you?’ The wizened old creature smiled. ‘Tell them,’ she said, ‘tell them that I am young and beautiful. ~ Shashi Tharoor,
1125:Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool. His mind broke the surface and fell back several times. There was red lipstick on his beard. He opened one eye, saw the brilliant colors of the quilt and closed his eye quickly. But after a while he looked again. His eye went past the quilt to the floor, to the broken plate in the corner, to the glasses standing on the table turned over on the floor, to the spilled wine and the books like heavy fallen butterflies. There were little bits of curled red paper all over the place and the sharp smell of firecrackers. He could see through the kitchen door to the steak plates stacked high and the skillets deep in grease. Hundreds of cigarette butts were stamped out on the floor. And under the firecracker smell was a fine combination of wine and whiskey perfume. His eye stopped for a moment on a little pile of hairpins in the middle of the floor.
He rolled over slowly and supporting himself on one elbow he looked out the broken window. Cannery Row was quiet and sunny. The boiler was open. The door of the Palace Flophouse was closed. A man slept peacefully among the weeds in the vacant lot. The Bear Flag was shut up tight. ~ John Steinbeck,
1126:INTERVIEWER

Why don’t you write tragedy?

BARTHELME

I’m fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It’s a habit of mind, a perversity. Tom Hess used to tell a story, maybe from Lewis Carroll, I don’t remember, about an enraged mob storming the palace shouting “More taxes! Less bread!” As soon as I hear a proposition I immediately consider its opposite. A double-minded man—makes for mixtures.

INTERVIEWER

Apparently the Yiddish theater, to which Kafka was very addicted, includes as a typical bit of comedy two clowns, more or less identical, who appear even in sad scenes—the parting of two lovers, for instance—and behave comically as the audience is weeping. This shows up especially in The Castle.

BARTHELME

The assistants.

INTERVIEWER

And the audience doesn’t know what to do.

BARTHELME

The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude. As when you attend a funeral and notice, against your will, that it’s being poorly done. [...] I think of the line from the German writer Heimito von Doderer: “At first you break windows. Then you become a window yourself. ~ Donald Barthelme,
1127:Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness.

Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down - rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen. ~ Laurie Lee,
1128:I love London. I love everything about it. I love its palaces and its museums and its galleries, sure. But also, I love its filth, and damp, and stink. Okay, well, I don’t mean love, exactly. But I don’t mind it. Not any more. Not now I’m used to it. You don’t mind anything once you’re used to it. Not the graffiti you find on your door the week after you painted over it, or the chicken bones and cider cans you have to move before you can sit down for your damp and muddy picnic. Not the everchanging fast food joints – AbraKebabra to Pizza the Action to Really Fried Chicken – and all on a high street that despite its three new names a week never seems to look any different. Its tawdriness can be comforting, its wilfulness inspiring. It’s the London I see every day. I mean, tourists: they see the Dorchester. They see Harrods, and they see men in bearskins and Carnaby Street. They very rarely see the Happy Shopper on the Mile End Road, or a drab Peckham disco. They head for Buckingham Palace, and see waving above it the red, white and blue, while the rest of us order dansak from the Tandoori Palace, and see Simply Red, White Lightning, and Duncan from Blue. But we should be proud of that, too. Or, at least, get used to it. ~ Danny Wallace,
1129:Happiness
If he sunbeams will not start you to rejoicing,
If the laughter of your babies you can hear
Without little songs of gladness gayly voicing,
If their dancing doesn't drive away your tear;
If you don't find happiness where they are playing,
If they do not make your pathways bright and sunny,
Then gladness from your heart has gone a-straying
And you won't be any happier with money.
If the blue skies bending over you don't thrill you,
If the roses just a-bursting into bloom
With a sense of perfect pleasure do not fill you,
If the song birds do not chase away your gloom;
If you cannot find contentment in your cottage
Then your heart for joy has not become a chalice,
If you cannot, smiling, eat your simple pottage,
Then you'd not be any happier in a palace.
If a troop of healthy, laughing boys and lassies
Doesn't strike you as a reason to rejoice;
If the glories of the earth, when winter passes,
You behold and still retain a whining voice;
If it doesn't rouse your spirits to go fishing,
Then your heart is but a cupboard for despair,
And for money all in vain today you're wishing,
You'd make a most unhappy millionaire.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
1130:suddenly these doors burst open and the two boys came out and they were so excited. They were hopping up and down waiting for their mum and dad to come, and Diana whisked past the hand-shaking people and her whole face lit up, and she took her hat off and she scuttled down the whole length of the yacht as fast as she could and was hugging them and kissing them. Fincher’s photograph is one of the most famous ever taken of Diana, her arms outstretched, William launching himself into her embrace. She asked Fincher for a copy which she displayed in her dressing room at Kensington Palace. But it wasn’t the only picture on that roll of film. And then a few seconds behind her Prince Charles did the same thing. He came down, he was hugging and kissing the boys too. But the sad thing was that all the pictures that were used were her with her arms out, and nobody ever used a picture of him. I think he got a bad press with the children at that time. Everybody kept saying, ‘Oh, this awful father’ and everything, which wasn’t true. He’s always been a lovely father. But I think he wasn’t seen with the children and she was – and in a lot of high-profile places like Thorpe Park. And so people tended to see that and think, Where’s he? all the time. ~ Tim Clayton,
1131:(At a health and fitness fair)

Though normally superconfident, I am not prepared for the judgmental stares of the ultrafit. They don't know me and have no idea of my prowess in the boardroom. They're unfamiliar with my shoe collection and unaware that I live in the Dot-Com Palace. And they didn't notice me pulling up in the Caddy. All they can see is how much space I occupy.

With each step I take, I feel cellulite blossoming on my arms, my stomach, my calves. Stop it! I think my chin just multiplied and my thighs inflated. No! Deflate! Deflate! And I'm pretty sure I can see my own ass out of the corner of my eye. Gah! Cut it out!! Am I imagining things, or do my footsteps sound like those of the giant who stomped through the city in the beginning of Underdog? And how did I go from aging-but-still-kind-of-hot ex-sorority girl to horrific, stompy cartoon monster in less than an hour?

My sleek and sexy python sandals have morphed into cloven hooves by the time I reach the line for the race packet. While I wait, the air is abuzz with tales of other marathons while many sets of eyes cut in my direction. Eventually an asshat in a JUST DO IT T-shirt asks me, "How's your training going? ~ Jen Lancaster,
1132:When clarity was returned to you, when it was painstakingly restored, it could drive you mad. Your reawakened memory could derange you, the memory of humiliation, of so much handling, of so many intrusions, the memory of men. Not a palace but a brothel of memories, and behind those memories the knowledge that those who loved you were dead, that there was no escape. Such knowledge could make you come to your feet, gather “yourself, and run. If you ran fast enough you might be able to escape your past and the memory of everything that had been done to you, and the future as well, the inescapable bleakness ahead. Were there brothers to rescue you? No, your brothers were dead. Perhaps the world itself was dead. Yes, it was. To be a part of the dead world it was necessary that you die as well. It was necessary that you run as fast as possible until you reached the edge between the worlds and then you didn't stop you ran on across that border as if it wasn't there as if glass was air and air was glass, the air shattering around you like glass as you fell. The air slicing you to pieces as if it were a blade. It was good to fall. It was good to fall out of life. It was good.”

Excerpt From: Toppy. “The Enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie. ~ Salman Rushdie,
1133:Pizza Palace?” David asks. It’s just a few doors down. I picture my friends all huddled in a booth in the back. No need to combine David with my real life.

“Nah.”

“I figured you wouldn’t want to go there. Pizza Pizza Pizza is so much better and has that great two-for-one deal. I just didn’t want to suggest it,” David says.

“Why?”

“The name. It’s not like they have three times more pizza than other places. Ridiculous.”

“How about we not get pizza at all?”

“I thought you might say that too, since you had such a hearty, well-balanced lunch.” He pauses. Clears his throat. Stares at the single car making its way down Main Street. “That’s going to be one of those things I said out loud and then will regret later, isn’t it?”

I laugh and it feels good. He looks sweet when he realizes he’s said the wrong thing. His eyes go big and wide. To rescue him, I link my arm with his and start us walking down the street.

“Just so you know, if asked, I would have no idea how to describe your frequency,” I say.

“Honestly, sometimes I think only dogs can hear me,” he says.

“For what it’s worth, I can hear you just fine.”

“It’s worth a lot,” David says, and I blush, and I’m pretty sure he does too ~ Julie Buxbaum,
1134:translated by Richard B. Clarke Practice of Meditation by Zen Master Dogen TRUTH is perfect and complete in itself. It is not something newly discovered; it has always existed. Truth is not far away; it is ever present. It is not something to be attained since not one of your steps leads away from it. Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things. The slightest movement of your dualistic thought will prevent you from entering the palace of meditation and wisdom. The Buddha meditated for six years, Bodhidharma for nine. The practice of meditation is not a method for the attainment of realization—it is enlightenment itself. Your search among books, word upon word, may lead you to the depths of knowledge, but it is not the way to receive the reflection of your true self. When you have thrown off your ideas as to mind and body, the original truth will fully appear. Zen is simply the expression of truth; therefore longing and striving are not the true attitudes of Zen. To actualize the blessedness of meditation you should practice with pure intention and firm determination. Your meditation room should be clean and quiet. Do not dwell in ~ Jack Kornfield,
1135:escaped captivity in pursuit of revenge, only to be supernaturally redeemed by the god he had hated. And all of it was so that Yahweh could use him in a single important event to capture an enemy of God. Of all the glory and fame that Eleazar had sought for in his life, it was all a pile of steaming excrement compared to the surpassing value of meeting Jesus and being used for this single event of spiritual significance. He considered it an honor to sacrifice himself on behalf of such a worthy cause. Mikael maneuvered to gain advantage over the god as they fell. The last time the angels had taken down the deity, was in his Mount Sapan palace. In that case, the other angels had tackled Ba’al in a similar way, by knocking him off a cliff into a river of fiery magma in the earth. This time he would land in the waters of the Abyss as opposed to the molten flames of lava. But this time, it would be permanent, because the waters of the Abyss led to Hades and Tartarus, where Mikael would leave the Watcher god bound until judgment. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of falling through the darkness, the three warriors hit the black waters of the Abyss, killing the giant. Mikael already had Ba’al bound with the Cherubim hair as they sank into the depths. ~ Brian Godawa,
1136:Of English Verse
Poets may boast, as safely vain,
Their works shall with the world remain;
Both, bound together, live or die,
The verses and the prophecy.
But who can hope his lines should long
Last in a daily changing tongue?
While they are new, envy prevails;
And as that dies, our language fails.
When architects have done their part,
The matter may betray their art;
Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,
Soon brings a well-built palace down.
Poets that lasting marble seek
Must carve in Latin or in Greek;
We write in sand, our language grows,
And, like the tide, our work o'erflows.
Chaucer his sense can only boast,
The glory of his numbers lost!
Years have defaced his matchless strain,
And yet he did not sing in vain.
The beauties which adorned that age,
The shining subjects of his rage,
Hoping they should immortal prove,
Rewarded with success his love.
This was the generous poet's scope,
And all an English pen can hope,
To make the fair approve his flame,
That can so far extend their fame.
Verse, thus designed, has no ill fate
If it arrive but at the date
Of fading beauty; if it prove
But as long-lived as present love.
13
~ Edmund Waller,
1137:Is that the Crystal Palace? Oh, it must be. It’s so beautiful—much more so than the engravings I’ve seen.” The building, which covered an area of more than nine acres, housed an international show of art and science called the Great Exhibition. Win had read about it in the French newspapers, which had aptly termed the exhibition one of the great wonders of the world. “How long since it was completed?” she asked, her step quickening as they headed toward the glittering building. “Not quite a month.” “Have you been inside? Have you seen the exhibits?” “I’ve visited once,” Merripen said, smiling at her eagerness. “And I saw a few of the exhibits, but not all. It would take three days or more to look at everything.” “Which part did you go to?” “The machinery court, mostly.” “I do wish I could see even a small part of it,” she said wistfully, watching the throngs of visitors exiting and entering the remarkable building. “Won’t you take me?” “You wouldn’t have time to see anything. It’s already afternoon. I’ll bring you tomorrow.” “Now. Please.” She tugged impatiently on his arm. “Oh, Kev, don’t say no.” As Merripen looked down at her, he was so handsome that she felt a pleasant little ache at the pit of her stomach. “How could I say no to you?” he asked softly. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
1138:It was time to let go. That day on the Shadow Fold, Mal had saved my life, and I had saved his. Maybe that was meant to be the end of us. The thought filled me with grief, grief for the dreams we’d shared, for the love I’d felt, for the hopeful girl I would never be again. That grief flooded through me, dissolving a knot that I hadn’t even known was there. I closed my eyes, feeling tears slide down my cheeks, and I reached out to the thing within me that I’d kept hidden for so long. I’m sorry, I whispered to it. I’m sorry I left you so long in the dark. I’m sorry, but I’m ready now. I called and the light answered. I felt it rushing toward me from every direction, skimming over the lake, skittering over the golden domes of the Little Palace, under the door and through the walls of Baghra’s cottage. I felt it everywhere. I opened my hands and the light bloomed right through me, filling the room, illuminating the stone walls, the old tile oven, and every angle of Baghra’s strange face. It surrounded me, blazing with heat, more powerful and more pure than ever before because it was all mine. I wanted to laugh, to sing, to shout. At last, there was something that belonged wholly and completely to me. “Good,” said Baghra, squinting in the sunlight. “Now we work. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
1139:Wednesday, November 8th, 1893

Here I sit in the still winter night on the drifting ice-floe, and see only stars above me. Far off I see the threads of life twisting themselves into the intricate web which stretches unbroken from life’s sweet morning dawn to the eternal death-stillness of ice. Thought follows thought—you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small—but high above all towers one form … Why did you take this voyage? … Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing—that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it. But no, there is not getting over the evidence of that Siberian drift-wood. But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity? ~ Fridtjof Nansen,
1140:Teddy O'Neale
I've come to the cabin he danced his wild jigs in,
As neat a mud palace as ever was seen;
And considering it served to keep poultry and pigs in,
I'm sure it was always most elegant clean.
But now all about it seems lonely and dreary,
All sad and all silent, no piper, no reel;
Not even the sun, through the casement, is cheery,
Since I miss the dear, darling boy, Teddy O'Neale.
I dreamt but last night--oh! bad luck to my dreaming,
I'd die if I thought 'twould come truly to pass,-But I dreamt, while the tears down my pillow were streaming,
That Teddy was courting another fair lass.
Oh! didn't I wake with a weeping and wailing,-The grief of that thought was too deep to conceal;
My mother cried--'Norah, child, what is your ailing?'
And all I could utter was--'Teddy O'Neale!'
Shall I ever forget when the big ship was ready,
And the moment was come when my love must depart;
How I sobbed like a spalpeen, 'Good-bye to you, Teddy!'
With drops on my cheek and a stone at my heart.
He says 'tis to better his fortune he's roving,
But what would be gold to the joy I should feel,
If I saw him come back to me, honest and loving,
Still poor, but my own darling, Teddy O'Neale.
~ Eliza Cook,
1141:WHEN on the Magpies' Bridge I see The Hoar-frost King has cast His sparkling mantle, well I know The night is nearly past, Daylight approaches fast. The author of this verse was Governor of the Province of Koshu, and Viceroy of the more or less uncivilized northern and eastern parts of Japan; he died A.D. 785. There was a bridge or passageway in the Imperial Palace at Kyoto called the Magpies' Bridge, but there is also an allusion here to the old legend about the Weaver and Herdsman. It is said, that the Weaver (the star Vega) was a maiden, who dwelt on one side of the River of the Milky Way, and who was employed in making clothes for the Gods. But one day the Sun took pity upon her, and gave her in marriage to the Herdboy (the star Aquila), who lived on the other side of the river. But as the result of this was that the supply of clothes fell short, she was only permitted to visit her husband once a year, viz. on the seventh night of the seventh month; and on this night, it is said, the magpies in a dense flock form a bridge for her across the river. The hoar frost forms just before day breaks. The illustration shows the Herdboy crossing on the Bridge of Magpies to his bride. A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (The Hyakunin-isshu), tr. by William N. Porter, [1909], ~ Anonymous,
1142:To Iris
IF I might build a palace, fair
With every joy of soul and sense,
And set my heart as sentry there
To guard your happy innocence-If I might plant a hedge so strong
No creeping sorrow could writhe through,
And find my whole life not too long
To give, to make your hedge for you-If I could teach the wandering air
To bring no sounds that were not sweet,
Could teach the earth that only fair
Untrodden flower deserved your feet:
Would I not tear the secret scroll
Where all your griefs lie closely curled,
And give your little hand control
Of all the joys of all the world?
But ah! I have no skill to raise
The palace, teach the hedge to grow;
The common airs blow through your days,
By common ways your dear feet go.
And you must twine of common flowers
The wreath that happy women wear,
And bear in desolate darkened hours
The common griefs that all men bear.
The pinions of my love I fold
Your little shoulders close about:
Ah--could my love keep out the cold
And shut the creeping sorrows out!
Rough paths will tire your darling feet,
Gray skies will weep your tears above,
While round you still, in torment, beat
The impotent wings of mother-love.
~ Edith Nesbit,
1143:Proserpina
LUNGI è la luce che in sù questo muro
Rifrange appena, un breve istante scorta
Del rio palazzo alla soprana porta.
Lungi quei fiori d'Enna, O lido oscuro,
Dal frutto tuo fatal che omai m'è duro.
Lungi quel cielo dal tartareo manto
Che quì mi cuopre: e lungì ahi lungi ahi quanto
Le notti che saran dai dì che furo.
Lungi da me mi sento; e ognor sognando
Cerco e ricerco, e resto ascoltatrice;
E qualche cuore a qualche anima dice,
(Di cui mi giunge il suon da quando in quando.
Continuamente insieme sospirando,)—
“Oimè per te, Proserpina infelice!”
AFAR away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall,—one instant and no more
Admitted at my distant palace-door.
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
That chills me: and afar, how far away,
The nights that shall be from the days that were.
Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring,
Continually together murmuring,)—
“Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!”
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
1144:Oh, please.” Loki stepped back, examining me with a look of disappointment. “It’s only a matter of degree. So I killed a god. Big deal! He went to Niflheim and became an honored guest in my daughter’s palace. And my punishment? You want to know my punishment?”

“You were tied on a stone slab,” I said. “With poison from a snake dripping on your face. I know.”

“Do you?” Loki pulled back his cuffs, showing me the raw scars on his wrists. “The gods were not content to punish me with eternal torture. They took out their wrath upon my two favorite sons–Vali and Narvi. They turned Vali into a wolf and watched with amusement while he disemboweled his brother Narvi. Then they shot and gutted the wolf. The gods took my innocent sons’ own entrails…” Loki’s voice cracked with grief. “Well, Magnus Chase, let’s just say I was not bound with ropes.”

Something in my chest curled up and died–possibly my hope that there was any kind of justice in the universe. “Gods.”

Loki nodded. “Yes, Magnus. The gods. Think about that when you meet Thor.”

“I’m meeting Thor?”

“I’m afraid so. The gods don’t even pretend to deal in good and evil, Magnus. It’s not the Aesir way. Might makes right. So tell me… do you really want to charge into battle on their behalf? ~ Rick Riordan,
1145:Marry me, and I’ll restore Ramsay House. I’ll turn it into a palace. We’ll consider it part of your bride-price.” “My what?” “A Romany tradition. The groom pays a sum to the bride’s family before the wedding. Which means I’ll also settle Leo’s accounts in London—” “He still owes you money?” “Not to me. Other creditors.” “Oh, no,” Amelia said, her stomach dropping. “I’ll take care of you and your household,” Cam continued with relentless patience. “Clothes, jewelry, horses, books … school for Beatrix … a season in London for Poppy. The best doctors for Winnifred. She can go to any clinic in the world.” A calculated pause. “Wouldn’t you like to see her well again?” “That’s not fair,” she whispered. “In return, all you have to do is give me what I want.” His hand came up to her wrist, sliding along the line of her arm. A ticklish pleasure ran beneath the layers of silk and wool. Amelia fought to steady her voice. “I would feel as if I’d made a bargain with the devil.” “No, Amelia.” His voice was dark velvet. “Just with me.” “I’m not even certain what it is you want.” Cam’s head lowered over hers. “After last night, I find that hard to believe.” “You could get that from countless other women. F-far more cheaply, I might add, and with much less trouble.” “I want it from you. Only you. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
1146:Porter’s aerial palace, complete with twenty-six windows, a long exhaust pipe for steam sticking out the rear, and a giant American flag fluttering over the rudders, was designed to ride beneath an immense cigar-shaped dirigible. The engineering was lunacy, but Porter’s marketing was brilliant. He proposed dispensing entirely with the notorious jumping-off hassles along the Missouri River by launching his “aerial locomotive” from New York. The coast-to-coast trip, Porter’s calculations showed, could be made in just three days—five days if the prevailing headwinds were particularly bad that week. Porter aggressively advertised his “Air Line to California” in eastern newspapers and magazines. Amazingly, over two hundred suckers paid a subscription price of $50, which included three-course meals and wine, for the inaugural balloon hop to the gold fields. That winter, a large crowd gathered in a Long Island cornfield to watch Porter test a model of his airship. But the craft never left the ground because the steam engines were far too heavy for the balloon. The would-be Porter aeronauts, however, were the lucky ones—they never had to leave in the first place. The 125 paying passengers on the first Turner and Allen Pioneer Train were not so fortunate. The Turner and Allen expedition of 1849 ~ Rinker Buck,
1147:One by one, the silence by the bed drew their attention. Even the king was quiet. Exhausted, relieved, he lay boneless and silent. The skin was dragged thin across his cheekbones. His sweaty hair stuck to his face, and his eyes were closed. His hand, clutching the fabric of his tunic, had relaxed and slipped down to his side, revealing what the careful bunching of the cloth had concealed. The tunic had been split by a knife stroke from one side to the other. As the edges of the fabric separated, those by the bed realized how much blood had been soaking, unseen, into the waist of the king’s trousers. The wound wasn’t a simple nick in the king’s side. It began near the navel and slid all the way across his belly. If the wall of the gut had been opened, the king would be dead of infection within days. He should have said something, why hadn’t he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they’d ignored it. If he’d been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, and Eddisian soldiers on the move. He’d meant to deceive them, and he’d succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,
1148:Promontory
Golden dawn and shivering evening find our brig lying by opposite
this villa and its dependencies which form a promontory
as extensive as Epirus and the Peloponnesus,
or as the large island of Japan, or as Arabia!
Fanes lighted up by the return of the _theories_;
prodigious views of a modern coast's defenses;
dunes illustrated with flaming flowers and bacchanalia;
grand canals of Carthage and Embankments of a dubious Venice;
Etnas languidly erupting, and crevasses of flowers and of glacier waters;
washhouses surrounded by German poplars;
strange parks with slopes bowing down the heads of the Tree of Japan;
and circular facades of the 'Grands' and the 'Royals' of Scarborough and of
Brooklyn;
and their railways flank, cut through, and overhang this hotel whose plan
was selected in the history of the most elegant and the most colossal edifices
of Italy, America, and Asia, and whose windows and terraces,
at the moment full of expensive illumination, drinks and breezes,
are open to the fancy of the travelers and the nobles who,-during the day allow all the tarantellas of the coast,-and even the ritornellos of the illustrious valleys of art,
to decorate most wonderfully the facades of Promontory Palace.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,
1149:Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship ~ Robert G Ingersoll,
1150:How do I know that the love of life is not a delusion? Or that the fear of death is not like a young person running away from home and unable to find his way back? The Lady Li Chi was the daughter of a border warden, Ai. When the state of Chin captured her, she wept until she had drenched her robes; then she came to the King’s palace, shared the King’s bed, ate his food, and repented of her tears. How do I know whether the dead now repent for their former clinging to life? ‘Come the morning, those who dream of the drunken feast may weep and moan; when the morning comes, those who dream of weeping and moaning go hunting in the fields. When they dream, they don’t know it is a dream. Indeed, in their dreams they may think they are interpreting dreams, only when they awake do they know it was a dream. Eventually there comes the day of reckoning and awakening, and then we shall know that it was all a great dream. Only fools think that they are now awake and that they really know what is going on, playing the prince and then playing the servant. What fools! The Master and you are both living in a dream. When I say a dream, I am also dreaming. This very saying is a deception. If after ten thousand years we could once meet a truly great sage, one who understands, it would seem as if it had only been a morning. ~ Zhuangzi,
1151:Another step came when, starting in 1314, the Venetian state began to take over and nationalize trade. It organized state galleys to engage in trade and, from 1324 on, began to charge individuals high levels of taxes if they wanted to engage in trade. Long-distance trade became the preserve of the nobility. This was the beginning of the end of Venetian prosperity. With the main lines of business monopolized by the increasingly narrow elite, the decline was under way. Venice appeared to have been on the brink of becoming the world’s first inclusive society, but it fell to a coup. Political and economic institutions became more extractive, and Venice began to experience economic decline. By 1500 the population had shrunk to one hundred thousand. Between 1650 and 1800, when the population of Europe rapidly expanded, that of Venice contracted. Today the only economy Venice has, apart from a bit of fishing, is tourism. Instead of pioneering trade routes and economic institutions, Venetians make pizza and ice cream and blow colored glass for hordes of foreigners. The tourists come to see the pre-Serrata wonders of Venice, such as the Doge’s Palace and the lions of St. Mark’s Cathedral, which were looted from Byzantium when Venice ruled the Mediterranean. Venice went from economic powerhouse to museum. I ~ Daron Acemo lu,
1152:The day Jonathan brought him to play music for the king had changed his life with new purpose. He decided it must have been the purpose of the Seer’s anointing. He had quickly discovered the ally he had in Jonathan, an unusual royal heir of integrity and character. He had taken a liking to this man over twice his age. Jonathan had become his mentor, his best friend. They had seen something in each other that connected them. He was everything David wished to be. Jonathan was measured and temperate; David was passionate and unstable. Jonathan had a singularity of spiritual devotion; David struggled with a divided heart for Yahweh and for the flesh. Jonathan had courtly sophistication, David was a rustic. Jonathan had the wisdom of age, David had the recklessness of youth. Jonathan had taken David under his wing and schooled him in the politics of the palace. They spent many hours together at both work and leisure. He became David’s confidant. He even shared family secrets and advised David not to reveal his anointing until Yahweh himself chose the time. When Jonathan discovered David’s battle skills, he was impressed and persuaded his father to make David one of the king’s armor-bearers. When the king had one of his fits of madness, Jonathan would call upon David to play his lyre and soothe the beast. ~ Brian Godawa,
1153:So once again on an early spring day, I was ensconced in a coach rolling down the middle of the Street of the Sun. Again people lined the street, but this time they waved and cheered. And as before, outriders joined us, but this time they wore our colors as well as the Renselaeuses’.
This had all been arranged beforehand, I found out through Nimiar. People expected power to be expressed through visible symbols, such as columns of armed outriders, and fancy carriages drawn by three matched pairs of fast horses, and so forth. Apparently Shevraeth loathed traveling about with such huge entourages--at least as much as Galdran used to love traveling with them--so he arranged for the trappings to be assumed at the last moment.
All this she told me as we rattled along the last distance through Remalna-city toward the golden-roofed palace called Athanarel.
When we reached the great gates, there were people hanging off them. I turned to look, and a small girl yelled, “Astiar!” as she flung a posy of crimson rosebuds and golden daisies through the open window of our carriage.
“They didn’t shout last time,” I said, burying my face in the posy. “Just stared.”
“Last time?” Nee asked.
“When I had the supreme felicity of being introduced to Galdran by the esteemed Marquis,” I said, striving for a light tone. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1154:You run off when things get a little more complicated than you'd like, and leave us to cover your tracks so the whole valley doesn't find out that Hytanica bloody lost its King-meanwhile, the Cokyrians are infiltrating our lands to the north, so it becomes entirely possible that you've walked right into their camp. We have men out there still searching for you,men who should be helping to barricade the northern border-to make sure that in a week you still have a kingdom to rule. And you have the gall to strut in here and be an ass! I swear, Steldo, if we didn't need someone to sit on that throne, I'd dispatch you with my own hands!"
The two erstwhile companions stared at each other, Galen challenging Steldor to respond, and Steldor too staggered to do so.Eventually,the sergeant threw his hands in the air and marched into his office,slamming the door behind him.
In the silence that followed Galen's departure, I came to appreciate the true meaning of the word awkward. Steldor did not rise to his feet, and his eyes were glazed. I felt un-needed,but there was no way for me to make a polished exit. The Palace Gaurds,bound by duty to remaind, searched the walls, the floor, the ceiling, for anything plausible in which to show an interest, not wanting to be caught gawking at their King. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1155:The Pilgrim Queen
(A Song)

There sat a Lady
all on the ground,
Rays of the morning
circled her round,
Save thee, and hail to thee,
Gracious and Fair,
In the chill twilight
what wouldst thou there?

'Here I sit desolate,'
sweetly said she,
'Though I'm a queen,
and my name is Marie:
Robbers have rifled
my garden and store,
Foes they have stolen
my heir from my bower.

'They said they could keep Him
far better than I,
In a palace all His,
planted deep and raised high.
'Twas a palace of ice,
hard and cold as were they,
And when summer came,
it all melted away.

'Next would they barter Him,
Him the Supreme,
For the spice of the desert,
and gold of the stream;
And me they bid wander
in weeds and alone,
In this green merry land
which once was my own.'

I look'd on that Lady,
and out from her eyes
Came the deep glowing blue
of Italy's skies;
And she raised up her head
and she smiled, as a Queen
On the day of her crowning,
so bland and serene.

'A moment,' she said,
'and the dead shall revive;
The giants are failing,
the Saints are alive;
I am coming to rescue
my home and my reign,
And Peter and Philip
are close in my train. ~ John Henry Newman,
1156:However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
1157:Where is Winesooth?” she had asked Wiktor, and he had said rather sharply: “On the map, where else?” “But where on the map? Clearly, it’s not on mine.” “It’s got to be,” he snapped, grabbing the map from her, then jabbing at it with his finger. “Right there, where it should be.” “But that says Lancut,” she protested, and when Wiktor looked again at the map he repeated: “It’s right here, where I said.” “But where you point…it’s Lancut.” For a long, perplexed moment Wiktor had looked at the map, then at his intended bride, and it was as if someone had lit a light in his face. “Darling, this is Winesooth.” “Are you teasing me?” “No!” he said emphatically, pointing to the letters Lancut. “That’s Winesooth. That’s how we pronounce it.” “Oh, Wiktor!” “Look for yourself. The L is pronounced W, the A isn’t like your A, sort of an I, which makes a Wine. Our C is really a TZ. And we give the final T a kind of Th sound. So it comes out Wine-tzooth.” She stared at her two maps, each of which clearly showed Lancut as the site of the palace; the word even carried a minute drawing of battlements to prove the point, but now she knew the name was really Winetzooth. Looking up, she had said: “I’m so glad you’ve proved you love me, Wiktor.” She had slammed the books shut. “Because otherwise I’d think you were trying to drive me crazy. ~ James A Michener,
1158:The Pilgrim Queen
(A Song)

There sat a Lady
all on the ground,
Rays of the morning
circled her round,
Save thee, and hail to thee,
Gracious and Fair,
In the chill twilight
what wouldst thou there?

'Here I sit desolate,'
sweetly said she,
'Though I'm a queen,
and my name is Marie:
Robbers have rifled
my garden and store,
Foes they have stolen
my heir from my bower.

'They said they could keep Him
far better than I,
In a palace all His,
planted deep and raised high.
'Twas a palace of ice,
hard and cold as were they,
And when summer came,
it all melted away.

'Next would they barter Him,
Him the Supreme,
For the spice of the desert,
and gold of the stream;
And me they bid wander
in weeds and alone,
In this green merry land
which once was my own.'

I look'd on that Lady,
and out from her eyes
Came the deep glowing blue
of Italy's skies;
And she raised up her head
and she smiled, as a Queen
On the day of her crowning,
so bland and serene.

'A moment,' she said,
'and the dead shall revive;
The giants are failing,
the Saints are alive;
I am coming to rescue
my home and my reign,
And Peter and Philip
are close in my train. ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
1159:Hey, sweetheart. All alone in this palace?"

She arched a brow when she felt the hand on her bottom and turned her head slowly to stare at McNab.

He went red, then white, then red again. "Christ! Lieutenant. Sir."

"Your hand's on my ass, McNab. I don't think you want it to be there."

He snatched it away as if scorched. "God. Man. Shit. Beg your pardon. I didn't recognize you. I mean..." He jammed the hand he sincerely hoped she'd allow him to keep in his pocket. "I didn't know it was you. I thought... You look..." Words failed him.

"I believe Detective McNab is trying to compliment you, Eve." Roarke slipped up beside them and, because it was too much to resist, stared hard into McNab's panicked eyes. "Weren't you, Ian?"

"Yeah. That is..."

"And if I believed he'd realized it was your ass he was fondling, I'd just have to kill him. Right here." Roarke reached out and flicked at the strings of McNab's snazzy red tie. "Right now."

"Oh, I'd have already taken care of that myself," Eve said dryly. "You look like you could use a drink,Detective."

"Yes, sir. I could."

"Roarke, why don't you take care of him? Mira just came in. I want to talk to her."

"Delighted." Roarke draped an arm around McNab's shoulder and squeezed just a little harder than comfort allowed. ~ J D Robb,
1160:When she did, her mouth fell open. The vivid glamour of the world outside paled in comparison to the world within. It was a palace of vaulting glass and shimmering tapestry and, woven through it all like light, magic. The air was alive with it. Not the secret, seductive magic of the stone, but a loud, bright, encompassing thing. Kell had told Lila that magic was like an extra sense, layered on top of sight and smell and taste, and now she understood. It was everywhere. In everything. And it was intoxicating. She could not tell if the energy was coming from the hundreds of bodies in the room, or from the room itself, which certainly reflected it. Amplified it like sound in an echoing chamber. And it was strangely—impossibly—familiar. Beneath the magic, or perhaps because of it, the space itself was alive with color and light. She’d never set foot inside St. James, but it couldn’t possibly have compared to the splendor of this. Nothing in her London could. Her world felt truly grey by comparison, bleak and empty in a way that made Lila want to kiss the stone for freeing her from it, for bringing her here, to this glittering jewel of a place. Everywhere she looked, she saw wealth. Her fingers itched, and she resisted the urge to start picking pockets, reminding herself that the cargo in her own was too precious to risk being caught. The ~ V E Schwab,
1161:To those who may have wisely kept their fancies within the boundary of the fields we know it is difficult for me to tell of the land to which Alveric had come, so that in their minds they can see that plain with its scattered trees and far off the dark wood out of which the palace of Elfland lifted those glittering spires, and above them and beyond them that serene range of mountains whose pinnacles took no colour from any light we see. Yet it is for this very purpose that our fancies travel far, and if my reader through fault of mine fail to picture the peaks of Elfland my fancy had better have stayed in the fields we know. Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June reflected in water. And the colour of Elfland, of which I despaired to tell, may yet be told, for we have hints of it here; the deep blue of the night in Summer just as the gloaming has gone, the pale blue of Venus flooding the evening with light, the deeps of lakes in the twilight, all these are hints of that colour. And while our sunflowers carefully turned to the sun, some forefather of the rhododendrons must have turned a little towards Elfland, so that some of that glory dwells with them to this day. ~ Lord Dunsany,
1162:After having ice cream, Alexander and Tatiana were walking along the Neva embankment heading west into the sunset and across from the green-and-white splendor of the Winter Palace when on the opposite side of the street Tatiana spotted a man who made her stop suddenly. A tall, thin, middle-aged man with a long, gray Jovian beard stood outside the Hermitage Museum with an expression of absolute shattered regret. Tatiana instantly reacted to his face. What could make a man look this way? He was standing next to the back of a military truck, watching young men carry wooden crates down the ramp from the Winter Palace. It was these crates the man looked at with such profound heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love. “Who is that man?” she asked, tremendously affected by his expression. “The curator of the Hermitage.” “Why is he looking at the crates that way?” Alexander said, “They are his life’s sole passion. He doesn’t know if he is ever going to see them again.” Tatiana stared at the man. She almost wanted to go and comfort him. “He’s got to have more faith, don’t you think?” “I agree, Tania.” Alexander smiled. “He’s got to have a little more faith. After the war is over, he will see his crates again.” “The way he is looking at them, after the war is over he is going to bring them back single-handedly,” declared Tatiana. ~ Paullina Simons,
1163:They stood in the courtyard of Swangard Palace, too cold to be comfortable despite the sun, and they looked fully on one another, knowing that they were friends, and would always be.

A lot of water under this bridge too, Mark thought, with something like awe. He was growing older. Old enough to feel the current of what had been flowing under him, leading to his future. Old enough to look back over his shoulder, and see his past behind him, and grieve for what was gone, and honour its memory.

He felt, suddenly, how much it would hurt him if Val died; felt an echo of that pain, knowing that the Valerian he had known, fluffy and peering and hapless and altogether wonderful: this Valerian was already dying. Not physically, of course, but the man he remembered from that first night in Swangard Palace would be gone the next time they met, though his ghost would linger on in Val forever, and in their memories.

Three cheers for ghosts, Mark thought. Three cheers for the dead.

Of course Val would be much the same: better, even. As full of wonder and delight, with big pockets full of puzzles and fascinating stories about the lives of ants and ingenious designs for windmills that would do your washing. And they would still be friends, excellent friends. It could even be better next time.

But it would never be the same. ~ Sean Stewart,
1164:What!" said the king; "is that wretch still alive? Go and behead him at once. I authorise you." "Sire," said Saouy, "I thank your Majesty for the justice you do me. I would further beg, as Noureddin publicly affronted me, that the execution might be in front of the palace, and that it might be proclaimed throughout the city, so that no one may be ignorant of it." The king granted these requests, and the announcement caused universal grief, for the memory of Noureddin's father was still fresh in the hearts of his people. Saouy, accompanied by twenty of his own slaves, went to the prison to fetch Noureddin, whom he mounted on a wretched horse without a saddle. Arrived at the palace, Saouy went in to the king, leaving Noureddin in the square, hemmed in not only by Saouy's slaves but by the royal guard, who had great difficulty in preventing the people from rushing in and rescuing Noureddin. So great was the indignation against Saouy that if anyone had set the example he would have been stoned on his way through the streets. Saouy, who witnessed the agitation of the people from the windows of the king's privy chambers, called to the executioner to strike at once. The king, however, ordered him to delay; not only was he jealous of Saouy's interference, but he had another reason. A troop of horsemen was seen at that moment riding at full gallop towards the square. ~ Anonymous,
1165:We approached the long, heavily guarded causeway. There were soldiers at the entrance. Our names were taken, and our permissions scrutinized, and then a bell rang and a military escort went with us through the gate. We didn’t go to the side where the government offices are. We walked inside the huge place, past the old cathedrals which have been there for so long, and we went through the museums in the giant palace which was used by so many czars, from Ivan the Terrible on. We went into the tiny bedroom that Ivan used, and into the little withdrawing rooms, and the private chapels. And they are very beautiful, and strange, and ancient, and they are kept just as they were. And we saw the museum where the armor, the plate, the weapons, the china services, the costumes, and the royal gifts for five hundred years are stored. There were huge crowns covered with diamonds and emeralds, there was the big sledge of Catherine the Great. We saw the fur garments and the fantastic armor of the old boyars. There were the gifts sent by other royal houses to the czars—a great silver dog sent by Queen Elizabeth, presents of German silver and china from Frederick the Great to Catherine, the swords of honor, the incredible claptrap of monarchy. It became apparent, after looking at a royal museum, that bad taste, far from being undesirable in royalty, is an absolute necessity. ~ John Steinbeck,
1166:After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
- The Waste Land (ll. 322-358) ~ T S Eliot,
1167:The first time I saw your father, I’d just come home from the hunt. The forests of Calydon are thick with game, but the deer are so clever that it was the first time I’d managed to bring one down. I was so proud of what I’d done that I insisted on carrying the buck into the throne room myself and dropped it at my father’s feet before I noticed we had a guest.” She smiled at the memory.
“I’ll bet Father thought you were Artemis herself,” I said.
That made my mother laugh. “Not Artemis. You know how he feels about her. But he did say he mistook me for one of her huntress nymphs. That was just before he told me he had to marry me or die.”
I made a face. “Father said that?”
“Men say many things when they want to win a woman. Whether or not they mean what they say…” She shrugged. “Your father meant it. Poor soul, it seemed like he would die, because none of my father’s advisers thought I should marry him. Tyndareus came to Calydon as a landless exile; his brother had stolen his kingdom.”
The story of Father’s early trouble and final triumph was so well known that the palace stones could tell it. “Did you come to Sparta to marry him after he won back his crown?” I asked. “Or did he have to go back to Calydon for you?”
“Are you asking because you want to know, or because you want to distract me from what we need to talk about? ~ Esther M Friesner,
1168:The Offering Of The New Law, The One Oblation Once
Offered
Once I thought to sit so high
In the Palace of the sky;
Now, I thank God for His Grace,
If I may fill the lowest place.
Once I thought to scale so soon
Heights above the changing moon;
Now, I thank God for delay—
To-day, it yet is called to-day.
While I stumble, halt and blind,
Lo! He waiteth to be kind;
Bless me soon, or bless me slow,
Except He bless, I let not go.
Once for earth I laid my plan,
Once I leaned on strength of man,
When my hope was swept aside,
I stayed my broken heart on pride:
Broken reed hath pierced my hand;
Fell my house I built on sand;
Roofless, wounded, maimed by sin,
Fightings without and fears within:
Yet, a tree, He feeds my root;
Yet, a branch, He prunes for fruit;
Yet, a sheep, these eves and morns,
He seeks for me among the thorns.
With Thine Image stamped of old,
Find Thy coin more choice than gold;
Known to Thee by name, recall
To Thee Thy home-sick prodigal.
Sacrifice and Offering
None there is that I can bring,
386
None, save what is Thine alone:
I bring Thee, Lord, but of Thine Own—
Broken Body, Blood Outpoured,
These I bring, my God, my Lord;
Wine of Life, and Living Bread,
With these for me Thy Board is spread.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,
1169:But it hasn’t gone at all. And that’s why it’s better than gold. It hasn’t gone, it’s just that we can’t see it any more. In fact, it’s still going, still growing. It’ll never stop going, or growing wider and wider, the ring you saw. You were lucky to see it at all. Cause when it got to the edge of the puddle it left the puddle and entered the air instead, it went invisible. A marvel. Didn’t you feel it go through you? No? But it did, you’re inside it now. I am too. We both are. And the yard. And the brickpiles. And the sandpiles. And the firing shed. And the houses. And the horses, and your father, your uncle, and your brothers, and the workmen, and the street. And the other houses. And the walls, and the gardens and houses, the churches, the palace tower, the top of the cathedral, the river, the fields behind us, the fields way over there, see? See how far your eye can go. See the tower and the houses in the distance? It’s passing through them and nothing and nobody will feel a thing but there it is doing it nonetheless. And imagine it circling the fields and the farms we can’t see from here. And the towns beyond those fields and farms all the way to the sea. And across the sea. The ring you saw in the water’ll never stop travelling till the edge of the world and then when it reaches the edge it’ll go beyond that too. Nothing can stop it. She looked down into the horse piss. ~ Ali Smith,
1170:contingent of soldiers with you.” Almost opening his mouth in protest, Killian seemed to think the better of it. “Yes, Madam.” He glanced quickly at Talis and the others. “Shouldn’t our guests come as well? The priests should cleanse them of…of any defilement that may have possessed them on their long voyage.” The Madam frowned. “I suppose that is true. The priests must perform their rites. Go on, now.” Talis wondered what kind of rites they practiced here on the island. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. He glanced at Rikar who shook his head slightly in a gesture of disapproval. They followed the twins out of the palace with a group of soldiers leading them north along the gardens until they turned east along the wall. Talis snuck a look at the looming outer walls. So close to freedom, if only the Madam hadn’t sent so many soldiers to mind them. But he couldn’t leave without finding his sword. The way opened up to a park surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Inside, they reached a stand of mangroves. Small wooden temples dotted the interior, with hundreds of strands of white rope stretched from branch to temple roof. White flags with ancient script in gold ink adorned the ropes. Talis recognized some of the characters: death, mountains, volcano, sky, chaos.  “Lieutenant,” Killian said. “Summon the priests, then be on your way. We can manage things ourselves from here on. ~ John Forrester,
1171:Then I said to myself, "If the centuries are going by, mine will come too, and will pass, and after a time the last century of all will come, and then I shall understand." And I fixed my eyes on the ages that were coming and passing on; now I was calm and resolute, maybe even happy. Each age brought its share of light and shade, of apathy and struggle, of truth and error, and its parade of systems, of new ideas, of new illusions; in each of them the verdure of spring burst forth, grew yellow with age, and then, young once more, burst forth again. While life thus moved with the regularity of a calendar, history and civilization developed; and man, at first naked and unarmed, clothed and armed himself, built hut and palace, villages and hundred-gated Thebes, created science that scrutinizes and art that elevates, made himself an orator, a mechanic, a philosopher, ran all over the face of the globe, went down into the earth and up to the clouds, performing the mysterious work through which he satisfied the necessities of life and tried to forget his loneliness. My tired eyes finally saw the present age go by end, after it, future ages. The present age, as it approached, was agile, skillful, vibrant, proud, a little verbose, audacious, learned, but in the end it was as miserable as the earlier ones. And so it passed, and so passed the others, with the same speed and monotony. ~ Machado de Assis,
1172:Cheng Xin gazed up at the giant black columns reaching into space. They lifted up the domed sky and seemed to turn the universe into a Palace of Death. Is this the ultimate end for everything? In the sky, Cheng Xin could see the end of the columns. She pointed in that direction. “So the ships entered lightspeed at the end?” “That’s right. These are only about a hundred kilometers high. We’ve seen columns even shorter than these, presumably left by ships that entered lightspeed almost instantaneously.” “Are these the most advanced lightspeed ships?” “Maybe. But this is a rarely seen technique. Death lines are usually the products of Zero-Homers.” “Zero-Homers?” “They’re also called Resetters. Maybe they’re a group of intelligent individuals, or a civilization, or a group of civilizations. We don’t know exactly who they are, but we’ve confirmed their existence. The Zero-Homers want to reset the universe and return it to the Garden of Eden.” “How?” “By moving the hour hand of the clock past twelve. Take spatial dimensions as an example. It’s practically impossible to drag a universe in lower dimensions back into higher dimensions, so maybe it’s better to work forward in the other direction. If the universe can be lowered into zero dimensions and then beyond, the clock might be reset and everything returned to the beginning. The universe might possess ten macroscopic dimensions again. ~ Liu Cixin,
1173:To My Godchild Alice
ALICE, Alice, little Alice,
My new-christened baby Alice,
Can there ever rhymes be found
To express my wishes for thee
In a silvery flowing, worthy
Of that silvery sound?
Bonnie Alice, Lady Alice,
Sure, this sweetest name must be
A true omen to thee, Alice,
Of a life's long melody.
Alice, Alice, little Alice,
Mayst thou prove a golden chalice,
Filled with holiness like wine:
With rich blessings running o'er
Yet replenished evermore
From a fount divine:
Alice, Alice, little Alice,
When this future comes to thee,
In thy young life's brimming chalice
Keep some drops of balm for me!
Alice, Alice, little Alice,
Mayst thou grow a goodly palace,
Fitly framed from roof to floors,
Pure unto the inmost centre,
While high thoughts like angels enter
At the open doors:
Alice, Alice, little Alice,
When this beauteous sight I see,
In thy woman-heart's wide palace
Keep one nook of love for me.
Alice, Alice, little Alice,-Sure the verse halts out of malice
To the thoughts it feebly bears,
And thy name's soft echoes, ranging
From quaint rhyme to rhyme, are changing
Into silent prayers.
200
God be with thee, little Alice,
Of His bounteousness may He
Fill the chalice, build the palace,
Here, unto eternity!
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
1174:The room was dark, though weak autumnal light filtered in through arched windows high on the walls, illuminating the room's rich aubergine brocade wallpaper. Its color cast a soft violet haze that floated through the bedroom, twinkling the huge diamond-shaped crystals that dropped from two immense, many-tiered silver chandeliers. They were larger than any I had ever seen, things out of a palace or a fairy tale. An imposing, heavily carved wardrobe, which looked as if it had been in place since the early fifteenth century, faced the bed where I lay. Beside it on the wall hung a large bronze shield with an iron French cross at its center, crowned by a gilded fleur-de-lis with a dazzling gemstone in the middle of the petal. Large portraits of nude ladies, odalisques that looked as if an Italian master- Titian, perhaps?- had painted them graced the adjacent wall. A heavy crystal vase of white long-stemmed roses sat on a table at the bedside, their petals tight, but their sweet perfume filling the air, mingling with the aroma of fresh baked bread.
I ran my hands down my body. I was not in my own nightdress but in a pale green gown of fine quality damask silk with a triangular neckline and long, full sleeves that cupped my wrists, draping white lace over my hands to the fingers. I had never seen such a rich garment. I imagined it was something that the queen's daughters would have worn. ~ Karen Essex,
1175:Our story begins in Israel, some time in the 7th century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has just conquered Jerusalem and orders his head eunuch to escort several Israelite nobles to his palace. Among them is Daniel, a man known for his piety. Upon his arrival, Daniel asks the head eunuch to let him abstain from eating “the king’s food and wine” since he and his men have their own religious diet. The eunuch is taken aback and objects. “I am afraid of my lord the king,” he says, “who has decided what you shall eat and drink. If the king sees you looking worse than the other young men your age, he would have my head because of you.” So Daniel devises a stratagem. “Test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and decide what to do with us based on how we look.” The Babylonian agrees. After ten days, Daniel and his friends look “healthier and better nourished” than the other courtiers, and from that moment on they are no longer served the royal delicacies and wine but a diet of pure vegetables. Quod erat demonstrandum. This is the first written record of a comparative experiment in which a hypothesis is tested and a control group is used. A few centuries later, these events would be immortalized in the biggest bestseller ever: the Bible (see Daniel 1:1–16). ~ Rutger Bregman,
1176:See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases
And never tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!
Since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!
Spin a thousand of pieces of silver, all of them come back!
Cook a sheep, kill a cow, whet the appetite,
And make me, of three hundred bowls, one long drink!
To the old master, Tsen,
And the young scholar, Tan-chiu,
Bring in the wine!
Let your cups never rest!
Let me sing you a song!
Let your ears attend!
What are bell and drum, rare dishes and treasure?
Let me br forever drunk and never come to reason!
Sober men of olden days and sages are forgotten,
And only the great drinkers are famous for all time.
Prince Chen paid at a banquet in the Palace of Perfection
Ten thousand coins for a cask of wine, with many a laugh and quip.
Why say, my host, that your money is gone?
Go and buy wine and we'll drink it together!
My flower-dappled horse,
My furs worth a thousand,
Hand them to the boy to exchange for good wine,
And we'll drown away the woes of ten thousand generation!

by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, Bringing in the Wine
,
1177:Good Carpenters
I mourn a dead friend, like myself, a good carpenter.
-Pablo Neruda about César Vallejo
I looked at the book.
'It will stand,' I thought.
Not a palace
built by a newspaper czar,
nor a mud hovel
that the sea will soften,
but a good house of words
near the sea
with everything plumb.
That is the most I can ask.
I have cut the wood myself
from my own forests,
I have sanded it smooth
with the grain.
I have left knotholes
for the muse to whistle through
-old siren that she is.
At least the roof does not leak.
& the fireplace is small
but it draws.
The wind whips the house
but it stands.
& the waves lick
the pilings
with their tongues
but at least they do not suck me
out to sea.
The sea is wordless
but it tries to talk to us.
We carpenters are also translators.
We build with sounds, with whispers & with wind.
We try to speak the language of the sea.
We want to build to last
88
yet change forever.
We want to be as endless as the sea.
& yet she mocks us
with her barnacle & rust stains;
she tells us what we build will also fall.
Our words are grains of sand,
our walls are wood,
our windowpanes are sprayed with solemn salt.
We whisper, as we build, 'Forever please,'
-by which we mean at least for thirty years.
~ Erica Jong,
1178:We have been dreaming of robots since Homer. In Book 18 of the Iliad , Achilles’ mother, the nymph Thetis, wants to order a new suit of armor for her son, and so she pays a visit to the Olympian atelier of the blacksmith-god Hephaestus, whom she finds hard at work on a series of automata: . . . He was crafting twenty tripods to stand along the walls of his well-built manse, affixing golden wheels to the bottom of each one so they might wheel down on their own [automatoi] to the gods’ assembly and then return to his house anon: an amazing sight to see. These are not the only animate household objects to appear in the Homeric epics. In Book 5 of the Iliad we hear that the gates of Olympus swivel on their hinges of their own accord, automatai , to let gods in their chariots in or out, thus anticipating by nearly thirty centuries the automatic garage door. In Book 7 of the Odyssey , Odysseus finds himself the guest of a fabulously wealthy king whose palace includes such conveniences as gold and silver watchdogs, ever alert, never aging. To this class of lifelike but intellectually inert household helpers we might ascribe other automata in the classical tradition. In the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, a third-century-BC epic about Jason and the Argonauts, a bronze giant called Talos runs three times around the island of Crete each day, protecting Zeus’s beloved Europa: a primitive home alarm system. ~ Anonymous,
1179:By The Lake
The old fellow from Shao-ling weeps with stifled sobs as he walks furtively by the
bends of the Sepentine on a day in spring.
In the waterside palaces the thousands of doors are locked. For whom have the
willows and rushed put on their fresh greenery?
I remember how formerly, when the Emperor's rainbow banner made its way into
the South Park, everything in the park seemed to bloom with a brighter color.
The First Lady of the Chao-yang Palace rode in the same carriage as her lord in
attendance at his side, while before the carriage rode maids of honour equipped
with bows and arrows, their white horses champing at golden bits.
Leaning back, face skywards, they shot into the clouds; and the Lady laughed
gaily when a bird fell to the ground transfixed by a well-aimed arrow.
Where are the bright eyes and the flashing smile now?
Tainted with blood-pollution, her wandering soul cannot make its way back.
The clear waters of the Wei flow eastwards, and Chien-ko is far away: between
the one who has gone and the one who remains no communication is possible.
It is human to have feelings and shed tears for such things; but the grasses and
flowers of the lakeside go on for ever, unmoved.
As evening falls, the city is full of the dust of foreign horseman. My way is
towards the South City, but my gaze turns northward. (tr. Hawkes)
~ Du Fu,
1180:If people came to know where my king's palace is, it would vanish
into the air.
  The walls are of white silver and the roof of shining gold.
  The queen lives in a palace with seven courtyards, and she
wears a jewel that cost all the wealth of seven kingdoms.
  But let me tell you, mother, in a whisper, where my king's
palace is.
  It is at the corner of our terrace where the pot of the tulsi
plant stands.
  The princess lies sleeping on the far-away shore of the seven
impassable seas.
  There is none in the world who can find her but myself.
  She has bracelets on her arms and pearl drops in her ears; her
hair sweeps down upon the floor.
  She will wake when I touch her with my magic wand and jewels
will fall from her lips when she smiles.
  But let me whisper in your ear, mother; she is there in the
corner of our terrace where the pot of the tulsi plant stands.
  When it is time for you to go to the river for your bath, step
up to that terrace on the roof.
  I sit in the corner where the shadow of the walls meet
together.
  Only puss is allowed to come with me, for she know where the
barber in the story lives.
  But let me whisper, mother, in your ear where the barber in
the story lives.
  It is at the corner of the terrace where the pot of the tulsi
plant stands.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fairyland
,
1181:MAY 10, THE day that Roosevelt issued his nonresponse to Churchill’s plea for U.S. belligerency, German bombers returned to London. As devastating as the previous raids had been, none came close to the savagery and destructiveness of this new firestorm. By the next morning, more than two thousand fires were raging out of control across the city, from Hammersmith in the west to Romford in the east, some twenty miles away. The damage to London’s landmarks was catastrophic. Queen’s Hall, the city’s premier concert venue, lay in ruins, while more than a quarter of a million books were incinerated and a number of galleries destroyed at the British Museum. Bombs smashed into St. James’s Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and Parliament. The medieval Westminster Hall, though badly damaged, was saved, but not so the House of Commons chamber, the scene of some of the most dramatic events in modern British history. Completely gutted by fire, the little hall, with its vaulted, timbered ceiling, was nothing but a mound of debris, gaping open to the sky. Every major railroad station but one was put out of action for weeks, as were many Underground stations and lines. A third of the streets in greater London were impassable, and almost a million people were without gas, water, and electricity. The death toll was even more calamitous: never in London’s history had so many of its residents—1,436—died in a single night. ~ Lynne Olson,
1182:Love's Palace
IF the woodland and the heath,
And the hedgerows thick with may,
And the weed-flowers underneath,
And the clambering honey-sheath,
And the mosses green and grey,
And the flecks of sun and shade
Lying light upon the grass,
And the ripple in the glade,
And the songs that float and fade,
And the joys that come and pass,
If the dog-rose choir of bees
Whirling golden in the sun,
And the sweetness of the breeze,
And the joists of mighty trees,
And the hoods of purple nun,
If this fabric of delight
Spread around to make the spring
Could but read my wish aright,
Could but aid me as it might,
Could obey me while I sing,
I should build thee such a bower
As the fairies built of old,
Walled with every fragrant flower,
And with many a mighty tower
Domed with purest morning gold.
And thy breath should draw the rose,
And thine ears be filled with sweet
Such as never poet knows,
Such as tricks him while it flows,
And eludes his bar and beat.
And thy couch should be more soft
Than the silk of Eastern days,
Than the rainbow’s flush aloft,
Than the dawning clouds that oft
Melt before us as we gaze.
There my dearest love should rest
Like a bird upon the bough,
Like a fledgeling in its nest,
Like her head upon my breast,
Like my kiss upon her brow.
~ Arthur Maquarie,
1183:Las Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification, a place the tone of which is set by mobsters and call girls and ladies’ room attendants with amyl nitrite poppers in their uniform pockets. Almost everyone notes that there is no “time” in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future (no Las Vegas casino, however, has taken the obliteration of the ordinary time sense quite so far as Harold’s Club in Reno, which for a while issued, at odd intervals in the day and night, mimeographed “bulletins” carrying news from the world outside); neither is there any logical sense of where one is. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks ”stardust” or “caesar’s palace.” Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with “real” life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder. All of which makes it an extraordinarily stimulating and interesting place, but an odd one in which to want to wear a candlelight satin Priscilla of Boston wedding dress with Chantilly lace insets, tapered sleeves and a detachable modified train. ~ Joan Didion,
1184:Destiny
1856
Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass,
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,
And martial strains, the full-voiced pæan swells.
The air is starred with flags, the chanted mass
Throngs all the churches, yet the broad streets swarm
With glad-eyed groups who chatter, laugh, and pass,
In holiday confusion, class with class.
And over all the spring, the sun-floods warm!
In the Imperial palace that March morn,
The beautiful young mother lay and smiled;
For by her side just breathed the Prince, her child,
Heir to an empire, to the purple born,
Crowned with the Titan's name that stirs the heart
Like a blown clarion--one more Bonaparte.
1879
Born to the purple, lying stark and dead,
Transfixed with poisoned spears, beneath the sun
Of brazen Africa! Thy grave is one,
Fore-fated youth (on whom were visited
Follies and sins not thine), whereat the world,
Heartless howe'er it be, will pause to sing
A dirge, to breathe a sigh, a wreath to fling
Of rosemary and rue with bay-leaves curled.
Enmeshed in toils ambitious, not thine own,
Immortal, loved boy-Prince, thou tak'st thy stand
With early doomed Don Carlos, hand in hand
With mild-browed Arthur, Geoffrey's murdered son.
Louis the Dauphin lifts his thorn-ringed head,
And welcomes thee, his brother, 'mongst the dead.
~ Emma Lazarus,
1185:Thus they were speaking when the thunderous voice came. So mighty it was that it filled every hall and chamber of the palace; and its first word dashed the pictures from the walls so that their crash and smash added to the roar, though they were lost in it. Its second word broke all the crockery in the palace and set the shards to sliding like screes of stones, so that they burst open cabinets and cupboards and descended to the floors in avalanches. Its third word toppled all the statues along the broad avenue that led up to the Great Gate; its fourth stopped the fountain and snapped off both arms of the marble nymph who blessed the waters; and its fifth cracked the basin itself. Its sixth, seventh, and eighth words maddened every cat in the place, struck dead seventeen bat-winged black rooks of the flock that swept the sky about the Grand Campanile, and set all the bells to ringing. Its ninth soured every cask in the cellars, while its tenth word stove them in. Its eleventh stopped the clocks and started the hounds to howling. Its twelfth and last (which was an especially big word) knocked the Dwarves off their feet and sent every one of them rolling and somersaulting amongst all their foulnesses while they held their ears and screeched. And what that voice said was, “What vermin are these who dare defile the body of a Giant?” Oh, my friends! Let us of this star, who are ourselves but Dwarves, heed well the warning. ~ Gene Wolfe,
1186:Unlike many at court, who tried to spend as much time in front of the king as they could, Destin valued his privacy. So, in addition to his apartment within the palace, he kept a suite of rooms at the Cup and Comfort Inn on the riverfront. Any kind of pleasure could be had at the Cup and Comfort for a price, but what Destin treasured most was anonymity. This was a place where he could be himself.

So it was with not a little alarm that he unlocked the door to his rooms at the inn to find Lila Barrowhill sleeping in his fireside chair.

He froze in the doorway, but she must have heard him, because she opened her eyes and smiled at him sleepily. “I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. I didn’t want to draw attention by sitting outside your door.”

Destin stepped inside and shut and locked the door behind him. Then turned to glare at her, his arms folded.

Lila grinned when she saw his expression. “Blood and bones, Karn, I’m so glad you’re still alive. It always seems that I’m a lot happier to see you than you are to see me. Well, except for that time you came to Oden’s Ford. Then there was that time in King Gerard’s garden—”

“How did you find this place?”

“I needed a cup and some comfort, and this place was recommended,” she said. She held up a cup she’d no doubt filled down in the taproom. “It’s truly amazing. You really can get anything you want here.” She winked at him. ~ Cinda Williams Chima,
1187:What can I be thinking of? Just imagine my not having presented myself to you even yet! But as a matter of fact I do not want to tell you my name
out loud; it is a romantic one, utterly inappropriate to the typically modern environment in which we now stand. Ah,
if we were only on the steep side of some mountain with the moon like a great lamp above us, or by the shore of
some wild ocean, there would be some glamour in proclaiming my identity in the silence of the night, or in the midst of lightning and thunder as a hurricane swept the seas! But here in a third-floor suite of the Royal Palace
Hotel, surrounded by telephones and electric lights, and standing by a window overlooking the Champs Elysees-> it would be positively anachronistic!" He took a card out of his pocket and drew near the little writing desk. "Allow me, Princess, to slip my card into this drawer, left open on purpose, it would seem," and while the princess uttered a little cry she could not repress, he did just that. "And now, Princess," he went on, compelling her to retreat before him as he moved to the door of the anteroom opening on to the corridor, "you are too well bred, I am sure, not to wish to conduct your visitor to the door of your suite." His tone altered abruptly, and in a deep imperious voice that made the princess quake he ordered her: "And now, not a word, not a cry, not a movement until I am outside, or I will kill you! ~ Marcel Allain,
1188:Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within the walls playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate—only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits. She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain—two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream! ~ Charles Dickens,
1189:He was waiting in the reception hall, a lone figure lost in the vast, vaulted chamber. The Herrani representative was an elderly man whose thin frame leaned heavily on his walking stick.
Kestrel faltered. She approached more slowly. She couldn’t help looking over his shoulder for Arin.
He wasn’t there.
“I thought the barbarian days of the Valorian empire were over,” the man said dryly.
“What?” said Kestrel.
“You’re barefoot.”
She glanced down, and only then realized that her feet were freezing, that she’d forgotten even the existence of shoes when she’d left her dressing chamber and hurtled through the palace for all to see, for the Valorian guards flanking the reception hall to see right now.
“Who are you?” Kestrel demanded.
“Tensen, the Herrani minister of agriculture.”
“And the governor? Where is he?”
“Not coming.”
“Not…” Kestrel pressed a palm to her forehead. “The emperor issued a summons. To a state function. And Arin declines?” Her anger was folding onto itself in as many layers as her ball gown--anger at Arin, at the way he was committing political suicide.
Anger at herself. At her own bare feet and how they were proof--pure, naked, cold proof--of her hope, her very need to see someone that she was supposed to forget.
Arin had not come.
“I get that disappointed look all the time,” Tensen said in a cheerful tone. “No one is ever excited to meet the minister of agriculture. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1190:He was waiting in the reception hall, a lone figure lost in the vast, vaulted chamber. The Herrani representative was an elderly man whose thin frame leaned heavily on his walking stick.
Kestrel faltered. She approached more slowly. She couldn’t help looking over his shoulder for Arin.
He wasn��t there.
“I thought the barbarian days of the Valorian empire were over,” the man said dryly.
“What?” said Kestrel.
“You’re barefoot.”
She glanced down, and only then realized that her feet were freezing, that she’d forgotten even the existence of shoes when she’d left her dressing chamber and hurtled through the palace for all to see, for the Valorian guards flanking the reception hall to see right now.
“Who are you?” Kestrel demanded.
“Tensen, the Herrani minister of agriculture.”
“And the governor? Where is he?”
“Not coming.”
“Not…” Kestrel pressed a palm to her forehead. “The emperor issued a summons. To a state function. And Arin declines?” Her anger was folding onto itself in as many layers as her ball gown--anger at Arin, at the way he was committing political suicide.
Anger at herself. At her own bare feet and how they were proof--pure, naked, cold proof--of her hope, her very need to see someone that she was supposed to forget.
Arin had not come.
“I get that disappointed look all the time,” Tensen said in a cheerful tone. “No one is ever excited to meet the minister of agriculture. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1191:Ripened Fruit

Do you remember how you came into existence?
You may not remember
because you arrived a little drunk.
Let me give you a hint:
Let go off your mind and then be mindful.
Close your ears and listen!

It is difficult to speak to your unripeness.
You may still be in your springtime,
unaware that autumn exists.
This world is a tree to which we cling----
we, the half-ripe fruit upon it.

The immature fruit clings tightly to the branch
because, not yet ripe, it's unfit for the palace.
When fruits become ripe, sweet, and juicy,
then, biting their lips,
they loosen their hold.

When the mouth has been sweetened by felicity,
the kingdom of the world loses it's appeal.
To be tightly attached to the world is immaturity.
As long as you're an embryo,
all you think about is sipping blood.

There's more to be said,
but let the Holy Spirit tell it.
You may even tell it to your own ear.
Neither I, nor some other "I," needs to tell you,
you who are also I.

Just as when you fall asleep,
you leave the presence of yourself
to enter another presence of yourself.
You hear something from yourself
and imagine that someone else
has secretly spoken to you in a dream.
But you are not a single "you,"
my friend----you are the wide sky and the deep sea.
Your awesome "You," which is nine hundredfold,
is where a hundred of your you's will drown. ~ Rumi,
1192:See the waters of the Yellow River leap down from Heaven, Roll away to the deep sea and never turn again! See at the mirror
in the High Hall Aged men bewailing white locks - In the morning, threads of silk, In the evening flakes of snow. Snatch the joys
of life as they come and use them to the full; Do not leave the silver cup idly glinting at the moon. The things that Heaven made
Man was meant to use; A thousand guilders scattered to the wind may come back again. Roast mutton and sliced beef will only
taste well If you drink with them at one sitting three hundred cups. Great Master Ts'en, Doctor Tan-ch'iu, Here is wine, do not
stop drinking But listen, please, and I will sing you a song. Bells and drums and fine food, what are they to me Who only want
to get drunk and never again be sober? The Saints and Sages of old times are all stock and still, Only the might drinkers of wine
have left a name behind. When the prince of Ch'en gave a feast in the Palace of P'ing-lo With twenty thousand gallons of wine
he loosed mirth and play. The master of the feast must not cry that his money is all spent; Let him send to the tavern and fetch
wine to keep our tankards filled. His five-flower horse and thousand-guilder coat - Let him call the boy to take them along and
pawn them for good wine, That drinking together we may drive away the sorrows of a thousand years.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, Chiang Chin Chiu
,
1193:Amar loosed a breath. “I understand, you know.”
I looked up.
“The forced silence…the voices of this palace.”
We stood there, not saying anything. I felt too aware of the space between us. Even with Akaran’s secrets spiraling in the shadows of my head, I couldn’t ignore the weightless feeling that had gripped me. Standing beside Amar did something to me. Like my center had shifted to make room for him.
“You do not trust me, do you?”
“No,” I said. I had no reason to lie. “I told you in the Night Bazaar that trust is won in actions and time. Not words.”
“I wish you trusted me.”
“I don’t place my faith in wishes,” I said. “How can I? I can’t even--”
I bit back the rest of my words. I can’t even see your face. Perhaps Gupta was lying and he really did have a disfiguring scar. Amar moved closer until we were only a hand space apart.
“What?” he coaxed, his voice hovering between a growl and a question.
“I can’t even see your face.”
A strange chill still curled off of him like smoke and even though the glass garden was teeming with little lights, shades veiled him.
“Is that what you want?” he said. “Would it make you trust me?”
“It would be a start.”
“You are impossible to please.”
I said nothing. Amar leaned forward, and I felt the silken trails of his hood brush across my neck. My breath constricted. “Is that what you want? An unguarded gaze can spill a thousand secrets.”
“I would know them anyway,” I said evenly. ~ Roshani Chokshi,
1194:The Dream Called Life
From the Spanish of Pedro Calderon de la Barca
A dream it was in which I found myself.
And you that hail me now, then hailed me king,
In a brave palace that was all my own,
Within, and all without it, mine; until,
Drunk with excess of majesty and pride,
Methought I towered so big and swelled so wide
That of myself I burst the glittering bubble
Which my ambition had about me blown,
And all again was darkness. Such a dream
As this, in which I may be walking now,
Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows,
Who make believe to listen; but anon
Kings, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel,
Aye, even with all your airy theatre,
May flit into the air you seem to rend
With acclamations, leaving me to wake
In the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake
From this that waking is; or this and that,
Both waking and both dreaming; such a doubt
Confounds and clouds our moral life about.
But whether wake or dreaming, this I know,
How dreamwise human glories come and go;
Whose momentary tenure not to break,
Walking as one who knows he soon may wake,
So fairly carry the full cup, so well
Disordered insolence and passion quell,
That there be nothing after to upbraid
Dreamer or doer in the part he played;
Whether tomorrow's dawn shall break the spell,
Or the last trumpet of the Eternal Day,
When dreaming, with the night, shall pass away.
~ Edward Fitzgerald,
1195:Where is Winesooth?” she had asked Wiktor, and he had said rather sharply: “On the map, where else?” “But where on the map? Clearly, it’s not on mine.” “It’s got to be,” he snapped, grabbing the map from her, then jabbing at it with his finger. “Right there, where it should be.” “But that says Lancut,” she protested, and when Wiktor looked again at the map he repeated: “It’s right here, where I said.” “But where you point…it’s Lancut.” For a long, perplexed moment Wiktor had looked at the map, then at his intended bride, and it was as if someone had lit a light in his face. “Darling, this is Winesooth.” “Are you teasing me?” “No!” he said emphatically, pointing to the letters Lancut. “That’s Winesooth. That’s how we pronounce it.” “Oh, Wiktor!” “Look for yourself. The L is pronounced W, the A isn’t like your A, sort of an I, which makes a Wine. Our C is really a TZ. And we give the final T a kind of Th sound. So it comes out Wine-tzooth.” She stared at her two maps, each of which clearly showed Lancut as the site of the palace; the word even carried a minute drawing of battlements to prove the point, but now she knew the name was really Winetzooth. Looking up, she had said: “I’m so glad you’ve proved you love me, Wiktor.” She had slammed the books shut. “Because otherwise I’d think you were trying to drive me crazy.” When it seemed that she would never master this difficult language, she had faced two alternatives: she could surrender in despair or she could laugh at herself and try anew. ~ James A Michener,
1196:As soon as I reached my room I took out the Marquise’s letter and reread it, even though by then I knew it word for word. It seemed impossible that Branaric’s arrival on the same day--with Shevraeth--was a coincidence.
I sighed. Now I could not ask my brother outright about this letter. He was as tactless as he was honest. I could easily imagine him blurting it out over dinner. He might find it diverting, though I didn’t think Shevraeth would, for the same reason I couldn’t ask him his opinion of Arthal Merindar: because the last time we had discussed the possible replacement for Galdran Merindar, I had told him flatly I’d rather see my brother crowned than another lying courtier.
Remembering that conversation--in Shevraeth’s father’s palace, with his father listening--I winced. It wasn’t just Bran who lacked tact.
Oria is probably right, I thought glumly, there are too many misunderstandings between the Marquis and me. The problem with gathering my courage and broaching the subject was the very fact of the kingship. If I hadn’t been able to resolve those misunderstandings before Galdran’s death, when Shevraeth was just the Marquis, it seemed impossible to do it now when he was about to take the crown. My motives might be mistaken and he’d think me one of those fawning courtiers at the royal palace. Ugh!
So I asked Oria to tell them I was sick. I holed up in my room with a book and did my best to shove them all out of my mind--as well as the mysterious Marquise of Merindar. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1197:Sit down," she ordered Peabody.

"I prefer to stand."

"And I prefer to give you a good boot in the ass, but I'm restraining myself." Eve reached up, fisted her hands in her own hair and yanked until the pain cleared most of the rage.

"Okay, stand. You couldn't sit with that stick up your butt, anyway. One you shove up it every time Subject Monroe, Charles, is mentioned. You want to be filled in, you want to be briefed? Fine. Here it is."

She had to take another deep breath to insure her tone was professional. "On the evening of March twenty-six, at or about nineteen-thirty, I, accompanied by Roarke, had occasion to visit Areena Mansfield's penthouse suite at The Palace Hotel, this city. Upon entering said premises, investigation officer found subject Mansfield in the company of one Charles Monroe, licensed companion. It was ascertained and confirmed that LC Monroe was there in a professional capacity and had no links to the deceased or the current investigation. His presence, and the salient details pertaining to it, were noted in the report of the interview and marked Level Five in a stupid, ill-conceived attempt by the investigating officer to spare her fat-headed aide any unnecessary embarrassment."

Eve stomped back to her desk, snatched up her coffee, gulped some down. "Record that," she snapped.

Peabody's lip trembled. She sat. She sniffled.

"Oh, no." In genuine panic, Eve stabbed out a finger. "No, you don't. No crying. We're on duty. There is no crying on duty. ~ J D Robb,
1198:..... he had ridden right through the gates of the palace. Of course, people rode through
the gates of the palace every day, but most of them needed the things to be opened first.
The guards on the other side were rigid with fear, because they thought they had seen a ghost.
They would have been far more frightened if they had known that a ghost was almost exactly
what they hadn't seen.
The guard outside the doors of the great hall had seen it happen too, but he had time to gather his
wits, or such that remained, and raise his spear as Binky trotted across the courtyard.
'Halt,' he croaked. 'Halt. What goes where?'
Mort saw him for the first time.
'What?' he said, still lost in thought.
The guard ran his tongue over his dry lips, and backed away. Mort slid off Binky's back and
walked forward.
'I meant, what goes there?' the guard tried again, with a mixture of doggedness and suicidal
stupidity that marked him for early promotion.
Mort caught the spear gently and lifted it out of the way of the door. As he did so the torchlight
illuminated his face.
'Mort,' he said softly.
It should have been enough for any normal soldier, but this guard was officer material.
'I mean, friend or foe?' he stuttered, trying to avoid Mort's gaze.
'Which would you prefer?' he grinned. It wasn't quite the grin of his master, but it was a pretty
effective grin and didn't have a trace of humour in it.
The guard sagged with relief, and stood aside.
'Pass, friend,' he said. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1199:/Farsi Next came the peacock, splendidly arrayed In many-coloured pomp; this he displayed As if he were some proud, self-conscious bride Turning with haughty looks from side to side. 'The Painter of the world created me,' He shrieked, 'but this celestial wealth you see Should not excite your hearts to jealousy. I was a dweller once in paradise; There the insinuating snake's advice Deceived me -- I became his friend, disgrace Was swift and I was banished from that place. My dearest hope is that some blessed day A guide will come to indicate the way Back to my paradise. The king you praise Is too unknown a goal; my inward gaze Is fixed for ever on that lovely land -- There is the goal which I can understand. How could I seek the Simorgh out when I Remember paradise?' And in reply The hoopoe said: 'These thoughts have made you stray Further and further from the proper Way; You think your monarch's palace of more worth Than Him who fashioned it and all the earth. The home we seek is in eternity; The Truth we seek is like a shoreless sea, Of which your paradise is but a drop. This ocean can be yours; why should you stop Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew? The secrets of the sun are yours, but you Content yourself with motes trapped in its beams. Turn to what truly lives, reject what seems -- Which matters more, the body or the soul? Be whole: desire and journey to the Whole. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis

~ Farid ud-Din Attar, The peacocks excuse
,
1200:Dreams Old
I have opened the window to warm my hands on the sill
Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon
Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still
In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.
The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine,
Like savage music striking far off, and there
On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine
Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.
There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange
Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud
Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range
At the back of my life’s horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.
Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil
Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora,
With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter that shakes the sail
Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed dreams lure the unoceaned
explorer.
All the bygone, hushèd years
Streaming back where the mist distils
Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears
No longer shake, where the silk sail fills
With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where the storm
Of living has passed, on and on
Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the warm
Wake of the tumult now spent and gone,
Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after
The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,
1201:This scroll, five hundred years old and more, had been inspired by her favorite, the great Wang Wei, master of landscape art, who had painted the scenes from his own home, where he lived for thirty years before he died. Now behind the palace walls on this winter’s day, where she could see only sky and falling snow, Tzu His gazed upon the green landscapes of continuing spring. One landscape melted into another as slowly she unrolled the scroll, so that she might dwell upon every detail of tree and brook and distant hillside. So did she, in imagination, pass beyond the high walls which enclosed her, and she traveled through a delectable country, beside flowing brooks and spreading lakes, and following the ever-flowing river she crossed over wooden bridges and climbed the stony pathways upon a high mountainside and thence looked down a gorge to see a torrent fed by still higher springs, and breaking into waterfalls as it traveled toward the plains. Down from the mountain again she came, past small villages nestling in pine forests and into the warmer valleys among bamboo groves, and she paused in a poet’s pavilion, and so reached at last the shore where the river lost itself in a bay. There among the reeds a fisherman’s boat rose and fell upon the rising tide. Here the river ended, its horizon the open sea and the misted mountains of infinity. This scroll, Lady Miao had once told her, was the artist’s picture of the human soul, passing through the pleasantest scenes of earth to the last view of the unknown future, far beyond. ~ Pearl S Buck,
1202:When he demanded gold, the Indians brought him copper, and when he demanded silver, they brought him silvery mica, which they mined in the North Carolina mountains, in sheets up to three feet wide and three feet long. De Soto found little precious metal, but an abundance of pearls, especially in the mortuary temples. In one town alone his expedition found 25,000 pounds of pearls. The mortuary temples of the people of Cutifachiqui astounded the Spaniards, who had already seen the cathedrals of Spain, the mosques and fountains of the Arabs, the palace of Montezuma in Mexico, and the gold ransom of Atahualpa in Peru. Outside the massive doors into the temple that housed the pearls, twelve wooden giants stood guard. The huge figures held over their heads massive clubs covered with strips of copper and studded with what appeared to the Spaniards to be diamonds, but may have been mica chips. The Indians had decorated the roof of one temple with pearls and feathers so that it looked to the Spaniards like a building from a fairy tale. Along the sides of the roof, pearls had been suspended from threads so thin that the pearls seemed to be floating in the air around the temple. Inside the temples the Spaniards saw rows of chests, each filled with pearls of uniform size. The Spaniards could not carry all the pearls, but they selected out the best ones for themselves. Ironically, even though De Soto’s expedition was the first into the area, his men also found in the temple some European trade goods—glass, cheap beads, and a rosary—indicating ~ Jack Weatherford,
1203:I mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine-fish or a glass jar of seeds from Western Australia - but not Bertram. No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not Bertram. By the time we had tottered out of the Gold Coast village and were working towards the Palace of Machinery, everything pointed to my shortly executing a quiet sneak in the direction of that rather jolly Planters' Bar in the West Indian section. ...
There are certain moments in life when words are not needed. I looked at Biffy, Biffy looked at me. A perfect understanding linked our two souls.
"?"
"!"
Three minutes later we had joined the Planters.
I have never been in the West Indies, but I am in a position to state that in certain of the fundamentals of life they are streets ahead of our European civilisation. The man behind the counter, as kindly a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove in view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap. A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father's life was saved at Wembley. ~ P G Wodehouse,
1204:When you were dying, Edward quickly discovered, people would let you do pretty much whatever you wanted. So he made some new unofficial decrees:
1. The king was allowed to sleep in as long as he wished.
2. The king no longer had to wear seven layers of elaborate, jewel-encrusted clothing. Or silly hats with feathers. Or pants that resembled pumpkins. Or tights. From now on, unless it was a special occasion, he was fine in just a simple shirt and trousers.
3. Dessert was to be served first. Blackberry pie, preferably. With whipped cream.
4. The king would no longer be taking part in any more dreary studies. His fine tutors had filled his head with enough history, politics and philosophy to last him two lifetimes, and as he was unlikely to get even half of one lifetime, there was no need for study. No more lessons, he decided. No more books. No more tutors' dirty looks.
5. The king was now going to reside in the top of the southeast turret, where he could sit in the window ledge and gaze out at the river for as long as he liked.
6. No one at court would be allowed to say the following words or phrases: affliction, illness,
malady, sickness, disease, disorder, ailment, infirmity, convalescence, indisposition, malaise,
plight, plague, poor health, failing health, what's going around
, or your condition. Most of all, no one was allowed to say the word dying.
And finally (and perhaps most importantly, for the sake of our story)
7. Dogs would now be allowed inside the palace. More specifically, his dog. ~ Cynthia Hand,
1205:Faces
I look into the faces of the people passing by,
The glad ones and the sad ones, and the lined with misery,
And I wonder why the sorrow or the twinkle in the eye;
But the pale and weary faces are the ones that trouble me.
I saw a face this morning, and time was when it was fair;
Youth had brushed it bright with color in the distant long ago,
And the goddess of the lovely once had kept a temple there,
But the cheeks were pale with grieving and the eyes were dull with woe.
Who has done this thing I wondered; what has wrought the ruin here?
Why these sunken cheeks and pallid where the roses once were pink?
Why has beauty fled her palace; did some vandal hand appear?
Did her lover prove unfaithful or her husband take to drink?
Once the golden voice of promise whispered sweetly in her ears;
She was born to be a garden where the smiles of love might lurk;
Now the eyes that shone like jewels are but gateways for her tears,
And she takes her place among us, toilers early bound for work.
Is it fate that writes so sadly, or the cruelty of man?
What foul deed has marred the parchment of a life so fair as this?
Who has wrecked this lovely temple and destroyed the Maker's plan,
Raining blows on cheeks of beauty God had fashioned just to kiss?
Oh, the pale and weary faces of the people that I see
Are the ones that seem to haunt me, and I pray to God above
That such cruel desolation shall not ever come to be
Stamped forever in the future on the faces that I love.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
1206:The Montreux Palace Hotel was built in an age when it was thought that things would last. It is on the very shores of Switzerland's Lake Geneva, its balconies and iron railings look across the water, its yellow-ocher awnings are a touch of color in the winter light. It is like a great sanitarium or museum. There are Bechstein pianos in the public rooms, a private silver collection, a Salon de Bridge. This is the hotel where the novelist Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov and his wife, Véra, live. They have been here for 14 years. One imagines his large and brooding reflection in the polished glass of bookcases near the reception desk where there are bound volumes of the Illustrated London News from the year 1849 to 1887, copies of Great Expectations, The Chess Games of Greco and a book called Things Past, by the Duchess of Sermoneta.

Though old, the hotel is marvelously kept up and, in certain portions, even modernized. Its business now is mainly conventions and, in the summer, tours, but there is still a thin migration of old clients, ancient couples and remnants of families who ask for certain rooms when they come and sometimes certain maids. For Nabokov, a man who rode as a child on the great European express trains, who had private tutors, estates, and inherited millions which disappeared in the Russian revolution, this is a return to his sources. It is a place to retire to, with Visconti's Mahler and the long-dead figures of La Belle Epoque, Edward VII, d'Annunzio, the munitions kings, where all stroll by the lake and play miniature golf, home at last. ~ James Salter,
1207:You’re terrified that my father will hear that you’ve taken me prisoner. No Spartan woman marries a coward!”
“Watch your tongue,” Theseus growled, his hands clenched. If he hit me, I’d hit him back, no matter how bad a beating I got for it. I would not surrender.
“Or what? Will you kill me? Go ahead and try. If you succeed, you lose what you really want to gain from this marriage. If I die, I take the Spartan crown with me into Hades’ kingdom. Better that than let you get your filthy hands on it!”
He took a step forward. I held my ground, shifting my weight just a bit and grabbing hold of my skirt. I’d changed my mind. If he gave the slightest sign that he intended to strike me, I wouldn’t wait for the blow to land. I’d jerk up the hem of my gown and kick him so hard that--!
Suddenly the hall rang with Theseus’s laughter. He held his sides, threw back his head, and brayed. “Ah, Lady Helen, the gods have been more than good to you. The three Graces gave you a face to outshine the sun, then filled your lovely mouth with these bursts of comical nonsense. We should be grateful to them. It’s all that keeps us poor mortal men from mistaking you for a goddess.”
He turned his back on me and returned to his throne. From there he proclaimed, “As a reward for amusing me so well, I’m going to give the lady Helen her own lodging in the palace and her very own attendant to be responsible for her every wish, her every whim, and above all, her every movement. Now who deserves such a prize?” His eyes closed and a mean smile twisted his lips. “Telys. ~ Esther M Friesner,
1208:Night
After the fret and failure of this day,
And weariness of thought, O Mother Night,
Come with soft kiss to soothe our care away
And all our little tumults set to right;
Most pitiful of all death’s kindred fair,
Riding above us through the curtained air
On thy dusk car, thou scatterest to the earth
Sweet dreams and drowsy charms of tender might
And lovers’ dear delight before to-morrow’s birth.
Thus art thou wont thy quiet lands to leave
And pillared courts beyond the Milky Way,
Wherein thou tarriest all our solar day
While unsubstantial dreams before thee weave
A foamy dance, and fluttering fancies play
About thy palace in the silver ray
Of some far, moony globe. But when the hour,
The long-expected comes, the ivory gates
Open on noiseless hinge before thy bower
Unbidden, and the jewelled chariot waits
With magic steeds. Thou from the fronting rim
Bending to urge them, whilst thy sea-dark hair
Falls in ambrosial ripples o’er each limb,
With beautiful pale arms, untrammelled, bare
For horsemanship, to those twin chargers fleet
Dost give full rein across the fires that glow
In the wide floor of heaven, from off their feet
Scattering the powdery star-dust as they go.
Come swiftly down the sky, O Lady Night,
Fall through the shadow-country, O most kind,
Shake out thy strands of gentle dreams and light
For chains, wherewith thou still art used to bind
With tenderest love of careful leeches’ art
The bruised and weary heart
In slumber blind.
~ Clive Staples Lewis,
1209:After so much imposture, so much fraud, it is comforting to contemplate a beggar. He, at least, neither lies nor lies to himself: his doctrine, if he has one, he embodies; work he dislikes, and he proves it; wanting to possess nothing, he cultivates his impoverishment, the condition of his freedom. His thought is resolved into his being and his being into his thought. He has nothing, he is himself, he endures: to live on a footing with eternity is to live from day to day, from hand to mouth. Thus, for him, other men are imprisoned in illusion. If he depends on them, he takes his revenge by studying them, a specialist in the underbelly of “noble” sentiments. His sloth, of a very rare quality, truly “delivers” him from a world of fools and dupes. About renunciation he knows more than many of your esoteric works. To be convinced of this, you need only walk out into the street … But you prefer the texts that teach mendicancy. Since no practical consequence accompanies your meditations, it will not be surprising that the merest bum is worth more than you … Can we conceive a Buddha faithful to his truths and to his palace? One is not “delivered-alive” and still a land-owner. I reject the generalization of the lie, I repudiate those who exhibit their so-called “salvation” and prop it with a doctrine which does not emanate from themselves. To unmask them, to knock them off the pedestal they have hoisted themselves on, to hold them up to scorn is a campaign no one should remain indifferent to. For at any price we must keep those who have too clear a conscience from living and dying in peace. ~ Emil M Cioran,
1210:Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,--the domain
Of Cynthia,--the wide palace of the sun,--
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,--
The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters: -- Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness.
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers,--
Forget-me-not,--the Blue bell,--and, that Queen
Of secrecy, the Violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!
Written in answer to a Sonnet ending thus : --
" Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell--"

'The sonnet of John Hamilton Reynolds to which this is a reply appeared in 1821 in The Garden of Florence &c. From a letter signed "A. J. Horwood" which was published in The Anthenoeum of the 3rd of June 1876, it would seem that this poem, like many others, must have been written out more than once by Keats; for, in a copy of The Garden of Florence mentioned in that letter, Keats's sonnet is transcribed, seemingly, from a different manuscript from that used by Lord Houghton when he gave the sonnet in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains (Vol. II, page 295) in 1848. ...Lord Houghton dates the sonnet February 1818.'
~ 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 In Answer To A Sonnet By J. H. Reynolds
,
1211:Daniel’s early life demonstrates that there is more to being young than making mistakes. No characteristic wins the hearts of adults more quickly than wisdom in the words and actions of a young person. Daniel and his friends had been taken from their homes in Judah and exiled. Their futures were in doubt, but they all had personal traits that qualified them for jobs as servants in the king’s palace. They took advantage of the opportunity without letting the opportunity take advantage of them. • Our first hint of Daniel’s greatness comes in his quiet refusal to give up his convictions. He had applied God’s will to his own life, and he resisted changing the good habits he had formed. Both his physical and spiritual diets were an important part of his relationship with God. He ate carefully and lived prayerfully. One of the benefits of being in training for royal service was eating food from the king’s table. Daniel tactfully chose a simpler menu that wouldn’t compromise his observance of God’s law. • While Daniel carefully limited his food options, he generously indulged in prayer. He was able to communicate with God because he made it a habit. He put into practice his convictions, even when that meant being thrown into a den of hungry lions. His life proved he made the right choice. • Do you hold so strongly to your faith in God that no matter what happens you will do what God says? Such conviction keeps you a step ahead of temptation; such conviction gives you wisdom and stability in changing circumstances. Prayerfully live out your convictions in everyday life and trust God for the results. ~ Anonymous,
1212:I remember, for instance, the first time I went to the great palace of Versailles outside Paris and how, as I wandered around among all those gardens and fountains and statues, I had a sense that the place was alive with ghosts which I was just barely able to see, that somewhere just beneath the surface of all that was going on around me at that moment, the past was going on around me too with such reality and such poignance that I had to have somebody else to tell about it if only to reassure myself that I wasn’t losing my mind. I wanted and sorely needed to name to another human being the sights that I was seeing and the thoughts and feelings they were giving rise to. I thought that in a way I could not even surely know what I was seeing physically until I could speak of it to someone else, could not come to terms with what I was feeling as either real or unreal until I could put it into words and speak those words and hear other words in response to mine. But there was nobody to speak to, as it happened, and I can still remember the frustration of it: the sense I had of something trying to be born in me that could not be born without the midwifery of expressing it; the sense, it might not be too much to say, of my self trying to be born, of a threshold I had to cross in order to move on into the next room of who I had it in me just then to become. “in the beginning was the Word,” John writes, and perhaps part of what that means is that until there is a word, there can be no beginning.
Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an essay called The Speaking and Writing of Words. ~ Frederick Buechner,
1213:I was a cottage maiden
Hardened by sun and air,
Contented with my cottage mates,
Not mindful I was fair.
Why did a great lord find me out,
And praise my flaxen hair?
Why did a great lord find me out
To fill my heart with care?
He lured me to his palace home—
Woe's me for joy thereof— 10
To lead a shameless shameful life,
His plaything and his love.
He wore me like a silken knot,
He changed me like a glove;
So now I moan, an unclean thing,
Who might have been a dove.
O Lady Kate, my cousin Kate,
You grew more fair than I:
He saw you at your father's gate,
Chose you, and cast me by. 20
He watched your steps along the lane,
Your work among the rye;
He lifted you from mean estate
To sit with him on high.
Because you were so good and pure
He bound you with his ring:
The neighbours call you good and pure,
Call me an outcast thing.
Even so I sit and howl in dust,
You sit in gold and sing: 30
Now which of us has tenderer heart?
You had the stronger wing.
O cousin Kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand:
If he had fooled not me but you,
If you stood where I stand,
He'd not have won me with his love
Nor bought me with his land;
I would have spit into his face
And not have taken his hand. 40
Yet I've a gift you have not got,
And seem not like to get:
For all your clothes and wedding-ring
I've little doubt you fret.
My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,
Cling closer, closer yet:
Your father would give lands for one
To wear his coronet. ~ Christina Rossetti,
1214:Peace And Shepherd
Low in a deep sequestered vale,
Whence Alpine heights ascend,
A beauteous nymph, in pilgrim garb,
Is seen her steps to bend.
Her olive garland drops with gore;
Her scattered tresses torn,
Her bleeding breast, her bruised feet,
Bespeak a maid forlorn.
“From bower, and hall, and palace driven,
To these lone wilds I flee;
My name is Peace,—I love the cot;
O Shepherd, shelter me!”
“O beauteous pilgrim, why dost thou
From bower and palace flee?
So soft thy voice, so sweet thy look,
Sure all would shelter thee.”
“Like Noah's dove, no rest I find;
The din of battle roars
Where once my steps I loved to print
Along the myrtle shores:
“For ever in my frighted ears
The savage war-whoop sounds;
And, like a panting hare, I fly
Before the opening hounds.”
“Pilgrim, those spiry groves among,
The mansions thou mayst see,
Where cloistered saints chaunt holy hymns,—
Sure such would shelter thee!”
“Those roofs with trophied banners stream,
There martial hymns resound;—
And, shepherd, oft from crosiered hands
This breast has felt a wound.”
“Ah! gentle pilgrim, glad would I
Those tones for ever hear!
With thee to share my scanty lot,
That lot to me were dear.
“But lo, along the vine-clad steep,
108
The gleam of armour shines;
His scattered flock, his straw-roofed hut,
The helpless swain resigns.
“And now the smouldering flames aspire;
Their lurid light I see;
I hear the human wolves approach:
I cannot
shelter thee.”
~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,
1215:One way of approaching the question about what makes a human being the same person over time would be to point out that we are living things. You are the same individual animal that you were as a baby. Locke used the word ‘man’ (meaning by that ‘man or woman’) to refer to the ‘human animal’. He thought it was true to say that over a life each of us remains the same ‘man’ in that sense. There is a continuity of the living human being that develops in the course of its life. But for Locke being the same ‘man’ was very different from being the same person. According to Locke, I could be the same ‘man’, but not the same person I was previously. How could that be? What makes us the same person over time, Locke claimed, is our consciousness, our awareness of our own selves. What you can't remember isn't part of you as a person. To illustrate this he imagined a prince waking up with a cobbler's memories; and a cobbler with a prince's memories. The prince wakes up as usual in his palace, and to outside appearances is the same person he was when he went to sleep. But because he has the cobbler's memories instead of his own, he feels that he is the cobbler. Locke's point was that the prince is right to feel that he is the cobbler. Bodily continuity doesn't decide the issue. What matters in questions about personal identity is psychological continuity. If you have the prince's memories, then you are the prince. If you have the cobbler's memories, you are the cobbler, even if you have the body of a prince. If the cobbler had committed a crime, it would be the one with the prince's body that we should hold responsible for it. Of ~ Nigel Warburton,
1216:Savoir Faire
CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the king's street.
Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish
people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel.
The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November drizzles wrap the
two, one in tall leather boots, one in wool leggins.
Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may name boats after me or
change the name of a long street and give it one of my nicknames.
The old men who beset the soil of Sweden and own the titles to the land-the old
men who enjoy a silken shimmer to their chin whiskers when they promenade
the streets named after old kings-if they forget me-the old men whose varicose
veins stand more and more blue on the calves of their legs when they take their
morning baths attended by old women born to the bath service of old men and
young-if these old men say another King Carl should have a bronze on the king's
street rather than a Fool CarlThen I would hurl them only another fool's laughI would remember last Sunday when I stood on a jutland of fire-born red granite
watching the drop of the sun in the middle of the afternoon and the full moon
shining over Stockholm four o'clock in the afternoon.
If the young men will read five lines of one of my poems I will let the kings have
all the bronze-I ask only that one page of my writings be a knapsack keepsake of
the young men who are the bloodkin of those who laughed nine hundred years
ago: We are afraid of nothing-only-the sky may fall on us.
~ Carl Sandburg,
1217:The Farewell To Clarimonde
Adieu, Romauld! But thou canst not forget me.
Although no more I haunt thy dreams at night,
Thy hungering heart forever must regret me,
And starve for those lost moments of delight.
Naught shall avail thy priestly rites and duties,
Nor fears of Hell, nor hopes of Heaven beyond:
Before the Cross shall rise my fair form's beauties—The lips, the limbs, the eyes of Clarimonde.
Like gall the wine sipped from the sacred chalice
Shall taste to one who knew my red mouth's bliss,
When Youth and Beauty dwelt in Love's own palace,
And life flowed on in one eternal kiss.
Through what strange ways I come, dear heart, to reach thee,
From viewless lands, by paths no man e'er trod!
I braved all fears, all dangers dared, to teach thee
A love more mighty than thy love of God.
Think not in all His Kingdom to discover
Such joys, Romauld, as ours, when fierce yet fond
I clasped thee—kissed thee—crowned thee my one lover:
Thou canst not find another Clarimonde.
I knew all arts of love: he who possessed me
Possessed all women, and could never tire;
A new life dawned for him who once caressed me;
Satiety itself I set on fire.
Inconstancy I chained: men died to win me;
Kings cast by crowns for one hour on my breast:
And all the passionate tide of love within me
I gave to thee, Romauld. Wert thou not blest?
Yet, for the love of God, thy hand hath riven
Our welded souls. But not in prayer well conned,
Not in thy dearly-purchased peace of Heaven,
Canst thou forget those hours with Clarimonde.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
1218:Well, if he wants to be king, he’ll just plain have to get used to questions and toadies and all the rest of it,” I said. Remembering the conversation at dinner and wondering if I’d made an idiot of myself, I added crossly, “I don’t have any sympathy at all. In fact, I wish he hadn’t come up here. If he needed rest from the fatigue of taking over a kingdom, why couldn’t he go to that fabulous palace in Renselaeus? Or to Shevraeth, which I’ll just bet has an equally fabulous palace?”
Nee sighed. “Is that a rhetorical or a real question?”
“Real. And I don’t want to ask Bran because he’s so likely to hop out with my question when we’re all together and fry me with embarrassment,” I finished bitterly.
She gave a sympathetic grin. “Well, I suspect it’s to present a united front, politically speaking. You haven’t been to Court, so you don’t quite comprehend how much you and your brother have become heroes--symbols--to the kingdom. Especially you, which is why there were some murmurs and speculations when you never came to the capital.”
I shook my head. “Symbol for failure, maybe. We didn’t win--Shevraeth did.”
She gave me an odd look midway between surprise and curiosity. “But to return to your question, Vidanric’s tendency to keep his own counsel ought to be reassuring as far as people hopping out with embarrassing words are concerned. If I were you--and I know it’s so much easier to give advice than to follow it--I’d sit down with him, when no one else is at hand, and talk it out.”
Just the thought of seeking him out for a private talk made me shudder. “I’d rather walk down the mountain in shoes full of snails. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1219:It is the postscript to the war that offers the most revelatory and startling commentary on Dutugemunu's life. Despite his newfound wealth and his peactime luxuries, Dutugemunu wanders gloomily about his palace, too often remembering the carnage he wrought on the battlefield and worried over the deep karmic deficits he has incurred. The elders of the Sangha, the Buddhist clergy, notice this and send a delegation of eight monks to minister to his anguish.

'In truth, venerable sirs,' Dutugemunu tells the monks when they arrive, 'how can there be comfort to me in that I caused the destruction of a great army of myriads of men?'

'There is no hindrance on the way to heaven because of your acts,' one of the monks assures his king. Slaughtering Tamils is no moral mistake. Only the equivalent of one and a half men died at Dutugemunu's hands, according to the Sangha's official arithmetic, because the Tamils 'were heretical and evil and dies as though they were animals. You will make the Buddha's faith shine in many ways. Therefore, Lord of Men, cast away your mental confusion.'

Being thus exhorted, the great king was comforted; his kill rate would never disturb him again. He does, however, recall that, once upon a breakfast, he ate a red-pepper pod without consciously setting aside a portion of it for the Sangha, as was the royal practice. 'For this,' he decides, 'penance must be done by me.' A hierarchy of sin springs into being, in which dishonouring the Sangha by denying it a due share of a red-pepper pod counts as a graver transgression, worthier of penance, than massacring thousands of Tamils on the battlefield. ~ Samanth Subramanian,
1220:When the Bolide Fragmentation Rate shot up through a certain level on Day 701, marking the formal beginning of the White Sky, a number of cultural organizations launched programs that they had been planning since around the time of the Crater Lake announcement. Many of these were broadcast on shortwave radio, and so Ivy had her pick of programs from Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tiananmen Square, the Potala Palace, the Great Pyramids, the Wailing Wall.

After sampling all of them she locked her radio dial on Notre Dame, where they were holding the Vigil for the End of the World and would continue doing so until the cathedral fell down in ruins upon the performers’ heads and extinguished all life in the remains of the building. She couldn’t watch it, since video bandwidth was scarce, but she could imagine it well: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, its ranks swollen by the most prestigious musicians of the Francophone world, all dressed in white tie and tails, ball gowns and tiaras, performing in shifts around the clock, playing a few secular classics but emphasizing the sacred repertoire: masses and requiems. The music was marred by the occasional thud, which she took to be the sonic booms of incoming bolides. In most cases the musicians played right through. Sometimes a singer would skip a beat. An especially big boom produced screams and howls of dismay from the audience, blended with the clank and clatter of shattered stained glass raining to the cathedral’s stone floor. But for the most part the music played sweetly, until it didn’t. Then there was nothing. ~ Neal Stephenson,
1221:Ah me, why did they build my
house by the road to the market
town?
  They moor their laden boats near
my trees.
  They come and go and wander at
their will.
  I sit and watch them; my time
wears on.
  Turn them away I cannot. And
thus my days pass by.
  Night and day their steps sound
by my door.
  Vainly I cry, "I do not know
you."
  Some of them are known to my
fingers, some to my nostrils, the
blood in my veins seems to know
them, and some are known to my
dreams.
  Turn them away I cannot. I call
them and say, "Come to my house
whoever chooses. Yes, come."
  In the morning the bell rings in the
temple.
  They come with their baskets in
their hands.
  Their feet are rosy red. The early
light of dawn is on their faces.
  Turn them away I cannot. I call
them and I say, "Come to my garden
to gather flowers. Come hither."
  In the mid-day the gong sounds
at the palace gate.
  I know not why they leave their
work and linger near my hedge.
  The flowers in their hair are pale
and faded; the notes are languid in
their flutes.
  Turn them away I cannot. I call
them and say, "The shade is cool
under my trees. Come, friends."
  At night the crickets chirp in the
woods.
  Who is it that comes slowly to my
door and gently knocks?
  I vaguely see the face, not a word
is spoken, the stillness of the sky is
all around.
  Turn away my silent guest I
cannot. I look at the face through the
dark, and hours of dreams pass by.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener IV - Ah Me
,
1222:Cousin Kate
I was a cottage maiden
Hardened by sun and air
Contented with my cottage mates,
Not mindful I was fair.
Why did a great lord find me out,
And praise my flaxen hair?
Why did a great lord find me out,
To fill my heart with care?
He lured me to his palace home Woe's me for joy thereofTo lead a shameless shameful life,
His plaything and his love.
He wore me like a silken knot,
He changed me like a glove;
So now I moan, an unclean thing,
Who might have been a dove.
O Lady kate, my cousin Kate,
You grew more fair than I:
He saw you at your father's gate,
Chose you, and cast me by.
He watched your steps along the lane,
Your work among the rye;
He lifted you from mean estate
To sit with him on high.
Because you were so good and pure
He bound you with his ring:
The neighbors call you good and pure,
Call me an outcast thing.
Even so I sit and howl in dust,
You sit in gold and sing:
Now which of us has tenderer heart?
You had the stronger wing.
O cousin Kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand:
If he had fooled not me but you,
127
If you stood where I stand,
He'd not have won me with his love
Nor bought me with his land;
I would have spit into his face
And not have taken his hand.
Yet I've a gift you have not got,
And seem not like to get:
For all your clothes and wedding-ring
I've little doubt you fret.
My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,
Cling closer, closer yet:
Your father would give his lands for one
To wear his coronet.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,
1223:Upon The Late Storm
[And Death of His Highness Ensuing the Same.]
We must resign! Heaven his great soul does claim
In storms, as loud as his immortal fame;
His dying groans, his last breath, shakes our isle,
And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile.
About his palace their broad roots are tossed
Into the air: So Romulus was lost.
New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,
And from obeying fell to worshipping.
On Oeta's top thus Hercules lay dead,
With ruined oaks and pines about him spread;
The poplar, too, whose bough he wont to wear
On his victorious head, lay prostrate there.
Those his last fury from the mountain rent;
Our dying hero from the continent
Ravished whole towns, and forts from Spaniards reft,
As his last legacy to Britain left.
The ocean, which so long our hopes confined,
Could give no limits to his vaster mind;
Our bounds' enlargement was his latest toil,
Nor hath he left us prisoners to our isle.
Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.
From civil broils he did us disengage,
Found nobler objects for our martial rage:
And, with wise conduct, to his country showed
Their ancient way of conquering abroad.
Ungrateful then, if we no tears allow
To him that gave us peace and empire too.
Princes, that feared him, grieve, concerned to see
No pitch of glory from the grave is free.
Nature herself took notice of his death,
And, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath
That to remotest shores her billows rolled,
The approaching fate of her great ruler told.
~ Edmund Waller,
1224:Lament For Zenocrate
Black is the beauty of the brightest day,
The golden belle of heaven's eternal fire,
That danced with glory on the silver waves,
Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams:
And all with faintness and for foul disgrace,
He binds his temples with a frowning cloud,
Ready to darken earth with endless night:
Zenocrate that gave him light and life,
Whose eyes shot fire from their ivory bowers,
And tempered every soul with lively heat,
Now by the malice of the angry skies,
Whose jealousy admits no second mate,
Draws in the comfort of her latest breath
All dazzled with the hellish mists of death.
Now walk the angels on the walls of heaven,
As sentinels to warn th'immortal souls,
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
Apollo, Cynthia, and the ceaseless lamps
That gently looked upon this loathsome earth,
Shine downwards now no more, but deck the heavens
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
The crystal springs whose taste illuminates
Refined eyes with an eternal sight,
Like tried silver runs through Paradise
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
The Cherubins and holy Seraphins
That sing and play before the King of Kings,
Use all their voices and their instruments
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
And in this sweet and curious harmony,
The God that tunes this music to our souls,
Holds out his hand in highest majesty
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
Then let some holy trance convey my thoughts,
Up to the palace of th'imperial heaven:
That this my life may be as short to me
As are the days of sweet Zenocrate.
42
~ Christopher Marlowe,
1225:Tale
A Prince was vexed at having devoted himself
only to the perfection of ordinary generosities.
He foresaw astonishing revolutions of love
and suspected his women of being able to do better
than their habitual acquiescence embellished by heaven and luxury.
He wanted to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and gratification.
Whether this was an aberration of piety or not,
that is what he wanted. Enough worldly power, at least, he had.
All the women who had known him were assassinated;
what havoc in the garden of beauty! At the point of the sword they blessed him.
He did not order new ones.-- The women reappeared.
He killed all those who followed him, after the hunt or the libations.-All followed him. He amused himself cutting the throats of rare animals.
He set palaces on fire. He would rush upon people and hack them to pieces.-The throngs, the gilded roofs, the beautiful animals still remained.
Can one be in ecstasies over destruction and by cruelty rejuvenated!
The people did not complain. No one offered him the benefit of his views.
One evening he was proudly galloping.
A Genie appeared, of ineffable beauty, unwavorable even.
In his face and in his bearing shone the promise of a complex and multiple love!
of an indescribable happiness, unendurable, even.
The Prince and the Genie annihilated each other probably in essential health.
How could they have helped dying of it?
Together then they died.
But this Prince died in his palace at an ordinary age,
the Prince was the Genie, the Genie was the Prince.-There is no sovereign music for our desire.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,
1226:Advising the Prince

The recluse Hsu Su Kwei had come to see Prince Wu.
The Prince was glad. "I have desired," he said, "To see you for a long time. Tell me if I am doing right.
I want to love my people, and by the exercise of justice
To put an end to war.
Is this enough?

"By no means," said the recluse.
"Your 'love' for your people
Puts them in mortal danger.
Your exercise of justice is the root
Of war after war!
Your grand intentions
Will end in disaster!

"If you set out to 'accomplish something great'
You only deceive yourself.
Your love and justice
Are fraudulent.
They are mere pretexts
For self-assertion, for aggression.
One action will bring on another
And in the chain of events
Your hidden intentions
Will be made plain.

You claim to practice justice. Should you seem to succeed
Success itself will bring more conflict.
Why all these guards
Standing at attention
At the palace gate around the temple altar
Everywhere.

You are at war with yourself!
You do not believe in justice,
Only in power and success.
If you overcome
An enemy and annex his country
You will be even less at peace
With yourself than you are now.
Nor will your passions let you
Sit still. You will fight again
And again for the sake of
A more perfect exercise of justice!

Abandon your plan
To be a 'loving inequitable ruler.'
Try to respond
To the demands of inner truth.
Stop vexing yourself and your people
With these obsessions!
Your people will breathe easy at last.
They will live
And war will end by itself! ~ Thomas Merton,
1227:/Farsi Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night To learn the truth about the candle light, And they decided one of them should go To gather news of the elusive glow. One flew till in the distance he discerned A palace window where a candle burned -- And went no nearer: back again he flew To tell the others what he thought he knew. The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim, Remarking: "He knows nothing of the flame." A moth more eager than the one before Set out and passed beyond the palace door. He hovered in the aura of the fire, A trembling blur of timorous desire, Then headed back to say how far he'd been, And how much he had undergone and seen. The mentor said: "You do not bear the signs Of one who's fathomed how the candle shines." Another moth flew out -- his dizzy flight Turned to an ardent wooing of the light; He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance Both self and fire were mingled by his dance -- The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head, His being glowed a fierce translucent red; And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze, The moth's form lost within the glowing rays, He said: "He knows, he knows the truth we seek, That hidden truth of which we cannot speak." To go beyond all knowledge is to find That comprehension which eludes the mind, And you can never gain the longed-for goal Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul; But should one part remain, a single hair Will drag you back and plunge you in despair -- No creature's self can be admitted here, Where all identity must disappear. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis

~ Farid ud-Din Attar, The moths and the flame
,
1228:We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake
Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat u, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo
Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake
Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo
No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake
The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo
"The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will
I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo
It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will
Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction facility-the Wilderness School. Guess I was busy-Leo
Doesn't matter. You were lucky to miss it. The thing is, Beckendorf was one of the first casualties, and ever since then-Jake
Your cabin's been cursed-Leo ~ Rick Riordan,
1229:The Haunted Palace
In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palaceRadiant palace- reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominionIt stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This- all this- was in the olden
Time long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well-befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!- for never morrow
90
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh- but smile no more.
-THE END.
~ Edgar Allan Poe,
1230:We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake
Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat up, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo
Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake
Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo
No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake
The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo
"The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will
I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo
It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will
Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction facility-the Wilderness School. Guess I was busy-Leo
Doesn't matter. You were lucky to miss it. The thing is, Beckendorf was one of the first casualties, and ever since then-Jake
Your cabin's been cursed-Leo ~ Rick Riordan,
1231:Breitmann In Belgium.
BOON tidings to der Breitmann came
Ash he at table end,
Dere's right goot fisch at Blankenberghe,
Und oysters in Ostend.
Denn to Ostland ve will reiten gaen,
To Ostland o'er de sand,
Dou und I mit pridle drawn
For dere ish de oyster land.
Und vhen dey shtood bei Ostersee,
Vhere de waters roar like sin,
Dere coom five hundert fischer volk
To dake der Breitmann in.
'Gotts doonder! Should ve doomple down
Amoong de waters plue,
I kess you'd vant more help from me
Dan I should vant from you!
'If you hat peen vhere I hafe peen
Und see vot I hafe see,
Vhere de surf rise oop nine tausend feet,
In de land of Nieuw Jarsie
Und schwimmed dat surf ash I hafe schwimmed,
Peside de Jersey stran''From dat day fort' de Ostland men
Shdeered glear of der Breitemann.
Boot von ding set him schvearin so,
I dinked he'd nefer cease,
De Ostend oysters kostet more
In Ostend als Paris.
Hans asked an anciendt fisherman,
To 'splain dis if he may,
Und says he, 'Mijn Heer - dey're beter hier
Als ein hundert leagues afay.
'Und as de oysters beter hier
Of course dey kostet more'Der Breitmann dook his bilcrim shdaff,
51
Und toorned him to de toor.
Says Hans, 'De Vlaemsche fischermen
Can sheat de vorldt I pet
Dey sheaten von anoder too,
All's fisch to a Dutchman's net.
'Der king peginned a palace hier,
De palace hat to shtop,
He foundt de beoples sheaten so
He gife de bildin oop.
Aldough das Leben hier ish goot,
Ad least Ostend-sibly'So shpoke der Breitemann und cut
Dat city py de sea.
~ Charles Godfrey Leland,
1232:The Lament Of The Old Nurse
NURSE
Our mistress bids me with all speed to call
Aegisthus to the strangers, that he come
And hear more clearly, as a man from man,
This newly brought report. Before her slaves,
Under set eyes of melancholy cast,
She hid her inner chuckle at the events
That have been brought to pass--too well for her,
But for this house and hearth most miserably,-As in the tale the strangers clearly told.
He, when he hears and learns the story's gist,
Will joy, I trow, in heart. Ah, wretched me!
How those old troubles, of all sorts made up,
Most hard to bear, in Atreus's palace-halls
Have made my heart full heavy in my breast!
But never have I known a woe like this.
For other ills I bore full patiently,
But as for dear Orestes, my sweet charge,
Whom from his mother I received and nursed . . .
And then the shrill cries rousing me o' nights,
And many and unprofitable toils
For me who bore them. For one needs must rear
The heedless infant like an animal,
(How can it else be?) as his humor serve
For while a child is yet in swaddling clothes,
It speaketh not, if either hunger comes,
Or passing thirst, or lower calls of need;
And children's stomach works its own content.
And I, though I foresaw this, call to mind,
How I was cheated, washing swaddling clothes,
And nurse and laundress did the selfsame work.
I then with these my double handicrafts,
Brought up Orestes for his father dear;
And now, woe's me! I learn that he is dead,
And go to fetch the man that mars this house;
And gladly will he hear these words of mine.
25
~ Aeschylus,
1233:Dimly Kev remembered one of the mythology stories the Hathaways were so fond of... the Greek one about Hades, the god of the underworld, kidnapping the maiden Persephone in a flowery field and dragging her down through an opening in the earth. Down to his dark, private world where he could possess her. Although the Hathaway daughters had all been indignant about Persephone's fate, Kev's sympathies had privately been on Hades' side. Romany culture tended to romanticize the idea of kidnapping a woman for one's bride, even mimicking it during their courtship rituals.
"I don't see why eating a mere half-dozen pomegranate seeds should have condemned Persephone to stay with Hades part of every year," Poppy had said in outrage. "No one told her the rules. It wasn't fair. I'm certain she would never have touched a thing, had she known what would happen."
"And it wasn't a very filling snack," Beatrix had added, perturbed. "If I'd been there, I would have asked for a pudding or a jam pastry, at least."
"Perhaps she wasn't altogether unhappy, having to stay," Win had suggested, her eyes twinkling. "After all, Hades did make her his queen. And the story says he possessed 'the riches of the earth.'"
"A rich husband," Amelia had said, "doesn't change the fact that Persephone's main residence is in an undesirable location with no view whatsoever. Just think of the difficulties in leasing it out during the off-months."
They had all agreed that Hades was a complete villain.
But Kev had understood exactly why the underworld god had stolen Persephone for his bride. He had wanted a little bit of sunshine, of warmth, for himself, down in the cheerless gloom of his dark palace. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
1234:Breitmann In Belgium. Ostende.
BOON tidings to der Breitmann came
Ash he at table end,
Dere's right goot fisch at Blankenberghe,
Und oysters in Ostend.
Denn to Ostland ve will reiten gaen,
To Ostland o'er de sand,
Dou und I mit pridle drawn
For dere ish de oyster land.
Und vhen dey shtood bei Ostersee,
Vhere de waters roar like sin,
Dere coom five hundert fischer volk
To dake der Breitmann in.
'Gotts doonder! Should ve doomple down
Amoong de waters plue,
I kess you'd vant more help from me
Dan I should vant from you!
'If you hat peen vhere I hafe peen
Und see vot I hafe see,
Vhere de surf rise oop nine tausend feet,
In de land of Nieuw Jarsie
Und schwimmed dat surf ash I hafe schwimmed,
Peside de Jersey stran''From dat day fort' de Ostland men
Shdeered glear of der Breitemann.
Boot von ding set him schvearin so,
I dinked he'd nefer cease,
De Ostend oysters kostet more
In Ostend als Paris.
Hans asked an anciendt fisherman,
To 'splain dis if he may,
Und says he, 'Mijn Heer - dey're beter hier
Als ein hundert leagues afay.
'Und as de oysters beter hier
Of course dey kostet more'Der Breitmann dook his bilcrim shdaff,
54
Und toorned him to de toor.
Says Hans, 'De Vlaemsche fischermen
Can sheat de vorldt I pet
Dey sheaten von anoder too,
All's fisch to a Dutchman's net.
'Der king peginned a palace hier,
De palace hat to shtop,
He foundt de beoples sheaten so
He gife de bildin oop.
Aldough das Leben hier ish goot,
Ad least Ostend-sibly'So shpoke der Breitemann und cut
Dat city py de sea.
~ Charles Godfrey Leland,
1235:What do you think of your kingdom?"
"It's beautiful," I said. And very empty. Where is everyone? "It might even be dangerous to live in such luxury and repose."
"This is no place of repose." Amar glanced outside where a sliver of moon glimmered behind clouds. “I am at the mercy of the moon to reveal the secrets of this kingdom. Until then, you must practice what it means to rule. I will test you, as this palace will, in its own way.”
I straightened in my seat. “On what?”
“Familiarity, you might say.” His voice was low. “All the usual aspects of ruling. I’ll test your fangs and claws and bloodlust.” He stopped to trace the inside of my wrist, and my pulse leapt to meet his touch. I scowled and grabbed my hand back. Treacherous blood. “I’ll test your eyes and ears and thoughts.”
“Not geography, then?” I asked, half joking.
“It’s useless here.” He shrugged. “You’ll see.”
“History?”
“Written by the victors,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in one-sided tales.”
“Legends? Folktales?”
This time, Amar grinned. “Perhaps. Do you have a favorite tale?”
My throat tightened and I thought of Gauri standing outside my door and demanding a story. “Many…And you?”
“All of them. Except for tragedies. I cannot abide those.”
In the harem, all the wives preferred tragedies. They wanted stories of star-crossed lovers. They wanted betrayal and declarations of love that ended with the speaker dying at their feet.
“You don’t find them romantic?”
“No,” he said, an edge to his voice. “There is no romance in real grief. Only longing and fury.”
He rose to his feet. “Tomorrow, you can tour the palace fully. It’s yours now. ~ Roshani Chokshi,
1236:I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace -
Radiant palace - reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion -
It stood there !
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This - all this - was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tunéd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene !)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate ;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate !)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody ;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh - but smile no more. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
1237:In the Beginning When the King conceived ordaining He engraved engravings in the luster on high. A blinding spark flashed within the Concealed of the Concealed from the mystery of the Infinite, a cluster of vapor in formlessness, set in a ring, not white, not black, not red, not green, no color at all. When a band spanned, it yielded radiant colors. Deep within the spark gushed a flow imbuing colors below, concealed within the concealed of the mystery of the Infinite. The flow broke through and did not break through its aura. It was not known at all until, under the impact of breaking through, one high and hidden point shone. Beyond that point, nothing is known. So it is called Beginning, the first command of all. "The enlightened will shine like the zohar of the sky, and those who make the masses righteous will shine like the stars forever and ever" (Daniel 12:3) Zohar, Concealed of the Concealed, struck its aura. The aura touched and did not touch this point. Then this Beginning emanated and made itself a palace for its glory and its praise. There it sowed the seed of holiness to give birth for the benefit of the universe. The secret is: "Her stock is a holy seed" (Isaiah 6:13) Zohar, sowing a seed for its glory like the seed of fine purple silk. The silkworm wraps itself within and makes itself a palace. This palace is its praise and a benefit to all. With the Beginning the Concealed One who is not known created the palace. This palace is called Elohim. The secret is: "With Beginning, ____________ created Elohim" (Genesis 1:1). [bk1sm.gif] -- from Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment: (Classics of Western Spirituality), Translated by Daniel Chanan Matt

~ Moses de Leon, The Creation of Elohim
,
1238:I raised my chin and stared back at him. I had no reason to feel embarrassed. After all, he was the one who said Akaran was just as much mine as it was his. The door had been open. And yet, a flush still crept up the back of my neck.
“I was taking a walk,” I said weakly.
“Where’s Gupta?”
“The dining room,” I said before adding defensively, “I only walked a little down the halls.”
His jaw tightened. “I told you that the kingdom’s location makes it dangerous.”
“Gupta told me that anyplace that might hold danger would be locked up,” I retorted. “The door to this room was not locked.”
“Even so,” said Amar. “They might sing through their bindings. It’s better to have an escort.”
“As you can see, I am unscathed from my walk from one hall to the next.”
“Today,” cut in Amar tightly. “Today you are unscathed. Tomorrow is unknown. As is the next day and the day after that. Never make light of your life.”
“I never do.”
The vial of mandrake poison flashed in my mind. Life led me here. Life and the desire to live it.
Gupta burst into the room.
“Oh, good!” he breathed, hands pushing against his knees. He looked like he’d just run from one side of a country to the next. Guilt heated my face. He turned to Amar. “I apologize. I lost track with the riddles.”
“You can leave, my friend,” said Amar. “She is safe with me.”
Gupta looked between us, started to say something and thought better of it. There was a touch of pity in his expression as he looked at the winking lights around us. With one last glance at the garden, Gupta left.
Amar loosed a breath. “I understand, you know.”
I looked up.
“The forced silence…the voices of this palace. ~ Roshani Chokshi,
1239:Upon A Wasp Chilled With Cold
The bear that breathes the northern blast
Did numb, torpedo-like, a wasp
Whose stiffened limbs encramped, lay bathing
In Sol's warm breath and shine as saving,
Which with her hands she chafes and stands
Rubbing her legs, shanks, thighs, and hands.
Her pretty toes, and fingers' ends
Nipped with this breath, she out extends
Unto the sun, in great desire
To warm her digits at that fire.
Doth hold her temples in this state
Where pulse doth beat, and head doth ache.
Doth turn, and stretch her body small,
Doth comb her velvet capital.
As if her little brain pan were
A volume of choice precepts clear.
As if her satin jacket hot
Contained apothecary's shop
Of nature's receipts, that prevails
To remedy all her sad ails,
As if her velvet helmet high
Did turret rationality.
She fans her wing up to the wind
As if her pettycoat were lined,
With reason's fleece, and hoists sails
And humming flies in thankful gales
Unto her dun curled palace hall
Her warm thanks offering for all.
Lord, clear my misted sight that I
May hence view Thy divinity,
Some sparks whereof thou up dost hasp
Within this little downy wasp
In whose small corporation we
A school and a schoolmaster see,
Where we may learn, and easily find
A nimble spirit bravely mind
Her work in every limb: and lace
It up neat with a vital grace,
40
Acting each part though ne'er so small
Here of this fustian animal.
Till I enravished climb into
The Godhead on this ladder do,
Where all my pipes inspired upraise
An heavenly music furred with praise.
~ Edward Taylor,
1240:He didn’t know what to do with his hands as he looked down at the sleeping general. Arin thrust them into his pockets before they went for the throat. He reminded himself why he had come.
He ripped open the man’s jacket. Arin reached for the inside breast pocket, located exactly where the man had tried to touch his chest as he had lain bleeding on the road.
Arin’s fingers met paper. He pulled it out, its texture suede-soft from having been handled so much. It had been unfolded and folded many times.
It was sheet music. At first, Arin didn’t understand what he looked at. Kestrel’s handwriting. Herrani script. Musical notation in crisp black. His own name leaped off the page.
Dear Arin.
Then he recognized the music as the sonata Kestrel had been studying when he’d entered her music room at the imperial palace in late spring. It had been the last time he’d seen her before the tundra. He had thought it would be the last time he would ever see her.
Arin hastened from the tent. He couldn’t read the letter here.
But he didn’t know if he could read it anywhere, if any place would be private enough, because being alone meant he’d still be with himself, and he hated to remember how he’d left Kestrel that day, and what had befallen her after.
He was desperate to read it.
He couldn’t bear to read it.
He resented that her father had kept it.
He wondered what it meant that her father had kept it.
Arin was only vaguely aware of having stumbled through the noisy camp and into the woods. The thought of reading the letter felt like a violation, like he’d be reading a letter meant for someone else.
Yet it had been addressed to him.
Dear Arin.
Arin read. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1241:Not long ago I was in Istanbul, Turkey. While there I toured the Topkapi Palace—the former royal palace of the Ottoman sultans and center of the Ottoman Empire. Among the many artifacts collected throughout the centuries and on display was an item I found quite remarkable—the sword of the prophet Muhammad. There, under protective glass and illuminated by high-tech lighting, was the fourteen-hundred-year-old sword of the founder of Islam. As I looked at the sword with its curved handle and jeweled scabbard, I thought how significant it is that no one will ever visit a museum and be shown a weapon that belonged to Jesus. Jesus brings freedom to the world in a way different from Pharaoh, Alexander, Caesar, Muhammad, Napoleon, and Patton. Jesus sets us free not by killing enemies but by being killed by enemies and forgiving them … by whom I mean us. Forgiveness and cosuffering love is the truth that sets us free—free from the false freedom inflicted by swords ancient and modern. Muhammad could fight a war in the name of freedom to liberate his followers from Meccan oppression, but Jesus had a radically different understanding of freedom. And lest this sound like crass Christian triumphalism, my real question is this: Do we Christians secretly wish that Jesus were more like Muhammad? It’s not an idle question. The moment the church took to the Crusades in order to fight Muslims, it had already surrendered its vision of Jesus to the model of Muhammad. Muhammad may have thought freedom could be found at the end of a sword, but Jesus never did. So are Christians who most enthusiastically support US-led wars against Muslim nations actually trying to turn Jesus into some version of Muhammad? It’s a serious question. ~ Brian Zahnd,
1242:THE DEPOT at Nochecita had smooth stuccoed apricot walls, trimmed in a somehow luminous shade of gray—around the railhead and its freight sheds and electrical and machine shops, the town had grown, houses and businesses painted vermilion, sage, and fawn, and towering at the end of the main street, a giant sporting establishment whose turquoise and crimson electric lamps were kept lit all night and daytime, too, for the place never closed. There was an icehouse and a billiard parlor, a wine room, a lunch and eating counter, gambling saloons and taquerías. In the part of town across the tracks from all that, Estrella Briggs, whom everybody called Stray, was living upstairs in what had been once the domestic palace of a mine owner from the days of the first great ore strikes around here, now a dimly illicit refuge for secret lives, dark and in places unrepainted wood rearing against a sky which since this morning had been threatening storm. Walkways in from the street were covered with corrugated snow-shed roofing. The restaurant and bar on the ground-floor corner had been there since the boom times, offering two-bit all-you-can-eat specials, sawdust on the floor, heavy-duty crockery, smells of steaks, chops, venison chili, coffee and beer and so on worked into the wood of the wall paneling, old trestle tables, bar and barstools. At all hours the place’d be racketing with gambling-hall workers on their breaks, big-hearted winners and bad losers, detectives, drummers, adventuresses, pigeons, and sharpers. A sunken chamber almost like a natatorium at some hot-springs resort, so cool and dim that you forgot after a while about the desert waiting out there to resume for you soon as you stepped back into it. . . . ~ Thomas Pynchon,
1243:In The Greenest Of Our Valleys
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace -Radiant palace --reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion -It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This --all this --was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
50
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh --but smile no more.
~ Edgar Allan Poe,
1244:And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski, some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked:
'You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own'; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate — dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions; for I often noticed that living as we did, she and I, in a world of total evil, we would become strangely embarrassed whenever I tried to discuss something she and an older friend, she and a parent, she and a real healthy sweetheart, I and Annabel, Lolita and a sublime, purified, analyzed, deified Harold Haze, might have discussed — and abstract idea, a painting, stippled Hopkins or shorn Baudelaire, God or Shakespeare, anything of a genuine kind. Good will! She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outburst of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible, oh my poor, bruised child. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
1245:The Funeral of Sarpedon Zeus is heavy with grief. Sarpedon
is dead at Patroclus’ hands and, right now,
the son of Menoetius and his Achaeans are setting out
to steal the corpse and desecrate it. But Zeus will not allow it.
He had left his beloved child alone
and now he’s lost – for such the Law demanded.
But at least he will honour him in death.
Behold: he sends Phoebus down to the field
with orders to care for the body. Phoebus lifts the hero’s corpse with reverence
and pity, and bears him to the river.
He washes away the blood and dust
and closes the wounds, careful
not to leave a scar; he pours balm
of ambrosia over the body and clothes him
in resplendent Olympian robes.
He blanches the skin and with a comb of pearl
straightens the raven-black hair.
He lays him out, arranging the lovely limbs. The youth seems a king, a charioteer,
twenty-five or twenty-six years old –
relishing his moment of victory,
with the swiftest stallions, upon a golden chariot
in a grand competition. Phoebus, completing his assignment,
calls on his two siblings,
Sleep and Death, commanding them
to carry the body to Lycia, land of riches. So the two brothers, Sleep and Death,
set out on foot to transport the body
to Lycia, land of riches.
And at the door of the king’s palace
they hand over the glorious body
and return to their affairs. As they receive him into the palace
they begin laments and tributes, processions
and libations flowing from sacred vessels
and everything that befits such a sad funeral;
then skilled craftsmen from the city
and artists well known for their work in marble
arrive to fashion the tomb and the stele. ~ Constantinos P Cavafy,
1246:I don’t know much about your kind, but I know that a snake’s egg will grow too quickly and die if they’re too hot. Your palace doctor has confirmed that your young are the same way. That being so, imagine a serpiente child growing in an avian womb; it would never survive.” Without waiting for me to acknowledge whether I understood, she concluded, “Apparently you’re both human enough to breed together. Your mate’s body is adapting itself to take care of your child. She will be weak for a while, but otherwise she appears healthy. You may see her in a couple of days.”
Days?
“I’ve been a doctor since before you were born, and that gives me the right to be blunt,” Betsy said. “She needs a few days without excitement while her system is getting used to the changes. Having you in her bedroom is not going to help her rest.”
Again I grudgingly accepted the doctor’s orders, though I hoped that Danica would argue once she woke.
“Andreios, you’ll make sure he does as he’s told?” Betsy appealed to the crow.
Rei answered immediately, “You know I would never let anyone do anything that would endanger my queen.”
Betsy frowned. “You’ve spent too much time with serpents for me to trust that means you’ll obey my orders,” she said. “I’ll wash my hands of it until she has the sense to return to the Keep. Just make sure she is allowed to rest. I will stay in serpiente lands until she is well enough to travel, in case complications arise. Zane, your associates assured me a room in the palace.”
I nodded. “Of course.” I wasn’t overly fond of the doctor right then, but that wasn’t really her fault. Avians, and their fixation on decorum and respectability, sent me to the brink of insanity almost daily. ~ Amelia Atwater Rhodes,
1247:Ballade Of The Voyage To Cythera
I know Cythera long is desolate;
I know the winds have stripp'd the gardens green.
Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight
A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been,
Nor ever lover on that coast is seen!
So be it, but we seek a fabled shore,
To lull our vague desires with mystic lore,
To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile;
There let us land, there dream for evermore:
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'
The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate,
If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene
We watch the bolt of heaven, and scorn the hate
Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen.
Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen
That veils the fairy coast we would explore.
Come, though the sea be vex'd, and breakers roar,
Come, for the air of this old world is vile,
Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar;
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'
Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate
Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen,
And ruined is the palace of our state;
But happy Loves flit round the mast, and keen
The shrill wind sings the silken cords between.
Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore,
Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar,
Yet haste, light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile;
Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore:
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle!'
ENVOY.
Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
Ah, singing birds your happy music pour!
Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;
Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:
47
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle!'
~ Andrew Lang,
1248:I think you should wear your hair down,” Nee said, looking me over.
“For a dinner? I might kneel on it,” I protested.
She smiled. “We’ll dine empire style, for Prince Alaerec will be there.”
I remembered from my visit to the Renselaeus palace that Shevraeth’s father had been wounded in the Pirate Wars many years before. He could walk, but only with difficulty; and he sat in chairs.
“So wear your hair bound with these.” She picked up an enameled box and opened it. There lay several snowstone hair ties, with thin silken ribbons hanging down. The ribbons were all white or silver.
I looked at my reflection. My gown was so dark a violet it was almost black, and had tiny faceted snowstones embroidered in lily patterns across the front. Nothing would ever make me look tall or voluptuous--even after a year of excellent food, I was exactly as small and scrawny as ever--but the gown flattered what little figure I had, so I didn’t look ten years old. “All right.” I simpered at my reflection. “Think I’ll start a new fashion?”
“I know you will.” She laughed. “I want to watch it happen.”
“They might not like me,” I said, sitting down on a hassock while Mora’s gentle fingers stroked and fingered my hair.
“Mmmm.” Nee watched with the air of an artist looking at a painting. “Do not give that a thought. You’re interesting--something new. I think…” She paused, gestured, and Mora adjusted the thin snowstone band higher on my brow, making it drape at a graceful angle toward the back of my head.
“Think what?” I played nervously with the new fan hanging at my waist.
“What’s that?” Nee looked up, her eyes inscrutable for a moment, then she smiled reassuringly. “I think it will be fine.”
And it started fine. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1249:Do a cartwheel, Tania,” said Dimitri with his hand on her back. “Show us what you can do.” “Yes, Tania!” Dasha said. “Come on. This is the perfect place for it, don’t you think? Here in front of a majestic palace, fountains, lawn, gardenias blooming—” “Germans in Minsk,” said Tatiana, trying not to look at Alexander, lying on the blanket on his side, propped up by his elbow. He looked so casual, so familiar, so… And yet, at the same time, utterly untouchable and unattainable. “Forget the Germans,” Dimitri said. “This is the place for love.” That’s what Tatiana was afraid of. “Come on, Tania,” Alexander said softly, sitting up and crossing his legs. “Let’s see these famous cartwheels.” He lit a cigarette. Dasha prodded her. “You never say no to a cartwheel.” Tatiana wanted to say no today. Sighing, she got up from their old blanket. “Fine. Though, frankly, I don’t know what kind of a queen I’d make, doing cartwheels for my subjects.” Tatiana was wearing a dress, not the dress but a casual pink sundress. Walking a few meters away from them, she said, “Are you ready?” And from a distance she saw Alexander’s eyes swallowing her. “Watch,” she said, putting her right foot forward. She flung herself upside down on her right arm, swinging her body in a perfect arc around onto her left arm and then her left foot, and then, without taking a breath and with her hair flying, Tatiana whirled around again, and again and again in an empyrean circle, down a straight trajectory on the grass toward the Great Palace, toward childhood and innocence, away from Dimitri and Dasha and Alexander. As she walked back, her face flushed and her hair everywhere, she allowed herself a glance at Alexander’s face. Everything she had wanted to see was there. ~ Paullina Simons,
1250:My Soul And I
When winter shuts a fellow in and turns the lock upon his door,
There's nothing else for him to do but sit and dream his bygones o'er.
And then before an open fire he smokes his pipe, while in the blaze
He seems to see a picture show of all his happy yesterdays.
No ordinary film is that which memory throws upon the screen,
But one in which his hidden soul comes out and can be plainly seen.
Now, I've been dreaming by the grate. I've seen myself the way I am,
Stripped bare of affectation's garb and wisdom's pose and folly's sham.
I've seen my soul and talked with it, and learned some things I never
knew.
I walk about the world as one, but I express the wish of two.
I've come to see the soul of me is wiser than my selfish mind,
For it has safely led me through the tangled paths I've left behind.
I should have sold myself for gold when I was young long years ago,
But for my soul which whispered then: 'You love your home and garden so,
You never could be quite content in palace walls. Once rise to fame
And you will lose the gentler joys which now so eagerly you claim.
I want to walk these lanes with you and keep the comradeship of trees,
Let you and I be happy here, nor seek life's gaudy luxuries.'
Mine is a curious soul, I guess; it seemed so, smiling in my dreams;
It keeps me close to little folks and birds and flowers and running
streams,
To Mother and her friends and mine; and though no fortune we possess,
The years that we have lived and loved have all been rich with happiness.
I'm glad the snowdrifts shut me in, for I have had a chance to see
How fortunate I've been to have that sort of soul to counsel me.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
1251:But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect; in the retrospect,--alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,--crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy cave;--clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but Death's? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee.--We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
1252:At last I came upon the hedge maze. Far from the warm circles of light cast by torch and lamp, the leaves and twigs here were wedged in a silver lacework of starlight and shadow. The entrance was framed by two large trees, their branches still bare of any new growth. In the darkness, they seemed less like garden posts marking the way into the labyrinth than two silent sentinels guarding the doorway to the underworld. Shapes writhed in the shadows beyond the archway of bramble and vine, both inviting and intimidating.
Yet I was not frightened. The hedge maze smelled like the forest outside the inn, a deep green scent of growth and decay, where life and death were intermingled. A familiar scent. A welcoming scent.
The scent of home. Removing my mask, I crossed the threshold, letting darkness swallow me whole.
There were no torches or candles lit upon the paths, and neither moonlight nor starlight penetrated the dense bramble. Yet my footing along these paths was sure, every part of me attuned to the wildness around me. Unlike the maze of Schönbrunn Palace, a meticulously manicured and man-made construction, this labyrinth breathed. Nature creeped in along the edges, reclaiming groomed, orderly, and civilized corridors into a twisting tangle of tunnels and tracks, weeds and wildflowers. Paths grew vague, roots unruly, branches untamed. Somewhere deep in the labyrinth, I could hear the giggles and gasps of illicit encounters in the shrubbery. I was careful of my step, lest I trip over a pair of trysting lovers, but when I came upon no one else, I let myself fall into a meditative state of mind. I wandered the recursive spirals of the hedge maze, turn after turn after turn, feeling a measure of calm for the first time in a long time. ~ S Jae Jones,
1253:in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus: I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tunéd law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh—but smile no more. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
1254:The Funeral Of Sarpedon
Zeus mourns deeply:
Patroklos has killed Sarpedon.
Now Patroklos and the Achaians rush on
to snatch up the body, to dishonour it.
But Zeus doesn't tolerate that at all.
Though he let his favourite child be killed
this the Law required
he'll at least honour him after death.
So he now sends Apollo down to the plain
with instructions about how the body should be tended.
Apollo reverently raises the hero's body
and carries it in sorrow to the river.
He washes the dust and blood away,
heals the terrible wounds so there's no trace left,
pours perfume of ambrosia over it,
and dresses it in radiant Olympian robes.
He bleaches the skin, and with a pearl comb
combs out the jet black hair.
He spreads and arranges the beautiful limbs.
Now he looks like a young king, a royal charioteertwenty-five or twenty-six years oldresting himself after winning
the prize in a famous race,
his chariot all gold and his horses the fastest.
Having finished his task this way,
Apollo calls for the two brothers,
Sleep and Death, and orders them
to take the body to Lykia, the rich country.
So the two brothers, Sleep and Death,
set off on foot toward the rich country, Lykia;
and when they reached the door
of the king's palace,
they handed over the honoured body
and then returned to their other concerns.
And once the body was received in the palace
the sad burial began, with processions and honours and dirges,
with many libations from sacred vessels,
with all pomp and circumstance.
Then skilled workers from the city
158
and celebrated craftsmen in stone
came to make the tombstone and the tomb.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
1255:Arin glanced up as she approached. One tree shadowed the knoll, a laran tree, leaves broad and glossy. Their shadows dappled Arin’s face, made it a patchwork of sun and dark. It was hard to read his expression. She noticed for the first time the way he kept the scarred side of his face out of her line of sight. Or rather, what she noticed for the first time was how common this habit was for him in her presence--and what that meant.
She stepped deliberately around him and sat so that he had to face her fully or shift into an awkward, neck-craned position.
He faced her. His brow lifted, not so much in amusement as in his awareness of being studied and translated.
“Just a habit,” he said, knowing what she’d seen.
“You have that habit only with me.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Your scar doesn’t matter to me, Arin.”
His expression turned sardonic and interior, as if he were listening to an unheard voice.
She groped for the right words, worried that she’d get this wrong. She remembered mocking him in the music room of the imperial palace (I wonder what you believe could compel me to go to such epic lengths for your sake. Is it your charm? Your breeding? Not your looks, surely.).
“It matters because it hurts you,” she said. “It doesn’t change how I see you. You’re beautiful. You always have been to me.” Even when she hadn’t realized it, even in the market nearly a year ago. Then later, when she understood his beauty. Again, when she saw his face torn, stitched, fevered. On the tundra, when his beauty terrified her. Now. Now, too. Her throat closed.
The line of his jaw hardened. He didn’t believe her.
“Arin--”
“I’m sorry for what happened in the village.”
She dropped her hand to her lap. She hadn’t been conscious of lifting it. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1256:He took a damp scrap of cloth from a shallow bowl on the floor and dabbed it softly across my brow. It felt good. Iolaus was a warrior, the nephew of the great hero Herakles himself, yet he had a light touch and a kind heart.
“How did you find me?” I asked him.
“I was coming down from the palace to have another look at the Argo when I saw the crowd you’d attracted. There were too many people to see what was going on, but I had a fine view of things when you collapsed. I thank almighty Zeus that I recognized you, because you were the last person I’d expect to find in Iolkos, in the middle of a brawl. I almost had to get into one myself with that slave of yours. He was ready to fight me to the death when I tried to pick you up and get you out of the sun.”
Stop calling Milo my ‘slave.’ He’s my friend, and he’s as free as you are!” I spat out the words with so much force that Iolaus raised his hands to ward off my anger.
“Lady--Glaucus--what can I say? I only remember him from King Oeneus’s palace in Calydon, where there’s no denying he was a slave. And he certainly is your friend. He let me carry you away only after I whispered your true name.”
“Where is he now?” I asked, placated by Iolaus’s explanation. “You never told me.”
“I sent him for more water.”
“Oh.” A fresh thought came to my mind. “Iolaus, you spoke of my brothers. You can’t tell them I’m here. Please.”
He looked puzzled. “I thought you came to Iolkos to find them. I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve been sitting here wondering what could’ve happened to make a girl like you risk the journey here. When your brothers showed up in Prince Jason’s company, they told me how you’d all traveled together as far as Delphi, where they’d left you safe, yet now…here you are. ~ Esther M Friesner,
1257:In The Junetwilight
IN the June twilight, in the soft gray twilight,
The yellow sun-glow trembling through the rainy eve,
As my love lay quiet, came the solemn fiat,
'All these things forever--forever--thou must leave.'
My love she sank down quivering, like a pine in tempest shivering-'I have had so little happiness as yet beneath the sun:
I have called the shadow sunshine, and the merest frosty moonshine
I have, weeping, blessed the Lord for, as if daylight had begun;
'Till He sent a sudden angel, with a glorious sweet evangel,
Who turned all my tears to pearl-gems, and crowned me--so little worth;
Me!--and through the rainy even changed my poor earth into heaven,
Or, by wondrous revelation, brought the heavens down to earth.
'O the strangeness of the feeling!--O the infinite revealing-To think how God must love me to have made me so content!
Though I would have served Him humbly, and patiently, and dumbly,
Without any angel standing in the pathway that I went.'
In the June twilight--in the lessening twilight-My love cried from my bosom an exceeding bitter cry:
'Lord, wait a little longer, until my soul is stronger,-O, wait till Thou hast taught me to be content to die.'
Then the tender face, all woman, took a glory superhuman,
And she seemed to watch for something, or see some I could not see:
From my arms she rose full statured, all transfigured, queenly featured-'As Thy will is done in heaven, so on earth still let it be.'
*****
I go lonely, I go lonely, and I feel that earth is only
The vestibule of palaces whose courts we never win:
Yet I see my palace shining, where my love sits, amaranths twining,
And I know the gates stand open, and I shall enter in.
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
1258:Come on, you two,” she called to them weakly, struggling to her feet. “Let’s head home. It’s getting late. Stop your horsing around. Anthony, please. What did I tell you? Be careful, I said!” Can’t you see what your father looks like? Suddenly her two men, one little, one big, both with the straight posture, the unwavering gazes, came and stood in front of her, their legs in the sand, each in an A, their hands on their hips like kettles. “Ready to go then?” she said, lowering her gaze. “Mommy,” said her son firmly, “come and play.” “Yes, Mommy,” said her husband firmly, “come and play.” “No, it’s time to go home.” She blinked. A mirage in the setting sun made him disappear for a second. “That’s it,” said Alexander, lifting her into his arms. “I’ve had just about enough of this.” He carried her and flung her into the water. Tatiana was without breath and when she came up for air, he threw himself on her, shaking her, disturbing her, implacably laying his hands on her. Perhaps he wasn’t a mirage after all, his body immersed in water that was so salty he floated and she floated, too, feeling real herself, remembering cartwheeling at the Palace of the Tsars for him, sitting on the tram with him, walking barefoot through the Field of Mars with him while Hitler’s tanks and Dimitri’s malice beat down the doors of their hearts. Alexander picked her up and threw her in the air, only pretending to catch her. She fell and splashed and shrieked, and scrambling to her feet, ran from him as he chased her onto the sand. She tripped to let him catch her and he kissed her wet and she held on to his neck and Anthony jumped and scrambled onto his back, break it up, break it up, and Alexander dragged them all deeper in and tossed them into the ocean, where they bobbed and swayed like houseboats. ~ Paullina Simons,
1259:You really told them you wanted to marry me?” I asked.
The smile had taken over his whole face now. “I told you before: I fell under your spell before you even knew you had magic, before you saved a kingdom, back when there was no chance you would be allowed to marry me. Nothing’s really changed since then, except that now any children we have might be wizards themselves, and I’ll be hopelessly outnumbered.
“So, yes, I want to marry you. Someday. If you’ll have me,” he said modestly.
“Of course I will, you idiot,” I said with a shriek, and threw myself into his arms. Some things, though, never change, regardless of how many countries you save. I tripped at the last moment, and we both went down in a laughing heap. It didn’t stop me from kissing him for so long that we both were gasping by the time it ended.
“So what should I call you now?” he said when we had our breath back. “Savior of Thorvaldor? Soon-to-Be-Master Wizard? Chief Councillor of Wise Words? My own love?”
“Sinda,” I said, without the slightest twinge of old memories, or something lost, or regret. “Just Sinda. Though I like that last one almost as much.”
Kiernan reached out and tucked a strand of escaping hair behind my ear. “I think I like Sinda best myself,” he said.
We hauled ourselves up and, still laughing, brushed grass and sticks from our clothes. Then, arms around each other, we began the walk back to Philantha’s house to tell her that her scribe had just gotten a new job and become engaged in the same afternoon. I looked back up the hill once, toward the palace, and then turned away. I would go there tomorrow, but right now, it didn’t matter. Today I only had to walk with Kiernan, to visit Philantha, to finally be just myself.
For once, for the first time, it was enough. ~ Eilis O Neal,
1260:There you are, princess!” he cried. “I thought you’d changed your mind and given up on our pact before it began.”
“Do I look like I’ve changed my mind?” I grumbled. I rubbed my arms, sore and aching, and spat dust from my mouth. My legs were covered with bloody scrapes, and it would take me hours to work the tangles out of my hair.
“Then why so long coming out here?” I liked Glaucus better when he was being stern; he had the most aggravating grin of any man alive. “Forget the path? Lose your way?”
“I’m watched,” I said. “Ever since the day you promised to teach me how to fight, it’s been next to impossible to get away. Whenever I knew you were taking the boys down here, I’d try to follow, but Ione always seemed to come along with a task for me to do. I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t gotten up long before dawn, dressed, and hidden myself in one of the storerooms all morning. Even then, I had to drop from a window and climb down the eastern side of the palace hill to be sure that no one would see me.”
“The eastern side…” Glaucus rubbed his chin. “That’s where the briars grow thickest, isn’t it?” And his grin got wider and wider, until suddenly I understood exactly what had been going on.
“You did this!” I shouted. “I don’t know what you said to Ione, but you’re the reason why she hasn’t left me alone for a moment all these days!”
“You look mad enough to throw a rock at my head,” Glaucus said calmly. “Did you think I was going to make this easy for you, princess? You say you want to learn a fighter’s skills. Well, patience is one of them, cunning’s another, and no one can give those to you but yourself. If you’d rather have gifts fall into your lap, go back to the palace and put on a skirt, but if you still want to learn from me, let’s see you throw something besides a rock. ~ Esther M Friesner,
1261:His time aboard the Argo had been good to him. He’d put on healthy weight and gained a sense of confidence. He no longer looked as if he feared to wake up one day and find that his freedom was only a dream. “I’ll see what I can find, then,” he said. “There were plenty of amphorae in the crew’s sleeping chambers this morning, wine and water both.”
“Do you think there’s any left?”
“Water or wine?” He grinned.
“By the way, where are all the men?” I asked.
“The ones who aren’t busy bothering the serving girls are practicing their battle skills with Lord Aetes’ guards. There’s a training ground, but it’s a fair distance from the citadel. I think the palace weapons bearers get more exercise than the men, carrying their gear there and back.”
“Except for one lazybones who’s hiding in the queen’s garden instead of doing his proper work. Poor Iolaus! This is the thanks he gets for hiring you.” I was teasing, and Milo knew it.
“And what about a weapons bearer so lazy that he’d rather turn into a girl than do his job?” Milo countered, laughing.
I stood up. “A girl who can carry two amphorae of wine to your one,” I said.
“One to my three, you mean!” Milo declared, getting into the spirit. “But you’ll have to find them first.” He made a taunting face at me and darted into the palace.
I raced after him gladly, our laughter echoing through the halls. We had a few near collisions with Lord Aetes’ slaves and servants, and drew our fair share of outraged curses from stuffy palace officials, but it felt so good to run! Milo soon forgot all about going back to the crew’s chambers to search for those amphorae. He ran right past the doorway and didn’t give it a glance. Though my dress hindered me and my sword slapped against my left leg at every stride, I was enjoying myself. ~ Esther M Friesner,
1262:About a month before the handover of sovereignty, Joshua Paul, a young CPA staffer, typed up a joke on his computer and sent it to a few friends in the palace. The recipients forwarded it to their friends, who did the same thing. In less than a week, almost everyone in the Green Zone had seen it. QUESTION: Why did the Iraqi chicken cross the road? CPA: The fact that the chicken crossed the road shows that decision-making authority has switched to the chicken in advance of the scheduled June 30th transition of power. From now on, the chicken is responsible for its own decisions. HALLIBURTON: We were asked to help the chicken cross the road. Given the inherent risk of road crossing and the rarity of chickens, this operation will only cost $326,004. SHIITE CLERIC MOQTADA AL-SADR: The chicken was a tool of the evil Coalition and will be killed. U.S. ARMY MILITARY POLICE: We were directed to prepare the chicken to cross the road. As part of these preparations, individual soldiers ran over the chicken repeatedly and then plucked the chicken. We deeply regret the occurrence of any chicken-rights violations. PESHMERGA: The chicken crossed the road, and will continue to cross the road, to show its independence and to transport the weapons it needs to defend itself. However, in the future, to avoid problems, the chicken will be called a duck, and will wear a plastic bill. AL-JAZEERA: The chicken was forced to cross the road multiple times at gunpoint by a large group of occupation soldiers, according to witnesses. The chicken was then fired upon intentionally, in yet another example of the abuse of innocent Iraqi chickens. CIA: We cannot confirm or deny any involvement in the chicken-road-crossing incident. TRANSLATORS: Chicken he cross street because bad she tangle regulation. Future chicken table against my request. ~ Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
1263:It's easy for the reader from his quiet vantage point high above the melee whence his eye sweeps over the whole horizon and he can see everything that is happening below--but a man down there can only see the subject nearest him. In the same way, in the world chronicle of mankind, there seem to be many centuries that could be crossed out and expunged as useless. There have been many errors committed in the world which we would not expect a child to commit today. What tortuous, blind, impassable, devious paths has mankind trodden in its search for eternal truth, while all the time, right before it, lay the straight road leading to the glittering edifice destined to be the palace of the ruler. This road is the clearest and the most beautiful of all, flooded by sunlight during the day and brightly illuminated at night, but the human throng flows past it in darkness. And how many times, even when inspired by God-given good sense, have men still managed to step back and turn away from it; succeeded again and again in losing themselves in back alleys in broad daylight; succeeded again and again in filling each others eyes with blinding smoke and trudging wearily after a mirage; again and again succeeded in coming to the very brink of the precipice, then asking each other, horrified, in which direction the road can be found. The present generation see all this clearly and is surprised at the erring and blundering of its ancestors, laughs at their folly. So it's not for nothing that mankind's chronicle is scarred out by heavenly flames, that each letter in it cries out, and that from every page a piercing finger is pointed at the present generation. But today's generation just laughs, sure of its strength and full of pride, and it starts off along a path of new errors over which its decedents in turn will pour their scorn. ~ Nikolai Gogol,
1264:To Sylvina Bullrich
They knew it, the fervent pupils of Pythagoras:
That stars and men revolve in a cycle,
That fateful atoms will bring back the vital
Gold Aphrodite, Thebans, and agoras.

In future epochs the centaur will oppress
With solid uncleft hoof the breast of the Lapith;
When Rome is dust the Minotaur will moan
Once more in the endless dark of its rank palace.

Every sleepless night will come back in minute
Detail. This writing hand will be born from the same
Womb, and bitter armies contrive their doom.
(Edinburghs David Hume made this very point.)

I do not know if we will recur in a second
Cycle, like numbers in a periodic fraction;
But I know that a vague Pythagorean rotation
Night after night sets me down in the world

On the outskirts of this city. A remote street
Which might be either north or west or south,
But always with a blue-washed wall, the shade
Of a fig tree, and a sidewalk of broken concrete.

This, here, is Buenos Aires. Time, which brings
Either love or money to men, hands on to me
Only this withered rose, this empty tracery
Of streets with names recurring from the past

In my blood: Laprida, Cabrera, Soler, Surez . . .
Names in which secret bugle calls are sounding,
Invoking republics, cavalry, and mornings,
Joyful victories, men dying in action.

Squares weighed down by a night in no ones care
Are the vast patios of an empty palace,
And the single-minded streets creating space
Are corridors for sleep and nameless fear.

It returns, the hollow dark of Anaxagoras;
In my human flesh, eternity keeps recurring
And the memory, or plan, of an endless poem beginning:
They knew it, the fervent pupils of Pythagoras . . .
[Alastair Reid]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Cyclical Night
,
1265:Are you trying to make me jealous, my pretty bird?” Theseus asked, teasing. He took one of the filled wine goblets from the cupbearer attending him and tried to give it to me. I turned my shoulder to him deliberately. “You can’t seem to take your eyes off Telys. What will it take to make you spare just one of those sweet glances for me? Shall I step onto the training ground myself?”
“Only if you’ll let me be the one to fight you, sword against sword,” I replied. “I’m willing to stake my freedom on the match.”
His lips twisted into a mocking smile. “And risk damaging that face? In four days’ time, we’ll be married. I intend to have a queen whose beauty makes me the envy of all.” He tried to stroke my cheek. I jerked my head back.
“Don’t worry, Theseus,” I said. “If we fight, I won’t be the one who’ll take away a scar. But if you’re afraid, name one of your men to match swords with me.” I swept the training ground with my eyes and in a loud, carrying voice added: “Or are all the men of Athens scared to fight a Spartan girl?”
A grumbling ran through the ranks of the assembled guardsmen. My barb hit the target and sunk in deep. Theseus didn’t like the way things were going. He tried to pull the fangs from my challenge by turning it into a joke.
“Ha! I know what you’re after, Helen. You’re hoping I’ll say yes to this mad proposal of yours, then you’ll find some sly, womanly way to fix it so that you fight Telys. There’s an easy win for anyone!”
I looked into his leering face and decided I’d seen enough of the cold malice everyone in the palace inflicted on Telys. The soldiers, the servants, and even the slaves were all a yapping pack of hounds following the lead of Theseus, the nastiest cur of them all. I leaped to my feet and shouted, “You worm! If you’re too scared to fight me yourself, then say so! ~ Esther M Friesner,
1266:Aspromonte
So you think he is defeated, O ye comfortably seated,
And that Victory is meted in your loaded huckster's scales?
O ye fools! though justice tarry, yet by heaven broad and starry,
Right, howe'er it may miscarry, ere the end arrive, prevails.
And you think a wounded hero may hereafter count as zero,
And that every desperate Nero rules the cities which he burns;
That a wild steed caught and snaffled means a nation wholly baffled,
And its future may be raffled in your diplomatic urns!
Well, then, know we would not barter this our never flinching martyr
For the very largest charter we could coax from ``Right Divine,''
That his blood upon your ermine only makes us more determine
To exterminate the vermin who have baulked his grand design.
Dolts! upon successful traitor vengeance groweth only greater,
Not one whit less sure, the later the account may be delayed,
And will one day have its grip on every decorated fripon,
Though he loudly laugh and lip on, whilst the world is plunged in shade.
And I pray ye, O ye people! trust in palace nor in steeple!
If you sow ill you will reap ill, to your misery and scorn;
In your generation wiser, know that vows of priest and kaiser
Only supple cheats and lies are, to be broken swift as sworn.
But have faith that Time the Scourger will be even with the perjure,
When shall greener be the verdure upon Aspromonte's slope,
When the populations fitted to be wholly manumitted,
Shall be trampled nor outwitted, or by Emperor or Pope.
And no longer forced to tremble, or whilst cursing to dissemble,
Shall free Italy assemble, 'neath a new and grander dome;
Grander far than that of Peter, wherein Liberty shall seat her,
By his martyrdom completer who first struck for ``Death or Rome!''
~ Alfred Austin,
1267:Dream Meditation Practices are best performed in an isolated (close to nature) chamber that is clean and dry. Diet should be modified before practice so that solid food is reduced and a sense of lightness is obtained. This meditation is best done after bathing; the student can be nude or wear a light robe. Begin by lying on your back. Focus your mind on the lower tan tien. Summon the spirits residing in the organs by chanting their names in the order of the creation cycle: Houhou or Shen (heart), Beibei or Yi (spleen), Yanyan or Po (lungs), Fu Fu or Zhi (kidneys), and Jianjian or Hun (liver).20 Repeat the chanting and gathering until a bright light and warmth appear in the lower tan tien. Opening this place will automatically open the Microcosmic Orbit. Coordinate your breathing with this meditation to assist the process: inhaling stimulates the kidneys and liver, while exhaling moves the heart and lungs to the centerpoint—the stomach and spleen. Bring the merged five spirits from the lower tan tien (you can also include the other four spirits) up to the heart, and then to the Crystal Palace (also known as the Divine Palace or Hall of Light). The team of merged spirits—now the Yuan Shen or Original Spirit—can exit via the crown. Being conscious during the whole dream, or alternatively remembering the dream after waking, completes the process. You also have the choice of practicing meditation during your dream state. Process the content of the dream during the day, taking any actions in the material world that are now necessary. Remember that one of our goals with the Kan and Li practice is to merge the everyday mind with your dream landscape and meditation. Fusion of these three minds (different from the three tan tiens) is a feature of the developing sage. Ideally, dreaming can include the practice of Microcosmic Orbit, Fusion, and even Kan and Li. ~ Mantak Chia,
1268:Nostalgia Of The Lakefronts
Cities burn behind us; the lake glitters.
A tall loudspeaker is announcing prizes;
Another, by the lake, the times of cruises.
Childhood, once vast with terrors and surprises,
Is fading to a landscape deep with distance—
And always the sad piano in the distance,
Faintly in the distance, a ghostly tinkling
(O indecipherable blurred harmonies)
Or some far horn repeating over water
Its high lost note, cut loose from all harmonies.
At such times, wakeful, a child will dream the world,
And this is the world we run to from the world.
Or the two worlds come together and are one
On dark, sweet afternoons of storm and of rain,
And stereopticons brought out and dusted,
Stacks of old Geographics, or, through the rain,
A mad wet dash to the local movie palace
And the shriek, perhaps, of Kane’s white cockatoo.
(Would this have been summer, 1942?)
By June the city always seems neurotic.
But lakes are good all summer for reflection,
And ours is famed among painters for its blues,
Yet not entirely sad, upon reflection.
Why sad at all? Is their wish so unique—
To anthropomorphize the inanimate
With a love that masquerades as pure technique?
O art and the child were innocent together!
But landscapes grow abstract, like aging parents.
Soon now the war will shutter the grand hotels,
And we, when we come back, will come as parents.
There are no lanterns now strung between pines—
29
Only, like history, the stark bare northern pines.
And after a time the lakefront disappears
Into the stubborn verses of its exiles
Or a few gifted sketches of old piers.
It rains perhaps on the other side of the heart;
Then we remember, whether we would or no.
—Nostalgia comes with the smell of rain, you know.
~ Donald Justice,
1269:He said, "Who is at my door?"
I said, "Your humble servant."
He said, "What business do you have?"
I said, "To greet you, 0 Lord."

He said, "How long will you journey on?"
I said, "Until you stop me."
He said, "How long will you boil in the fire?"
I said, "Until I am pure.

"This is my oath of love.
For the sake of love
I gave up wealth and position."

He said, "You have pleaded your case
but you have no witness."
I said, "My tears are my witness;
the pallor of my face is my proof.'
He said, "Your witness has no credibility;
your eyes are too wet to see."
I said, "By the splendor of your justice
my eyes are clear and faultless."

He said, "What do you seek?"
I said, "To have you as my constant friend."
He said, "What do you want from me?"
I said, "Your abundant grace."

He said, "Who was your companion on the journey?
I said, "The thought of you, 0 King."
He said, "What called you here?"
I said, "The fragrance of your wine."

He said, "What brings you the most fulfillment?"
I said, "The company of the Emperor."
He said, "What do you find there?"
I said, "A hundred miracles."
He said, "Why is the palace deserted?"
I said, "They all fear the thief."
He said, "Who is the thief?"
I said, "The one who keeps me from -you.

He said, "Where is there safety?"
I said, "In service and renunciation."
He said, "What is there to renounce?"
I said, "The hope of salvation."

He said, "Where is there calamity?"
I said, "In the presence of your love."
He said, "How do you benefit from this life?"
I said, "By keeping true to myself

Now it is time for silence.
If I told you about His true essence
You would fly from your self and be gone,
and neither door nor roof could hold you back!
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Who Is At My Door?
,
1270:If the threat was from the borders, it seemed unlikely that I’d find Renselaeus warriors roaming around the royal palace Athanarel. So, was there a threat at home?
Like a rival for the kingship? My thoughts went immediately to the Marquise of Merindar--and to the conversation with Shevraeth at the inn. The Marquise had made no attempt to communicate with me, and I had not even seen her subsequent to that dinner the night of my arrival. In the days since, I’d managed to lose sight of my purpose in coming.
When I’d surprised Shevraeth in the archive, it had seemed he was actually willing to discuss royal business--at least that portion that pertained to cleaning up after Galdran--for why else would he offer me a look at the old king’s papers? But I’d managed to turn the discussion into a quarrel, and so lost the chance.
I groaned aloud. What was wrong with me? As I hurried up the steps to our wing, I promised myself that next time Shevraeth tried to talk to me, I’d listen, and even if he insulted me, my family, and my land, I’d keep my tongue between my teeth.
“My own conscience demands that I make the attempt.” Would there even be another try?
I sighed as I opened my door, then Nessaren and Shevraeth and the rain went out of my mind when I saw that my letter table was not empty.
Two items awaited me. The first was a letter--and when I saw the device on the heavy seal, my heart sped: the Marquise of Merindar.
I ripped it open, to find only an invitation to a gathering three weeks hence. No hint of any personal message.
Laying it aside, I turned my gaze to the other object.
Sitting in the middle of the table was a fine little vase cut from luminous starstone, and in it, bordered by the most delicate ferns, was a single rose, just barely blooming.
One white rose. I knew what that meant, thanks to Nee: Purity of Intent. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1271:10 Small Streets That Live Large DIETMAR DENGER / LAIF / REDUX PICTURES BY MATT BLITZ | 238 words CAIRO, EGYPT Tenth-century El-Moez Street boasts medieval architecture that’s unparalleled in the Islamic world, like the Al-Azhar Mosque and the Bab Zuweila gate. COLMAR, FRANCE Canals, shops and rainbow-colored houses along Grand Rue will make you feel as if you fell into an Alsatian fairy tale. GEORGE TOWN, PENANG, MALAYSIA Vibrant murals adorn funky Beach Street, celebrated for food vendors. Slurp hokkien mee (prawn and egg broth) or ais kacang (shaved ice with red bean and grass jelly). QUEBEC CITY, CANADA Chockablock with shops, cafés and French architecture, Rue du Petit Champlain is the oldest road in a 17th-century district in the shadow of the Chateau Frontenac. DELHI, INDIA In one of Asia’s largest jewelry markets, merchants sell precious wares on narrow Dariba Kalan Road in the old city’s Chandni Chowk area, once known as “moonlit square.” DUBROVNIK, CROATIA Twelfth-century Placa Street draws eaters, shoppers and sightseers, just blocks from the Adriatic Sea and close to stunning beaches. HAVANA, CUBA Calle Obispo (pictured above) comes alive at night with drinks, cigars and music. See the Taquechel Pharmacy Museum and Hemingway’s digs at Hotel Ambos Mundos. AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS In a neighborhood of canal-lined streets Gasthuismolensteeg may be the most happening, with boutiques, the city’s best broodjes (sandwich) shop and the offbeat Museum of Spectacles. NEW YORK, NEW YORK Between Broadway and Bowery, snug Great Jones Street packs in grunge bars, swank restaurants, a tony spa and history, from 19th-century gang brawls to ’60s “jonesing.” OLINDA, PERNAMBUCO, BRAZIL The Rua Bispo Coutinho wends through a Unesco World Heritage district past sidewalk vendors, galleries and a sacred art museum in a 17th-century Episcopal palace, all just blocks from the Atlantic. ~ Anonymous,
1272:February 14 MORNING “And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.” — 2 Kings 25:30 JEHOIACHIN was not sent away from the king’s palace with a store to last him for months, but his provision was given him as a daily pension. Herein he well pictures the happy position of all the Lord’s people. A daily portion is all that a man really wants. We do not need tomorrow’s supplies; that day has not yet dawned, and its wants are as yet unborn. The thirst which we may suffer in the month of June does not need to be quenched in February, for we do not feel it yet; if we have enough for each day as the days arrive we shall never know want. Sufficient for the day is all that we can enjoy. We cannot eat or drink or wear more than the day’s supply of food and raiment; the surplus gives us the care of storing it, and the anxiety of watching against a thief. One staff aids a traveller, but a bundle of staves is a heavy burden. Enough is not only as good as a feast, but is all that the veriest glutton can truly enjoy. This is all that we should expect; a craving for more than this is ungrateful. When our Father does not give us more, we should be content with his daily allowance. Jehoiachin’s case is ours, we have a sure portion, a portion given us of the king, a gracious portion, and a perpetual portion. Here is surely ground for thankfulness. Beloved Christian reader, in matters of grace you need a daily supply. You have no store of strength. Day by day must you seek help from above. It is a very sweet assurance that a daily portion is provided for you. In the word, through the ministry, by meditation, in prayer, and waiting upon God you shall receive renewed strength. In Jesus all needful things are laid up for you. Then enjoy your continual allowance. Never go hungry while the daily bread of grace is on the table of mercy. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
1273:Lines Written On Visiting The Chateaux On The Loire
``River rolling past the grey
Battlements of yesterday,
Palace strongholds reared by hands
Summoned from transalpine lands,
Skilled in wedding strength with grace,
Fort with stately dwelling-place,
Vizored brow with siren tress,
Majesty with loveliness,River, that beheld their sway
Dawn and dwindle, then decay,
Linger, loiter, while I sit,
As the sunshine-shadows flit,
Pondering pictures of the vast
Panorama of the Past,
And, with retrospective gaze,
Tell me of the vanished days.''
II
Still the river rolled and rolled
'Twixt its banks of green and gold,
Winding, wandering, slowly through
Starwort white and speedwell blue,
Flowing onward, heedless where,
Irresponsive to my prayer.
III
But, as motionless I dreamed
Of dim yesterdays, there seemed
From the plain to reach mine ears
Murmurings of the bygone years,
Till the river's undertone
Blent its musings with my own.
IV
``Seaward I meander on,
All unchanged to gaze upon,
As when sceptre, pomp, and power,
330
Threatening parapet and tower,
Warrior grim and maiden gay
Fought and laughed the hours away:
Captains, Cardinals, and Kings,
Sepulchred with meaner things,
Nothing to distinguish now
Mitred head from minion brow,
Fleshless skull from fleshless skull,
Arrogant from beautiful;
Nameless relics of a name:I alone abide the same.''
Lingering still, I sate and mused,
Thought and feeling interfused
With the Châteaux and the stream
In an intermittent dream,
Till the Future wore at last
Likeness to the shadowy Past,
And I wondered if to-day,
Loftily as yesterday,
Will, departing, leave behind
Monuments of heart and mind,
Love and reverence will restore,
When men dwell in them no more.
~ Alfred Austin,
1274:city, ending again at the palace gate. “Bounds must always be walked to dawn first,” Belvarin had explained. “It is not the direction of the circle, but the direction of the first turn that matters—it must be the shortest way to the rising sun and the elvenhome kingdoms.” Now they were nearing the city’s margin, with forest beyond gardens and orchards. A cloud of birds rose singing from the trees—tiny birds, brilliantly colored, fluttering like butterflies. They swooped nearer, flew in a spiral over his head, and returned to the trees as the procession turned toward the river. Butterflies then took over, out of the gardens and orchards, arching over the lane, then settling on his shoulders and arms as lightly as air, as if he wore a cloak of jeweled wings. As they neared the river side of the city, the butterflies lifted away, and out of the water meadows rose flying creatures as brightly colored as the birds and butterflies … glittering gauzy wings, metallic greens, golds, blues, scarlet. Kieri put up his hand and one landed there long enough for him to see it clearly. Great green eyes, a body boldly striped in black, gold, and green, with a green tail. The head cocked toward him; he could see tiny jaws move. Was it talking? He could hear nothing, but the creature looked as if it were listening. It was a long walk, and his new boots—comfortable enough that morning—were far less so by the time they reached the palace gates again. He could smell the fragrance of roast meats and bread, but next he had the ritual visit to the royal ossuary, and spoke vows into that listening silence, to those who had given him bone and blood, vows no one else would hear. He came up again to find the feast spread in the King’s Ride, long tables stretching away into the distance. On either side, the trees rose up; he could feel them, feel their roots below the cushiony sod that welcomed his feet. His place lay at the farthest table, with ~ Elizabeth Moon,
1275:Any Prince To Any Princess
August is coming
and the goose, I'm afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.
I can't imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the
Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.
I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General
Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.
The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be
repeated.
I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn't getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see
the absurdity of the
situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It's been three weeks now, and not even
a word.
Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,
let down your hair,
reconsider.
~ Adrian Henri,
1276:This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favourable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1277:And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for well-being either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being guaranteed to me when necessary. Suffering would be out of place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In the "Palace of Crystal" it is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a "palace of crystal" if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1278:The same year that the third great Viking ship found in Norway was excavated, at Oseberg, the town of Ålesund burned. At that time the Viking ships were displayed in makeshift exhibition halls, and the great Ålesund fire hastened the process of building a separate museum for them. The architect Fritz Holland proposed building an enormous crypt for them beneath the royal palace in Oslo. It was to be 63 metres long and 15 metres wide, with a niche for each ship. The walls were to be covered with reliefs of Viking motifs. Drawings exist of this underground hall. It is full of arches and vaults, and everything is made of stone. The ships stand in a kind of depression in the floor. More than anything it resembles a burial chamber, and that is fitting, one might think, both because the three ships were originally graves and because placed in a subterranean crypt beneath the palace gardens they would appear as what they represented: an embodiment of a national myth, in reality relics of a bygone era, alive only in the symbolic realm. The crypt was never built, and the power of history over the construction of national identity has since faded away almost entirely. There is another unrealised drawing of Oslo, from the 1920s, with tall brick buildings like skyscrapers along the main thoroughfare, Karl Johans Gate, and Zeppelins sailing above the city. When I look at these drawings, of a reality that was never realised, and feel the enormous pull they exert, which I am unable to explain, I know that the people living in Kristiania in 1904, as Oslo was called then, would have stared open-mouthed at nearly everything that surrounds us today and which we hardly notice, unable to believe their eyes. What is a stone crypt compared to a telephone that shows living pictures? What is the writing down of Draumkvedet (The Dream Poem), a late-medieval Norwegian visionary ballad, compared to a robot lawnmower that cuts the grass automatically? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,
1279:Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people. The Mesopotamian, for example, felt convinced that authorities were always right: "The command of the palace, like the command of Anu, cannot be altered. The king's word is right; his utterance, like that of a god, cannot be changed!" The prophets repudiated the work as well as the power of man as an object of supreme adoration. They denounced "arrogant boasting" and "haughty pride" (Isa. 10:12), the kings who ruled the nations in anger, the oppressors (Isa. 14:4-6), the destroyers of nations, who went forth to inflict waste, ruin, and death (Jer. 4:7), the "guilty men, whose own might is their god" (Hab. 1: 11).

Their course is evil,
Their might is not right.
Jeremiah 23:10


The end of public authority is to realize the moral law, a task for which both knowledge and understanding as well as the possession of power are indispensable means. Yet inherent in power is the tendency to breed conceit. " . . . one of the most striking and one of the most pervasive features of the prophetic polemic [is] the denunciation and distrust of power in all its forms and guises. The hunger of the powerfit! knows no satiety; the appetite grows on what it feeds. Power exalts itself and is incapable of yielding to any transcendent judgment; it 'listens to no voice' (Zeph. 3:2) ." It is the bitter irony of history that the common people, who are devoid of power and are the prospective victims of its abuse, are the first to become the ally of him who accumulates power. Power is spectacular, while its end, the moral law, is inconspicuous. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,
1280:William Stead recognized the power of the fair immediately. The vision of the White City and its profound contrast to the Black City drove him to write If Christ Came to Chicago, a book often credited with launching the City Beautiful movement, which sought to elevate American cities to the level of the great cities of Europe. Like Stead, civic authorities throughout the world saw the fair as a model of what to strive for. They asked Burnham to apply the same citywide thinking that had gone into the White City to their own cities. He became a pioneer in modern urban planning. He created citywide plans for Cleveland, San Francisco, and Manila and led the turn-of-the-century effort to resuscitate and expand L’Enfant’s vision of Washington, D.C. In each case he worked without a fee. While helping design the new Washington plan, Burnham persuaded the head of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Alexander Cassatt, to remove his freight tracks and depot from the center of the federal mall, thus creating the unobstructed green that extends today from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. Other cities came to Daniel Burnham for citywide plans, among them Fort Worth, Atlantic City, and St. Louis, but he turned them down to concentrate on his last plan, for the city of Chicago. Over the years many aspects of his Chicago plan were adopted, among them the creation of the city’s lovely ribbon of lakefront parks and Michigan Avenue’s “Miracle Mile.” One portion of the lakefront, named Burnham Park in his honor, contains Soldier Field and the Field Museum, which he designed. The park runs south in a narrow green border along the lakeshore all the way to Jackson Park, where the fair’s Palace of Fine Arts, transformed into a permanent structure, now houses the Museum of Science and Industry. It looks out over the lagoons and the Wooded Island, now a wild and tangled place that perhaps would make Olmsted smile—though no doubt he would find features to criticize. ~ Erik Larson,
1281:A Last Appeal
KNOWING our needs, hardly knowing our powers,
Hear how we cry to you, brothers of ours!-Brothers in nature, pulse, passions, and pains,
Our sins in you, and your blood in our veins.
First in your palace, or last in our den,
Basest or best, we are all of us men!
Justice eternal cries out in our name,
What is the least common manhood can claim?
'Food that we make for you,
Money we earn:
Give us our share of them-Give us our turn.'
Landowners, bankers, and merchants, we make
Out of our lives this new wealth that you take.
Have we earned only such pitiful dole
As just holds worn body to desolate soul?
When that soul is bewildered each day and perplext
With the problem of how to get bread for the next,
Is it better to end it, as some of us do,
Or to fight it out bravely, still calling to you-'Food that we make for you,
Money we earn:
Give us our share of them-Give us our turn'?
Ever more passionate grows our demand-Give us our share of our food and our land:
Give us our rights, make us equal and free-Let us be all we are not, but might be.
Our sons would be honest, our daughters be pure,
If our wage were more certain, your vices less sure-Oh, you who are forging the fetters we feel,
Hear our wild protest, our maddened appeal-'Food that we make for you,
Money we earn:
Give us our share of them--
15
Give us our turn.'
Hear us, and answer, while Time is your friend,
Lest we be answered by God in the end;
Lest, when the flame of His patience burns low,
We be the weapon He shapes for His blow-Lest with His foot on your necks He shall stand,
And appeal that you spurned be new-born as command,
And thunder your doom, as you die by the rod
Of the vengeance of man through the justice of God.
'Food that we make for you,
Money we earn:
Give us our share of them-Give us our turn.'
~ Edith Nesbit,
1282:Gifts
'O World-God, give me Wealth!' the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold
Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street,
His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined,
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh's race to-day and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
'O World-God, give me beauty!' cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame,
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sun-shine race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
'O World-God, give me Power!' the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride.
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close-meshed Code,
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home,
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
'O Godhead, give me Truth!' the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
85
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.
~ Emma Lazarus,
1283:Parisian Dream
Á Constantine Guys
The vague and distant image
of this landscape, so terrifying,
on which no mortal’s gazed
thrilled me again this morning.
Sleep is full of miracles!
By a singular caprice
from that unfolding spectacle
I’d banned all shapeless leaf,
a painter proud of my artistry
I savoured in my picture
the enchanting monotony
of metal, marble, water.
Babel of stairs and arcades,
it was an infinite palace
full of pools and cascades,
falling gold, burnt, or lustreless:
and heavy cataracts there
like curtains of crystal,
dazzling, hung in air
from walls of metal.
Not trees, but colonnades
circled the sleeping pools
where colossal naiads gazed
at themselves, as women do.
Between banks of rose and green,
the blue water stretched,
for millions of leagues
to the universe’s edge:
there were un-heard of stones,
and magic waves: there were,
dazzled by everything shown,
enormous quivering mirrors!
Impassive and taciturn,
Ganges, in the firmament,
poured treasures from the urn
into abysses of diamond.
Architect of this spell,
399
I made a tame ocean swell
entirely at my will,
through a jewelled tunnel:
and all, seemed glossy, clear
iridescent: even the shades
of black, liquid glory there
in light’s crystallised rays.
Not a single star, no trace
of a sun even, low in the sky,
to illuminate this wondrous place
that shone with intrinsic fire!
And over these shifting wonders
hovered (oh dreadful novelty!
All for the eye, none for the ear!)
the silence of eternity.
II
Opening eyes filled with flame
I saw the horrors of my hovel,
and felt the barbs of shameful
care, re-entering my soul:
brutally with gloomy blows
the clock struck mid-day,
and the sky poured shadows
on a world, benumbed and grey.
~ Charles Baudelaire,
1284:Another scene from universal myth unfolds -- here powerfully reminiscent of the Underworld quests of Orpheus for Eurydice and of Demeter for Persephone. The ancient Japanese recension of this mysteriously global story is given in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, where we read that Izanagi, mourning for his dead wife, followed after her to the Land of Yomi in an attempt to bring her back to the world of the living:
'Izanagi-no-Mikoto went after Izanami-no-Mikoto and entered the Land of Yomi ... So when from the palace she raised the door and came out to meet him, Izanagi spoke saying; 'My lovely younger sister! The lands that I and thou made are not yet finished making; so come back!'
Izanami is honoured by Izanagi's attention and minded to return. But there is one problem. She has already eaten food prepared in the Land of Yomi and this binds her to the place, just as the consumption of a single pomegranate seed binds Persephone to hell in the Greek myth.
Is it an accident that ancient Indian myth also contains the same idea? In the Katha Upanishad a human, Nachiketas, succeeds in visiting the underworld realm of Yama, the Hindu god of Death (and, yes, scholars have noted and commented upon the weird resonance between the names and functions of Yama and Yomi). It is precisely to avoid detention in the realm of Yama that Nachiketas is warned:
'Three nights within Yama's mansion stay / But taste not, though a guest, his food.'
So there's a common idea here -- in Japan, in Greece, in India -- about not eating food in the Underworld if you want to leave. Such similarities can result from common invention of the same motif -- in other words, coincidence. They can result from the influence of one of the ancient cultures upon the other two, i.e. cultural diffusion. Or they can result from an influence that has somehow percolated down to all three, and perhaps to other cultures, stemming from an as yet unidentified common source. ~ Graham Hancock,
1285:Jesus is the true and better Adam, who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us (1 Corinthians 15). Jesus is the true and better Abel, who, though innocently slain, has blood that cries out for our acquittal, not our condemnation (Hebrews 12:24). Jesus is the true and better Abraham, who answered the call of God to leave the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void “not knowing whither he went” to create a new people of God. Jesus is the true and better Isaac, who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us all. God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me, because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love, from me.” Now we can say to God, “Now we know that you love us, because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love, from us.” Jesus is the true and better Jacob, who wrestled with God and took the blow of justice we deserved so that we, like Jacob, receive only the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us. Jesus is the true and better Joseph, who at the right hand of the King forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them. Jesus is the true and better Moses, who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant (Hebrews 3). Jesus is the true and better rock of Moses, who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert. Jesus is the true and better Job—the truly innocent sufferer—who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends (Job 42). Jesus is the true and better David, whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves. Jesus is the true and better Esther, who didn’t just risk losing an earthly palace but lost the ultimate heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life but gave his life—to save his people. Jesus is the true and better Jonah, who was cast out into the storm so we could be brought in. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1286:Kestrel didn’t see why carriage seats had to face each other. Why couldn’t they have been designed for moments like these, when all she wanted to do was hide? She took one look at Arin. She had given no order for the carriage lamps to be lit, but the moonlight was strong. Arin was silvered by it. He was staring out the window at the governor’s palace dwindling as the carriage trundled toward home. Then he tore his gaze from the window with a sharp turn of the head and sagged against his seat, face filled with something that looked like shocked relief.
Kestrel felt a flicker of instinctive curiosity. Then she reminded herself bitterly that this was what curiosity had bought her: fifty keystones for a singer who refused to sing, a friend who wasn’t her friend, someone who was hers and yet would never be hers. Kestrel looked away from Arin. She swore to herself that she would never look back.
Softly, he said, “Why are you crying?”
His words made the tears flow faster.
“Kestrel.”
She drew a shaky breath. “Because when my father comes home, I will tell him that he has won. I will join the military.”
There was a silence. “I don’t understand.”
Kestrel shrugged. She shouldn’t care whether he understood or not.
“You would give up your music?”
Yes. She would.
“But your bargain with the general was for spring.” Arin still sounded confused. “You have until spring to marry or enlist. Ronan…Ronan would ask the god of souls for you. He would ask you to marry him.”
“He has.”
Arin didn’t speak.
“But I can’t,” she said.
“Kestrel.”
“I can’t.”
“Kestrel, please don’t cry.” Tentative fingers touched her face. A thumb ran along the wet skin of her cheekbone. She suffered for it, suffered for the misery of knowing that whatever possessed him to do this could be no more than compassion. He valued her that much. But not enough.
“Why can’t you marry him?” he whispered.
She broke her word to herself and looked at him. “Because of you. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1287:Close your eyes, Maxon."
"What?"
"Close your eyes.
Somewhere in this palace, there is a woman who will be your wife. This girl? Imagine that she depends on you. She needs you to cherish her and make her feel like the Selection didn't even happen. Like if you were dropped in your own out in the middle of the country to wander around door to door, she's still the one you would have found. She was always the one you would have picked. She needs you to provide for her and protect her. And if it came to a point where there was absolutely nothing to eat, and you couldn't even fall asleep at night because the sound of her stomach growling kept you awake—"
"Stop it!"
"Sorry."
"Is that really what it's like? Out there... does that happen? Are people hungry like that a lot?"
"Maxon, I..."
"Tell me the truth."
"Yes. That happens. I know of families where people give up their share for their children or siblings. I know of a boy who was whipped in the town square for stealing food. Sometimes you do crazy things when you are desperate."
"A boy? How old?"
"Nine."
"Have you ever been like that? Starving?...How bad?"
"Maxon, it will only upset you more."
"Probably, but I'm only starting to realize how much I don't know about my own country. Please."
"We've been pretty bad. Most time if it gets to where we have to choose, we keep the food and lose electricity. The worst was when it happened near Christmas one year. May didn't understand why we couldn't exchange gifts. As a general rule, there are never any leftovers at my house. Someone always wants more. I know the checks we've gotten over the last few weeks have really helped, and my family is really smart about money. I'm sure they have already tucked it away so it will stretch out for a long time. You've done so much for us, Maxon."
"Good God. When you said that you were only here for the food, you weren't kidding, were you?"
"Really, Maxon, we've been doing pretty well lately. I—"
"I'll see you at dinner. ~ Kiera Cass,
1288:Whatever any of us may have thought about Hatsumomo, she was like an empress in our okiya since she earned the income be which we all lived. And being an empress she would have been very displeased, upon returning late at night, to find her palace dark and all the servants asleep. That is to say, when she came home too drunk to unbutton her socks, someone had to unbutton them for her; and if she felt hungry, she certainly wasn't going to stroll into the kitchen and prepare something by herself--such as an umeboshi ochazuke, which was a favorite snack of hers, made with leftover rice and pickled sour plums, soaked in hot tea. Actually our okiya wasn't at all unusual in this respect. The job of waiting up to bow and welcome the geisha home almost always fell to the most junior of the "cocoons"--as the young geisha-in-training were often called. And from the moment I began taking lessons at the school, the most junior cocoon in our okiya was me. Long before midnight, Pumpkin and the two elderly maids were sound asleep on their futons only a meter or so away on the wood floor of the entrance hall; but I had to go on kneeling there, struggling to stay awake until sometimes as late as two o'clock in the morning. Granny's room was nearby and she slept with her light on and her door opened a crack. The bar of light that fell across my empty futon made me think of a day, not long before Satsu [Chiyo's sister] and I were taken away from our village, when I'd peered into the back room of our house to see my mother asleep there. My father had draped fishing nets across the paper screens to darken the room, but it looked so gloomy I decided to open one of the windows; and when I did, a strip of bright sunlight fell across my mother's futon and showed her hand so pale and bony. To see the yellow lights streaming from Granny's room onto my futon...I had to wonder if my mother was still alive. We ere so much alike, I felt sure I would have known if she'd died; but of course, I'd had no sign one way or the other. ~ Arthur Golden,
1289:Don’t provoke Cheat,” Arin said as they stepped out of the carriage and onto the dusky path that led to the governor’s palace, which looked eerie to Kestrel because its impressive façade was the same as the night before, but the lights burning in the windows were now few.
“Kestrel, do you hear me? You can’t toy with him.”
“He started it.”
“That’s not the point.” Gravel crunched under Arin’s heavy boots as he stalked up the path. “Don’t you understand that he wants you dead? He’d leap at the chance,” Arin said, hands in pockets, head down, almost talking to himself. He strode ahead, his long legs quicker than hers. “I can’t--Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize--my prize--it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won’t harm you, I swear that he won’t, but you must…hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you’re not better off dead. Swallow your pride.”
“Maybe that’s not as easy for me as it is for you.”
He wheeled on her. “It’s not easy for me,” he said through his teeth. “You know that it’s not. What do you think I have had to swallow, these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?”
They stood before the palace door. “Truly,” she said, “I haven’t the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else.”
He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: “You can make people feel so small.”
Kestrel went hot with shame--then was ashamed of her own shame. Who was he, that she should apologize? He had used her. He had lied. Nothing he said meant anything. If she was to feel shame, it should be for having been so easily fooled.
He ran fingers through his cropped hair, but slowly, anger gone, replaced by something heavier. He didn’t look at her. His breath smoked the chill air. “Do what you want to me. Say anything. But it frightens me how you refuse to see the danger you risk with others. Maybe now you’ll see. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1290:I really don’t think you should be discussing the role of sensuality in art, for, my friends, sensuality is an art, possibly the most beautiful of all the arts. Up until now, however, very few have cultivated it in that spirit. Imagine trembling with waves of incipient pleasure, with ecstasies of fire, aflame with longing – wouldn’t that be a pleasure to thrill you, so much more intense than the vague frisson of beauty a superb painting or a poem in bronze might afford you? Believe me it would. Of course, you would need to know how to kindle those waves of pleasure, how to provoke them. And that is precisely what no one knows, what no one even considers. So the pleasure of the senses are the same for everyone, they are purely carnal pleasures, mere brute embraces, wet kisses, repellently moist caresses. Ah, but what wonderful, extraordinary works could be created by a truly great artist, who took sensuality as his raw material. At his disposal he would have fire, light, air, water, sound, colour, smells, opiates and silks – all those new and as yet unexplored sensual experiences... I would be proud to be that artist! My dream is to hold a great party in my enchanted palace, where I would overwhelm you all with pleasure... where I would rain down on you the tremulous mysteries of light, of many-coloured fires, so that for the first time your flesh would really feel the fire and the light, the perfumes and the sounds, which, penetrating it, would be scattered, dissolved, destroyed!... Have you never considered the strange voluptuousness of fire, the perversity of water, the sensual subtleties of light? Whenever I plunge my bare legs into the waters of a stream, whenever I gaze upon the incandescent flames of a fire or feel my body lit by electric torrents of light, I must confess I feel real sexual excitement – an excitement in which desire has been ennobled by beauty. Believe me, my friends, however refined, however complicated and however much the artist you all pretend to be, you are, in fact, mere barbarians! ~ M rio de S Carneiro,
1291:Death! where is thy victory?
To triumph whilst I die,
To triumph whilst thine ebon wing
Enfolds my shuddering soul?
O Death! where is thy sting?
Not when the tides of murder roll,
When nations groan, that kings may bask in bliss,
Death! canst thou boast a victory such as this--
When in his hour of pomp and power
His blow the mightiest murderer gave,
Mid Natures cries the sacrifice
Of millions to glut the grave;
When sunk the Tyrant Desolations slave;
Or Freedoms life-blood streamed upon thy shrine;
Stern Tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine?

To know in dissolutions void
That mortals baubles sunk decay;
That everything, but Love, destroyed
Must perish with its kindred clay,--
Perish Ambitions crown,
Perish her sceptred sway:
From Deaths pale front fades Prides fastidious frown.
In Deaths damp vault the lurid fires decay,
That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtues beam--
That all the cares subside,
Which lurk beneath the tide
Of lifes unquiet stream;--
Yes! this is victory!
And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky,
To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled;
To baffle the lean passions of their prey,
To sleep within the palace of the dead!
Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne
His countless courtiers mock the words they say,
Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown,
As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring groan!

Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe
Which props the column of unnatural state!
You the plainings, faint and low,
From Miserys tortured soul that flow,
Shall usher to your fate.

Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell command
The war-fiend riots oer a peaceful land!
You Desolations gory throng
Shall bear from Victory along
To that mysterious strand.
Published (without title) by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858; dated 1810. Included (under the title, To Death) in the Esdaile manuscript book.

  
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Death
,
1292:have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth." Ecclesiastes 10:7 Upstarts frequently usurp the highest places, while the truly great pine in obscurity. This is a riddle in providence whose solution will one day gladden the hearts of the upright; but it is so common a fact, that none of us should murmur if it should fall to our own lot. When our Lord was upon earth, although he is the Prince of the kings of the earth, yet he walked the footpath of weariness and service as the Servant of servants: what wonder is it if his followers, who are princes of the blood, should also be looked down upon as inferior and contemptible persons? The world is upside down, and therefore, the first are last and the last first. See how the servile sons of Satan lord it in the earth! What a high horse they ride! How they lift up their horn on high! Haman is in the court, while Mordecai sits in the gate; David wanders on the mountains, while Saul reigns in state; Elijah is complaining in the cave while Jezebel is boasting in the palace; yet who would wish to take the places of the proud rebels? and who, on the other hand, might not envy the despised saints? When the wheel turns, those who are lowest rise, and the highest sink. Patience, then, believer, eternity will right the wrongs of time. Let us not fall into the error of letting our passions and carnal appetites ride in triumph, while our nobler powers walk in the dust. Grace must reign as a prince, and make the members of the body instruments of righteousness. The Holy Spirit loves order, and he therefore sets our powers and faculties in due rank and place, giving the highest room to those spiritual faculties which link us with the great King; let us not disturb the divine arrangement, but ask for grace that we may keep under our body and bring it into subjection. We were not new created to allow our passions to rule over us, but that we, as kings, may reign in Christ Jesus over the triple kingdom of spirit, soul, and body, to the glory of God the Father. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
1293:A Morning Fancy
I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boat
Upon the surface of a shoreless sea
Whereon no ship nor anything did float,
Save only the frail bark supporting me;
And that-it was so shadowy-seemed to be
Almost from out the very vapors wrought
Of the great ocean underneath its keel;
And all that blue profound appeared as naught
But thicker sky, translucent to reveal,
Miles down, whatever through its spaces glided,
Or at the bottom traveled or abided.
Great cities there I saw-of rich and poor,
The palace and the hovel; mountains, vales,
Forest and field, the desert and the moor,
Tombs of the good and wise who'd lived in jails,
And seas of denser fluid, white with sails
Pushed at by currents moving here and there
And sensible to sight above the flat
Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange and fair
The nether world that I was gazing at
With beating heart from that exalted level,
And-lest I founder-trembling like the devil!
The cities all were populous: men swarmed
In public places-chattered, laughed and wept;
And savages their shining bodies warmed
At fires in primal woods. The wild beast leapt
Upon its prey and slew it as it slept.
Armies went forth to battle on the plain
So far, far down in that unfathomed deep
The living seemed as silent as the slain,
Nor even the widows could be heard to weep.
One might have thought their shaking was but laughter;
And, truly, most were married shortly after.
Above the wreckage of that silent fray
Strange fishes swam in circles, round and round
Black, double-finned; and once a little way
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A bubble rose and burst without a sound
And a man tumbled out upon the ground.
Lord! 'twas an eerie thing to drift apace
On that pellucid sea, beneath black skies
And o'er the heads of an undrowning race;
And when I woke I said-to her surprise
Who came with chocolate, for me to drink it:
'The atmosphere is deeper than you think it.'
~ Ambrose Bierce,
1294:WHEN THE GREAT YOGIN Padmasambhava, called by Tibetans Guru Rinpoche, "the precious teacher," embarks on his spiritual journey, he travels from place to place requesting teachings from yogins and yoginls. Guided by visions and dreams, his journey takes him to desolate forests populated with ferocious wild animals, to poison lakes with fortified islands, and to cremation grounds. Wherever he goes he performs miracles, receives empowerments, and ripens his own abilities to benefit others.

   When he hears of the supreme queen of all dakinls, the greatly accomplished yogini called Secret Wisdom, he travels to the Sandal Grove cremation ground to the gates of her abode, the Palace of Skulls. He attempts to send a request to the queen with her maidservant Kumari. But the girl ignores him and continues to carry huge brass jugs of water suspended from a heavy yoke across her shoulders. When he presses his request, Kumari continues her labors, remaining silent. The great yogin becomes impatient and, through his yogic powers, magically nails the heavy jugs to the floor. No matter how hard Kumari struggles, she cannot lift them.

   Removing the yoke and ropes from her shoulders, she steps before Padmasambhava, exclaiming, "You have developed great yogic powers. What of my powers, great one?" And so saying, she draws a sparkling crystal knife from the girdle at her waist and slices open her heart center, revealing the vivid and vast interior space of her body. Inside she displays to Guru Rinpoche the mandala of deities from the inner tantras: forty-two peaceful deities manifested in her upper torso and head and fifty-eight wrathful deities resting in her lower torso. Abashed that he did not realize with whom he was dealing, Guru Rinpoche bows before her and humbly renews his request for teachings. In response, she offers him her respect as well, adding, "I am only a maidservant," and ushers him in to meet the queen Secret Wisdom. ~ Judith Simmer-Brown, Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism, Introduction: Encountering the Dakini,
1295:Although Arin was eager to see Kestrel, he would have to wait. He caught threads of music from far away. As he came across the grass, the piano’s melody strengthened. It opened within him a happiness that gathered and gleamed…glossy, but the way water is, with weight.
A lovely fatigue claimed him. He lay down on the grass and listened. He thought about how Kestrel had slept on the palace lawn and dreamed of him. When she had told him this, he’d wished that it had been real. He tried to imagine the dream, then found himself dreaming. Everything made sense in his dream yet he felt the tenuousness of this perfect reason. The arch of Kestrel’s bare foot. An old tale about the god of death and the seamstress. Arin would lose, upon waking, his understanding of why touching Kestrel would arouse the memory of a story he’d not thought about in a long time.
He dreamed: one stocking balled in his fist, and the stray question of how it had been made, who had sewn this? He saw his hands--though they did not look like his hands--measuring and cutting fabric, sewing invisible stitches. A dark-haired boy tumbled from a room, a god-mark upon his brow. When a guest entered and said, Weave me the cloth of yourself, Arin thought that he was the forbidding guest and the child and the sewing girl all at once. She said, I’m going to miss you when I wake up.
Don’t wake up
, he answered.
But he did.
Kestrel, beside him on the grass, said, “Did I wake you? I didn’t mean to.”
It took him a velvety moment to understand that this was real. The air was quiet. An insect beat its clear wings. She brushed hair from his brow. Now he was very awake.
“You were sleeping so sweetly,” she said.
“Dreaming.” He touched her tender mouth.
“About what?”
“Come closer, and I’ll tell you.”
But he forgot. He kissed her, and became lost in the exquisite sensation of his skin becoming too tight for his body. He murmured other things instead. A secret, a want, a promise. A story, in its own way.
She curled her fingers into the green earth. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1296:Orophernis
The figure on this four drachma coin
who seems to have a smile on his face
his beautiful, delicate face
this figure is Orophernis, son of Ariarathis.
A child, they threw him out of Cappadocia,
out of his great ancestral palace,
and sent him to grow up in Ionia,
to be forgotten there among foreigners.
Oh those exquisite Ionian nights
when fearlessly, and entirely in a Greek way,
he came to know sensual pleasure totally.
In his heart, Asiatic always,
but in manners and language, a Greek;
with his turquoise jewellery, his Greek clothes,
his body perfumed with oil of jasmine,
he was the most handsome, the most perfect
of Ionia's handsome young men.
Later, when the Syrians entered Cappadocia
and made him king,
he became fully engrossed in his kingship
so as to enjoy himself in a new way each day,
greedily hoarding gold and silver,
delightedly gloating over
the piles of wealth glittering before his eyes.
As for worrying about the country and running ithe had no idea what was going on.
The Cappadocians quickly got rid of him,
and he ended up in Syria, at the palace of Dimitrios,
where he spent his time amusing himself and loafing.
But one day unfamiliar thoughts
broke in on his completely idle life:
he remembered how through his mother Antiochis
and that old grandmother Stratoniki
he too was connected with the Syrian crown,
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he too almost a Selefkid.
For a while he gave up lechery and drink
and ineptly, half dazed,
tried to start an intrigue,
do something, come up with a plan;
but he failed pitifully and that was that.
His end must have been recorded somewhere only to be lost;
or maybe history passed over it
and rightly didn't bother to notice
anything so trivial.
The figure on this four drachma coin,
something of whose young charm can still be seen,
a ray of his poetic beauty
this sensuous image of an Ionian boy,
this is Orophernis, son of Ariarathis.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
1297:The ordinary reader today knows about the Grail thanks only to Richard Wagner's Parsifal, which, in its Romantic approach, really deforms and twists the whole myth. Equally misleading is the attempt to interpret the mystery of the Grail in Christian terms: for Christian elements only play an accessory, secondary and concealing role in the saga. In order to grasp the true significance of the myth, it is necessary instead to consider the more immediate points of reference represented by the themes and echoes pertaining to the cycle of King Arthur, which survives in the Celtic and Nordic traditions. The Grail essentially embodies the source of a transcendent and immortalizing power of primordial origin that has been preserved after the 'Fall', degeneration and decadence of humanity. Significantly, all sources agree that the guardians of the Grail are not priests, but are knights and warriors - besides, the very place where the Grail is kept is described not as a temple or church, but as a royal palace or castle.

In the book, I argued that the Grail can be seen to possess an initiatory (rather than vaguely mystical) character: that it embodies the mystery of warrior initiation. Most commonly, the sagas emphasize one additional element: the duties deriving from such initiation. The predestined Knight - he who has received the calling and has enjoyed a vision of the Grail, or received its boons – or he who has 'fought his way' to the Grail (as described in certain texts) must accomplish his duty of restoring legitimate power, lest he forever be damned. The Knight must either allow a prostrate, deceased, wounded or only apparently living King to regain his strength, or personally assume the regal role, thus restoring a fallen kingdom. The sagas usually attribute this function to the power of the Grail. A significant means to assess the dignity or intentions of the Knight is to 'ask the question': the question concerning the purpose of the Grail. In many cases, the posing of this crucial question coincides with the miracle of awakening, of healing or of restoration. ~ Julius Evola,
1298:Song Of The Worm
THE worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain
In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ;
The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart of the brave
Must turn weak and submit to the worm and the grave.
Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and sod-treading feet-Oh ! turn not away with the shriek of disgust
From the thing you must mate with in darkness and dust.
Your eyes may be flashing in pleasure and pride,
'Neath the crown of a Queen or the wreath of a bride ;
Your lips may be fresh and your cheeks may be fair-Let a few years pass over, and I shall be there.
Cities of splendour, where palace and gate,
Where the marble of strength and the purple of state ;
Where the mart and arena, the olive and vine,
Once flourished in glory ; oh ! are ye not mine ?
Go look for famed Carthage, and I shall be found
In the desolate ruin and weed-covered mound ;
And the slime of my trailing discovers my home,
'Mid the pillars of Tyre and the temples of Rome.
I am sacredly sheltered and daintily fed
Where the velvet bedecks, and the white lawn is spread ;
I may feast undisturbed, I may dwell and carouse
On the sweetest of lips and the smoothest of brows.
The voice of the sexton, the chink of the spade,
Sound merrily under the willow's dank shade.
They are carnival notes, and I travel with glee
To learn what the churchyard has given to me.
Oh ! the worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain,
For where monarchs are voiceless I revel and reign ;
I delve at my ease and regale where I may ;
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None dispute with the worm in his will or his way.
The high and the bright for my feasting must fall-Youth, Beauty, and Manhood, I prey on ye all :
The Prince and the peasant, the despot and slave ;
All, all must bow down to the worm and the grave.
~ Eliza Cook,
1299:Sic Semper Liberatoribus!
As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip
His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares,
Now on a thin-ledged chasm's rock-crumbling lip,
Now on a tottering pinnacle that dare
The front of heaven, while always unawares
Weird monsters start above, around, beneath,
Each glaring from some uglier mask of death,
So the White Czar imperial progress made
Through terror-haunted days. A shock, a cry
Whose echoes ring the globe-the spectre's laid.
Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie
Resting in peace-fear, change, and death gone by.
Fit end for nightmare-mist of blood and tears,
Red climax to the slow, abortive years.
The world draws breath-one long, deep-shuddering sigh,
At that which dullest brain prefigured clear
As swift-sure bolt from thunder-threatening sky.
How heaven-anointed humblest lots appear
Beside his glittering eminence of fear;
His spiked crown, sackcloth purple, poisoned cates,
His golden palace honey-combed with hates.
Well is it done! A most heroic plan,
Which after myriad plots succeeds at last
In robbing of his life this poor old man,
Whose sole offense-his birthright-has but passed
To fresher blood, with younger strength recast.
What men are these, who, clamoring to be free,
Would bestialize the world to what they be?
Whose sons are they who made the snow-wreathed head
Their frenzy's target? In their Russian veins,
What alien current urged on to smite him dead,
Whose word had loosed a million Russian chains?
What brutes were they for whom such speechless pains,
So royally endured, no human thrill
Awoke, in hearts drunk with the lust to kill?
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Not brutes! No tiger of the wilderness,
No jackal of the jungle, bears such brand
As man's black heart, who shrinks not to confess
The desperate deed of his deliberate hand.
Our kind, our kin, have done this thing. We stand
Bowed earthward, red with shame, to see such wrong
Prorogue Love's cause and Truth's-God knows how long!
~ Emma Lazarus,
1300:He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces, and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times—generally on his way home—stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him… so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now—all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all…. He felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from his sight. Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1301:He closed his hand on the twenty kopecks, walked on for ten paces, and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was cloudless and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the Neva. The dome of the cathedral, which is seen at its best from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished. The pain from the lash eased off, and Raskolnikov forgot about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea now occupied him completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times—generally on his way home—stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marveled at a vague and mysterious emotion it aroused in him. It left him strangely cold; for him, this gorgeous picture was blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at his somber and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off finding an explanation for it. He vividly recalled those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and grotesque that he should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him . . . so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now—all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all . . . He felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from his sight. Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from every one and from everything at that moment. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1302:The Man Born Blind
A man born blind received his sight
By a painful operation;
And these are things he saw in the light
Of an infant observation.
He saw a merchant, good and wise.
And greatly, too, respected,
Who looked, to those imperfect eyes,
Like a swindler undetected.
He saw a patriot address
A noisy public meeting.
And said: 'Why, that's a calf. I guess.
That for the teat is bleating.'
A doctor stood beside a bed
And shook his summit sadly.
'O see that foul assassin!' said
The man who saw so badly.
He saw a lawyer pleading for
A thief whom they'd been jailing,
And said: 'That's an accomplice, or
My sight again is failing.'
Upon the Bench a Justice sat,
With nothing to restrain him;
''Tis strange,' said the observer, 'that
They ventured to unchain him.'
With theologic works supplied,
He saw a solemn preacher;
'A burglar with his kit,' he cried,
'To rob a fellow creature.'
A bluff old farmer next he saw
Sell produce in a village,
And said: 'What, what! is there no law
To punish men for pillage?'
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A dame, tall, fair and stately, passed,
Who many charms united;
He thanked his stars his lot was cast
Where sepulchers were whited.
He saw a soldier stiff and stern,
'Full of strange oaths' and toddy;
But was unable to discern
A wound upon his body.
Ten square leagues of rolling ground
To one great man belonging,
Looked like one little grassy mound
With worms beneath it thronging.
A palace's well-carven stones,
Where Dives dwelt contented,
Seemed built throughout of human bones
With human blood cemented.
He watched the yellow shining thread
A silk-worm was a-spinning;
'That creature's coining gold.' he said,
'To pay some girl for sinning.'
His eyes were so untrained and dim
All politics, religions,
Arts, sciences, appeared to him
But modes of plucking pigeons.
And so he drew his final breath,
And thought he saw with sorrow
Some persons weeping for his death
Who'd be all smiles to-morrow.
~ Ambrose Bierce,
1303:PROLOGUE

Soon after Father’s death we discovered the latest, and worst, of King Galdran’s acts: He was going to betray our Covenant with the mysterious and magical Hill Folk in order to harvest and sell the fabulous colorwood trees, which grow nowhere else in the world. The forests have been home to the Hill Folk since long before humans settled in Remalna. The Covenant made with the Hill Folk centuries before our time guaranteed that so long as we left the forests--common trees as well as our fabulous colorwoods--uncut, they would give us magical Fire Sticks each fall, which burned warmly until at least midsummer.
So, untrained and ill prepared, Branaric and I commenced our revolt.
It was a disaster.
Oh, we were successful enough at first, when the huge army the King sent against us was led by his cowardly, bullying cousin Baron Debegri. But when the Marquis of Shevraeth--son of the Prince and Princess of Renselaeus--replaced Debegri, we lost ground steadily. I stumbled into a steel trap our side had set out in a desperate attempt to slow up Shevraeth’s army, was caught, and was taken by the Marquis to the capital, where the King condemned me to death without permitting me to speak a word in my defense.
But I escaped--with help--and limped my way back toward home, chased by two armies. Both Branaric and I nearly got killed before we found out that some of King Galdran’s Court aristocrats--led by the Marquis of Shevraeth--had actually been working to get rid of the King without launching civil war.
King Galdran and Baron Debegri forced us into a final battle, in which they were killed. After that Branaric rode with the Marquis and his allies to the royal palace Athanarel in Remalna-city, the capital, and I retreated home. As a reward for our aid, Shevraeth--who was favored to become the new king--turned over Galdran’s personal fortune to Branaric and me.
That much, I know, is in the records.
What the scribes don’t tell, because they don’t know, is exactly how--and why--I subsequently got mixed up again in royal affairs.
It began with a letter from the Marquise of Merindar--sister of the late King Galdran. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1304:Now I myself, I cheerfully admit, feel that enormity in Kensington Gardens as something quite natural. I feel it so because I have been brought up, so to speak, under its shadow; and stared at the graven images of Raphael and Shakespeare almost before I knew their names; and long before I saw anything funny in their figures being carved, on a smaller scale, under the feet of Prince Albert. I even took a certain childish pleasure in the gilding of the canopy and spire, as if in the golden palace of what was, to Peter Pan and all children, something of a fairy garden. So do the Christians of Jerusalem take pleasure, and possibly a childish pleasure, in the gilding of a better palace, besides a nobler garden, ornamented with a somewhat worthier aim. But the point is that the people of Kensington, whatever they might think about the Holy Sepulchre, do not think anything at all about the Albert Memorial. They are quite unconscious of how strange a thing it is; and that simply because they are used to it. The religious groups in Jerusalem are also accustomed to their coloured background; and they are surely none the worse if they still feel rather more of the meaning of the colours. It may be said that they retain their childish illusion about their Albert Memorial. I confess I cannot manage to regard Palestine as a place where a special curse was laid on those who can become like little children. And I never could understand why such critics who agree that the kingdom of heaven is for children, should forbid it to be the only sort of kingdom that children would really like; a kingdom with real crowns of gold or even of tinsel. But that is another question, which I shall discuss in another place; the point is for the moment that such people would be quite as much surprised at the place of tinsel in our lives as we are at its place in theirs. If we are critical of the petty things they do to glorify great things, they would find quite as much to criticise (as in Kensington Gardens) in the great things we do to glorify petty things. And if we wonder at the way in which they seem to gild the lily, they would wonder quite as much at the way we gild the weed. ~ G K Chesterton,
1305:For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how—by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy—he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured.
I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan’s familiar “Hej, Marcus.” Instead, there was screaming. “How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?” This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. “I’m going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard.” And then he hung up.
I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Boulud and Ferran Adrià, and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them. As a group we were interviewed by the Chicago newspaper; Gordon interrupted everyone who tried to answer a question, craving the limelight. I was almost embarrassed for him. So when I was giving interviews in the lead-up to the Lanesborough event, and was asked who inspired me, I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all. Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out. To be honest, though, only one phrase in his juvenile tirade unsettled me: when he called me a black bastard. Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about the bastard part. But the black part pissed me off. ~ Marcus Samuelsson,
1306:The Spider Queen
IN the deep heart of furthest fairyland
Where foot of man has never trodden yet
The enchanted portals of her palace stand,
And there her sleepless sentinels are set.
All round grow forests of white eglantine
And drooping, dreaming clematis; there blows
The purple nightshade; there pale bindweeds twine
And there the pale, frail flower of slumber grows.
Her palaces are decked with gleaming wings,
Hung o'er with webs through spacious bower and hall,
Filled through and through with precious priceless things;
She is their mistress and she hates them all.
No darkling webs, woven in dust and gloom,
Adorn her palace walls; there gleam astir
Live threads of light, spun for a fairy's loom,
And stolen by her slaves and brought to her.
She wears a robe woven of the July sun,
Mixed with green threads won from the East at dawn,
Bordered with silver moonrays, finely spun,
And gemmed with glowworms from some shadowy lawn.
She wears a crown of dewdrops bright like tears,
Her girdle is a web of rainbow dyes;
She knows no youth, nor age; the hours and years
Leave never a shadow on her lips and eyes.
In magic rings of green and glistening light
Her fairies dance, in star-spun raiment clad,
Her people do her bidding day and night,
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Her dark-robed servants toil to make her glad.
Her minstrels play to her--her singers raise
Soft songs, more sweet than man has ever heard,
With endless rhythms of love her courtiers praise,
And all their heart is in their every word.
She is the mistress of all things that set
Snare of fine webs to win their hearts' desire,
Queen of all folk who weave the death-strong net
Between the poppy and the wild-rose briar.
Yet sits despair upon that brow of hers,
And sorrow in her eyes makes festival;
The soul of grief with her sad soul confers,
And she sits lonely in her crowded hall;
Because she has woven a web of her bright hair-A tear-bright web, to catch one soul; and he
Beheld her, in her beauty, set the snare,
And seeing laughed, and laughing passed out free!
~ Edith Nesbit,
1307:At The Close Of The Canvass
'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,
All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;
And in a Jeremiad of objurgatory warning
He lifted up his jodel to the following effect:
'O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles!
O ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!
Rest a little while the digital and maxillary muscles
And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.
'Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying;
Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found
In the letter of a lover; cease 'exposing' and 'replying'
Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.
'For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of NovemberOnly day of opportunity before the final rush.
Carpe diem! go conciliate each person who's a member
Of the other party-do so while you can without a blush.
'Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season
Having howled itself to silence like a Minnesota 'clone,
Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,
When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown.
'Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging,
With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet,
When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging
To the opposite political denominations meet!
'Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly
Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high
When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace
192
And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky.
'Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar.
Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound!
Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother!
Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!''
Then that venerable warner disappeared around a corner,
And the season of unreason having also taken flight,
All the cheeks of men were burning like the skies to crimson turning
When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.
~ Ambrose Bierce,
1308:When you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse you and do you good, for I shall go through the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new places. Our neighbours, the Filmores, are come; Alfred will join us at Basle, and we shall all go together to Vienna, and back by Prague...'

My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and he left my mind resting on the word Prague with a strange sense that a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me: a city under the broad sunshine, that seemed to me as if it were summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course-unrefreshed for ages by dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching the dusty, weary, time-eaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like deposed and superannuated kings in their regal gold inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me; who pay their court in the worn and crumbling pomp of the palace which stretches its monotonous length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live on in perpetual midday, without the repose of night or the new birth of morning.

A stunning clang of metal suddenly thrilled through me, and I became conscious of the objects in my room again: one of the fire-irons had fallen as Pierre opened the door to bring me my draught. My heart was palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to leave my draught beside me; I would take it presently. ("The Lifted Veil") ~ George Eliot,
1309:At The Close Of The Canvass
'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,
All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;
And in a jeremaid of objurgatory warning
He lifted up his _jodel_ to the following effect:
O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles
O ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!
And a little while the digital and maxillary muscles
And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.
Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying;
Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found
In the letter of a lover; cease 'exposing' and 'replying'
Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.
For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November
Only day of opportunity before the final rush.
_Carpe diem!_ go conciliate each person who's a member
Of the other party-do it while you can without a blush.
'Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season
Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone,
Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,
When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown.
'Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging,
With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet,
When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging
To the opposite political denominations meet!
'Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly
Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high
When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace
And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky.
'Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar.
Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound!
Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother!
Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!''
190
Then that Venerable Person went away without returning
And, the madness of the season having also taken flight,
All the people soon were blushing like the skies to crimson burning
When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.
~ Ambrose Bierce,
1310:To Sculptor Borch
(On his fiftieth birthday)
With friends you stalwart stand and fair,
To-day of fifty years the heir;
The past your works rejoicing praise,
But forward goes your gaze.
Your childlike faith, your spirit true,
Your hand that never weary grew,
A home's sweet music, love of wife,
Make ever young your life.
You dared believe with heart alive
That here in Norway art can thrive.
You forced the hardness of our stones
To harmony of tones.
You laid our wild world's secrets bare
And caught 'The Hunter' near the lair.
Our nation's moods, of beauty born,
Your 'Girl with Eggs' adorn.
As o'er a slope's snow-covered brow
A youth came swiftly flying now,
You saw him, raised your hand, and lo!
He stood there, chiseled snow.
But your 'Ski-runner's' courage good,
It was your own, when forth you stood
Art's champion by the world unawed,
And with your faith in God.
You won your victory supreme
Through rock-like faith and will's full stream
While with unnumbered hours of rest
Your love has others blessed.
Were all now here from west and east
Whose hearts you own, oh, what a feast!
From Akershus the convicts e'en
Would bear a freeman's mien.
Now we whose lives with good you filled
For you to-day a palace build,
205
On heights of heart's-ease lifting square
Its golden tower of prayer.
In peace you oft shall dwell in it,
Whene'er you need to rest a bit,
And feel through them who hold you dear
Yourself to heaven near.
Long since our country to you gave
The meed of thanks that most you crave;
It gave a maid with golden hair,
Its springtime's image fair.
She came from where the fairies dwell,
With nixie's charm and wood-nymph's spell,
With peace all holy, sweet, and calm,
To sing of life the psalm.
So may your life yet long endure
To light our gland, your home secure!
May all that from your heart you gave,
Still blossom on your grave!
May God's protecting mercy hold
Your spirit ever fresh and bold,May He to genius oft impart
Just such a mind and heart!
~ Bjornstjerne Bjornson,
1311:When Franz returned to himself, he seemed still to be in a dream. He thought himself in a sepulchre, into which a ray of sunlight in pity scarcely penetrated. He stretched forth his hand, and touched stone; he rose to his seat, and found himself lying on his bournous in a bed of dry heather, very soft and odoriferous. The vision had fled; and as if the statues had been but shadows from the tomb, they had vanished at his waking. He advanced several paces towards the point whence the light came, and to all the excitement of his dream succeeded the calmness of reality. He found that he was in a grotto, went towards the opening, and through a kind of fanlight saw a blue sea and an azure sky. The air and water were shining in the beams of the morning sun; on the shore the sailors were sitting, chatting and laughing; and at ten yards from them the boat was at anchor, undulating gracefully on the water. There for some time he enjoyed the fresh breeze which played on his brow, and listened to the dash of the waves on the beach, that left against the rocks a lace of foam as white as silver. He was for some time without reflection or thought for the divine charm which is in the things of nature, specially after a fantastic dream; then gradually this view of the outer world, so calm, so pure, so grand, reminded him of the illusiveness of his vision, and once more awakened memory. He recalled his arrival on the island, his presentation to a smuggler chief, a subterranean palace full of splendor, an excellent supper, and a spoonful of hashish. It seemed, however, even in the very face of open day, that at least a year had elapsed since all these things had passed, so deep was the impression made in his mind by the dream, and so strong a hold had it taken of his imagination. Thus every now and then he saw in fancy amid the sailors, seated on a rock, or undulating in the vessel, one of the shadows which had shared his dream with looks and kisses. Otherwise, his head was perfectly clear, and his body refreshed; he was free from the slightest headache; on the contrary, he felt a certain degree of lightness, a faculty for absorbing the pure air, and enjoying the bright sunshine more vividly than ever. ~ Alexandre Dumas,
1312:I turned around--and nearly bumped into a small group of soldiers in Renselaeus colors. They all stopped, bowed silently, and would have stepped out of my way, but I recognized one of them from my ride to Renselaeus just before the end of the war, and I cried, “Captain Nessaren!”
“My lady.” Nessaren smiled, her flat cheeks tinged slightly with color.
“Is your riding assigned here now?”
“As you see, my lady.”
The others bowed and withdrew silently, leaving us alone.
“Are you not supposed to talk to the civs?” Raindrops stung my face.
Her eyes crinkled. “They usually don’t talk to us.”
“Is this a good duty, or is it boring now that nothing is going on?”
Her eyes flickered to my face then down to the ground, and her lips just parted. After a moment she said, “We’re well enough, my lady.”
Which wasn’t quite what I had asked. Resolving to think that over later, I said, “You know what I miss? The practice sessions we had when we were riding cross-country last year. I did some practice at home…but there doesn’t seem to be opportunity anymore.”
“We have open practice each day at dawn, in the garrison court when the weather’s fine, the gym when it isn’t. You’re welcome to join us. There’s no hierarchy, except that of expertise, by order of the Marquis himself.”
“The Marquis?” I repeated faintly, realizing how close I’d come to making an even worse fool of myself than my spectacular attempts so far.
“There every day,” she said. “Others as well--Lady Renna. Duke of Savona there most days, same as Baron Khialem. You wouldn’t be alone.”
I won’t be there at all. But out loud I just thanked her.
She bowed. Her companions were still waiting at a discreet distance, despite the spatter of rain, so I said, “I won’t keep you any longer.”
As she rejoined her group, I started back toward the Residence. The wind had turned chill, and the rain started falling faster, but I scarcely noticed. Was there still some kind of danger? Instinct attributed Nessaren’s deliberate vagueness to a military reason.
If the threat was from the borders, it seemed unlikely that I’d find Renselaeus warriors roaming around the royal palace Athanarel. So, was there a threat at home? ~ Sherwood Smith,
1313:The wedding of David and Michal was a glorious affair. Though Saul was normally stingy with his money, he was not so with his daughters. Michal had started the day with a bath followed by a bodily anointing of oil. She wore a linen and silk dress with embroidered cloth of Phoenician purple. Her hair was brushed to a soft perfection and placed beneath her Tyrian style crown of gold. She was bedecked with gold and silver jewelry from Egypt. Bracelets, necklaces, ear coverings and a ring on her nose. She walked through the Gibeah streets in fine calf leather sandals, surrounded by a cadre of dozens of virgin bridesmaid companions dressed in white linen. A band of minstrels led her with rejoicing on tambourine, flute, and lyre. She felt like a queen. She would be a queen one day. She knew that she was marrying the mightiest warrior in all of Israel. The gibborim who had killed the giant Rephaim Philistine, who her own father, the anointed warrior king, could not conquer. All she could think of the entire journey to the palace were the lyrics she first heard her from the lips of her bridegroom upon their first acquaintance. She had never forgot them. They were burned into her heart. He had sung a song of virginal submission to a manly king as a sample of his musical talent to her father. But she knew he had sung those words for her. She knew by the look in his eyes, his unquenchable stare of desire for her. It was like a prophecy. Now those words were coming true, she was going to be living them out any moment. Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. The people of Israel lined the streets and cheered their beautiful princess as she approached the entranceway to the palace. She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest. Would he sing to her on their wedding night? Would he seduce her with his musical talent before he ravished her? All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. ~ Brian Godawa,
1314:Chapter 22 Aaron teaches Lamoni’s father about the Creation, the Fall of Adam, and the plan of redemption through Christ—The king and all his household are converted—The division of the land between the Nephites and the Lamanites is explained. About 90–77 B.C. 1 Now, as Ammon was thus teaching the people of Lamoni continually, we will return to the account of Aaron and his brethren; for after he departed from the land of Middoni he was led by the Spirit to the land of Nephi, even to the house of the king which was over all the land save it were the land of Ishmael; and he was the father of Lamoni. 2 And it came to pass that he went in unto him into the king’s palace, with his brethren, and bowed himself before the king, and said unto him: Behold, O king, we are the brethren of Ammon, whom thou hast delivered out of prison. 3 And now, O king, if thou wilt spare our lives, we will be thy servants. And the king said unto them: Arise, for I will grant unto you your lives, and I will not suffer that ye shall be my servants; but I will insist that ye shall administer unto me; for I have been somewhat troubled in mind because of the generosity and the greatness of the words of thy brother Ammon; and I desire to know the cause why he has not come up out of Middoni with thee. 4 And Aaron said unto the king: Behold, the Spirit of the Lord has called him another way; he has gone to the land of Ishmael, to teach the people of Lamoni. 5 Now the king said unto them: What is this that ye have said concerning the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, this is the thing which doth trouble me. 6 And also, what is this that Ammon said—If ye will repent ye shall be saved, and if ye will not repent, ye shall be cast off at the last day? 7 And Aaron answered him and said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God? And the king said: I know that the Amalekites say that there is a God, and I have granted unto them that they should build sanctuaries, that they may assemble themselves together to worship him. And if now thou sayest there is a God, behold I will believe. 8 And now when Aaron heard this, his heart began to rejoice, and he said: Behold, assuredly as thou livest, O king, there is a God. 9 And the king said: Is God that Great Spirit that ~ Joseph Smith Jr,
1315:Living: After A Death
O LIVE!
(Thus seems it we should say to our beloved,-Each held by such slight links, so oft removed
And I can let thee go to the world's end,
All precious names, companion, love, spouse, friend,
Seal up in an eternal silence gray,
Like a closed grave till resurrection-day:
All sweet remembrances, hopes, dreams, desires,
Heap, as one heaps up sarificial fires:
Then, turning, consecrate by loss, and proud
Of penury--go back into the loud
Tumultuous world again with never a moan-Save that which whispers still, 'My own, my own,'
Unto the same broad sky whose arch immense
Enfolds us both like the arm of Providence:
And thus, contended, I could live or die,
With never clasp of hand or meeting eye
On this side Paradise.--While thee I see
Living to God, thou art alive to me.
O live!
And I, methinks, can let all dear rights go,
Fond duties melt away like April snow,
And sweet, sweet hopes, that took a life to weave,
Vanish like gossamers of autumn eve.
Nay, sometimes seems it I could even bear
To lay down humbly this love-crown I wear,
Steal from my palace, helpless, hopeless, poor,
And see another queen it at the door,-If only that the king had done no wrong,
If this my palace, where I dwelt so long,
Were not defiled by falsehood entering in:-There is no loss but change, no death but sin,
No parting, save the slow corrupting pain
Of murdered faith that never lives again.
O live!
(So endeth faint the low pathetic cry
Of love, whom death has taught love cannot die,)
108
And I can stand above the daisy bed,
The only pillow for thy dearest head,
There cover up forever from my sight
My own, my earthly all of earth delight;
And enter the sea-cave of widowed years,
Where far, far off the trembling gleam appears
Through which thy heavenly image slipped away,
And waits to meet me at the open day.
Only to me, my love, only to me.
This cavern underneath the moaning sea;
This long, long life that I alone must tread,
To whom the living seem most like the dead,-Thou wilt be safe out on the happy shore:
He who in God lives, liveth evermore.
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
1316:The Defiance Of Eteocles
MESSENGER
Now at the Seventh Gate the seventh chief,
Thy proper mother's son, I will announce,
What fortune for this city, for himself,
With curses he invoketh:--on the walls
Ascending, heralded as king, to stand,
With paeans for their capture; then with thee
To fight, and either slaying near thee die,
Or thee, who wronged him, chasing forth alive,
Requite in kind his proper banishment.
Such words he shouts, and calls upon the gods
Who o'er his race preside and Fatherland,
With gracious eye to look upon his prayers.
A well-wrought buckler, newly forged, he bears,
With twofold blazon riveted thereon,
For there a woman leads, with sober mien,
A mailed warrior, enchased in gold;
Justice her style, and thus the legend speaks:-'This man I will restore, and he shall hold
The city and his father's palace homes.'
Such the devices of the hostile chiefs.
'Tis for thyself to choose whom thou wilt send;
But never shalt thou blame my herald-words.
To guide the rudder of the State be thine!
ETEOCLES
O heaven-demented race of Oedipus,
My race, tear-fraught, detested of the gods!
Alas, our father's curses now bear fruit.
But it beseems not to lament or weep,
Lest lamentations sadder still be born.
For him, too truly Polyneikes named,-What his device will work we soon shall know;
Whether his braggart words, with madness fraught,
Gold-blazoned on his shield, shall lead him back.
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
23
Guided his deeds and thoughts, this might have been;
But neither when he fled the darksome womb,
Or in his childhood, or in youth's fair prime,
Or when the hair thick gathered on his chin,
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Nor in this outrage on his Fatherland
Deem I she now beside him deigns to stand.
For Justice would in sooth belie her name,
Did she with this all-daring man consort.
In these regards confiding will I go,
Myself will meet him. Who with better right?
Brother to brother, chieftain against chief,
Foeman to foe, I'll stand. Quick, bring my spear,
My greaves, and armor, bulwark against stones.
~ Aeschylus,
1317:know what Clement said about being pope?” I shook my head, as he’d hoped I would. “Clement said none of his predecessors knew how to be pope.” “What did he mean?” “He meant that none of the others knew how to throw such big parties. He was also called ‘Clement the Magnificent.’ When he was crowned as pope, he gave a feast for three thousand people. He served one thousand sheep, nine hundred goats, a hundred cows, a hundred calves, and sixty pigs.” “Goodness. That’s, what, ten, twenty pounds of meat for every person?” “Ah, but there is more. Much more. Ten thousand chickens. Fourteen hundred geese. Three hundred fish—” “Only three hundred?” He stretched his arms wide—“Pike, very big fish”—then transformed the gesture into a shrug. “But also, Catholics eat a lot of fish, so maybe it was not considered a delicacy.” He held up a finger. “Plus fifty thousand cheeses. And for dessert? Fifty thousand tarts.” “That’s not possible. Surely somebody exaggerated.” “Non, non, pas du tout. We have the book of accounts. It records what they bought, and how much it cost.” “How much did it cost?” “More than I will earn in my entire life. But it was a smart investment. It made him a favorite with the people who mattered—kings and queens and dukes. And, of course, with his cardinals and bishops, who sent him money they collected in their churches.” Turning away from the palace, he pointed to a building on the opposite side of the square. “Do you know this building?” I shook my head. “It’s just as important as the palace.” “What is it?” “The papal mint.” “Mint, as in money?” He nodded. “The popes coined their own money, and they built this mint here. They made gold florins in the mint, then stored them in the treasury in the palace.” “The popes had their own mint? That seems ironic, since Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem.” “If you look for inconsistencies, you will find a million. The popes had armies. They had mistresses. They had children. They poisoned their rivals. They lived like kings and emperors; better than kings and emperors.” “And nobody objected?” “Oh, sure,” he said. “Some of the Franciscans—founded by Saint Francis of Assisi—they were very critical. They said monks and priests and popes should live in poverty, like Jesus. ~ Jefferson Bass,
1318:Well! Being born into this world there are, I suppose, many aims which we may strive to attain.

The Imperial Throne of the Mikado inspires us with the greatest awe; even the uttermost leaf of the Imperial Family Tree is worthy of honour and very different from the rest of mankind. As to the position of a certain august personage (i.e. the Mikado's regent) there can be no question, and those whose rank entitles them to a Palace Guard are very magnificent also - their sons and grandsons, even if they fall into poverty, are still gentlefolk. But when those who are of lower degree chance to rise in the world and assume an aspect of arrogance, though they may think themselves grand, it is very regrettable.

Now there is no life so undesirable as that of a priest. Truly indeed did Sei Shô-nagon write, 'People think of them as if they were only chips of wood.' Their savage violence and loud shouting does not show them to advantage, and I feel sure that, as the sage Zôga said, their desire for notoriety is not in accordance with the sacred precepts of Buddha. To retire from the world in real earnest, on the contrary, is indeed praiseworthy, and some I hope there may be who are willing to do so.

A man should preferably have pleasing features and a good style; one never tires of meeting those who can engage in some little pleasant conversation and who have an attractive manner, but who are not too talkative. It is a great pity, however, if a man's true character does not come up to his prepossessing appearance. One's features are fixed by nature; but, if we wish to, may we not change our hearts from good to better? For, if a man though handsome and good-natured has no real ability, his position will suffer, and in association with men of a less engaging aspect his deficiency will cause him to be thrown into the background, which is indeed a pity.

The thing to aim at, therefore, is the path of true literature, the study of prose, poetry, and music; to be an accepted authority for others on ancient customs and ceremonies is also praiseworthy. One who is quick and clever at writing and sketching, who has a pleasant voice, who can beat time to music, and who does not refuse a little wine, even thoughhe cannot drink much, is a good man. ~ Yoshida Kenk,
1319:Well! Being born into this world there are, I suppose, many aims which we may strive to attain.

The Imperial Throne of the Mikado inspires us with the greatest awe; even the uttermost leaf of the Imperial Family Tree is worthy of honour and very different from the rest of mankind. As to the position of a certain august personage (i.e. the Mikado's regent) there can be no question, and those whose rank entitles them to a Palace Guard are very magnificent also - their sons and grandsons, even if they fall into poverty, are still gentlefolk. But when those who are of lower degree chance to rise in the world and assume an aspect of arrogance, though they may think themselves grand, it is very regrettable.

Now there is no life so undesirable as that of a priest. Truly indeed did Sei Shô-nagon write, 'People think of them as if they were only chips of wood.' Their savage violence and loud shouting does not show them to advantage, and I feel sure that, as the sage Zôga said, their desire for notoriety is not in accordance with the sacred precepts of Buddha. To retire from the world in real earnest, on the contrary, is indeed praiseworthy, and some I hope there may be who are willing to do so.

A man should preferably have pleasing features and a good style; one never tires of meeting those who can engage in some little pleasant conversation and who have an attractive manner, but who are not too talkative. It is a great pity, however, if a man's true character does not come up to his prepossessing appearance. One's features are fixed by nature; but, if we wish to, may we not change our hearts from good to better? For, if a man though handsome and good-natured has no real ability, his position will suffer, and in association with men of a less engaging aspect his deficiency will cause him to be thrown into the background, which is indeed a pity.

The thing to aim at, therefore, is the path of true literature, the study of prose, poetry, and music; to be an accepted authority for others on ancient customs and ceremonies is also praiseworthy. One who is quick and clever at writing and sketching, who has a pleasant voice, who can beat time to music, and who does not refuse a little wine, even though he cannot drink much, is a good man. ~ Yoshida Kenk,
1320:per hour. Handbrake knew that he could keep up with the best of them. Ambassadors might look old-fashioned and slow, but the latest models had Japanese engines. But he soon learned to keep it under seventy. Time and again, as his competitors raced up behind him and made their impatience known by the use of their horns and flashing high beams, he grudgingly gave way, pulling into the slow lane among the trucks, tractors and bullock carts. Soon, the lush mustard and sugarcane fields of Haryana gave way to the scrub and desert of Rajasthan. Four hours later, they reached the rocky hills surrounding the Pink City, passing in the shadow of the Amber Fort with its soaring ramparts and towering gatehouse. The road led past the Jal Mahal palace, beached on a sandy lake bed, into Jaipur’s ancient quarter. It was almost noon and the bazaars along the city’s crenellated walls were stirring into life. Beneath faded, dusty awnings, cobblers crouched, sewing sequins and gold thread onto leather slippers with curled-up toes. Spice merchants sat surrounded by heaps of lal mirch, haldi and ground jeera, their colours as clean and sharp as new watercolor paints. Sweets sellers lit the gas under blackened woks of oil and prepared sticky jalebis. Lassi vendors chipped away at great blocks of ice delivered by camel cart. In front of a few of the shops, small boys, who by law should have been at school, swept the pavements, sprinkling them with water to keep down the dust. One dragged a doormat into the road where the wheels of passing vehicles ran over it, doing the job of carpet beaters. Handbrake honked his way through the light traffic as they neared the Ajmeri Gate, watching the faces that passed by his window: skinny bicycle rickshaw drivers, straining against the weight of fat aunties; wild-eyed Rajasthani men with long handlebar moustaches and sun-baked faces almost as bright as their turbans; sinewy peasant women wearing gold nose rings and red glass bangles on their arms; a couple of pink-faced goras straining under their backpacks; a naked sadhu, his body half covered in ash like a caveman. Handbrake turned into the old British Civil Lines, where the roads were wide and straight and the houses and gardens were set well apart. Ajay Kasliwal’s residence was number ~ Tarquin Hall,
1321:A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE

There lived a king; his comeliness was such
The world could not acclaim his charm too much.
The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace;
It was a miracle to view his face.
If he had rivals,then I know of none;
The earth resounded with this paragon.
When riding through his streets he did not fail
To hide his features with a scarlet veil.
Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head;
Whoever spoke his name was left for dead,
The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled
With passion for this king was quickly killed.
A thousand for his love expired each day,
And those who saw his face, in blank dismay
Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away-
To die for love of that bewitching sight
Was worth a hundred lives without his light.
None could survive his absence patiently,
None could endure this king's proximity-
How strange it was that man could neither brook
The presence nor the absence of his look!
Since few could bear his sight, they were content
To hear the king in sober argument,
But while they listened they endure such pain
As made them long to see their king again.
The king commanded mirrors to be placed
About the palace walls, and when he faced
Their polished surfaces his image shone
With mitigated splendour to the throne.

If you would glimpse the beauty we revere
Look in your heart-its image will appear.
Make of your heart a looking-glass and see
Reflected there the Friend's nobility;
Your sovereign's glory will illuminate
The palace where he reigns in proper state.
Search for this king within your heart; His soul
Reveals itself in atoms of the Whole.
The multitude of forms that masquerade
Throughout the world spring from the Simorgh's shade.
If you catch sight of His magnificence
It is His shadow that beguiles your glance;
The Simorgh's shadow and Himself are one;
Seek them together, twinned in unison.
But you are lost in vague uncertainty...
Pass beyond shadows to Reality.
How can you reach the Simorgh's splendid court?
First find its gateway, and the sun, long-sought,
Erupts through clouds; when victory is won,
Your sight knows nothing but the blinding sun. ~ Attar of Nishapur,
1322:In The Manner Of Spenser
So long estranged from every Muse's lyre,
And groveling in the tangled net of Care;
What powerful breath shall kindle up that fire
Smothered with damps of most unkindly air?
Ah, how is quenched the lamp that burnt so fair!
Come, sweet seducers, late too far away,
Once more to my deserted cell repair;
Your rebel courts again your gentle sway;—
Come, soothe the winter's night, and charm the summer's day.
Come, dear companions of my youthful hour,
Fill my fond breast with your majestic themes;
Meet me again on hill, by stream, or bower,
And bathe my fancy in the bliss of dreams.
Vain wish! no more the star of Fancy gleams;
They with becoming scorn reject thy prayer:
Nor will they haunt thy bower, or bless thy streams,
No more to thy deserted cell repair:—
“Go, court the world,” they cry, “thou art not worth our care.”
Bustle and hurry, noise and thrall they hate,
And plodding Method with her leaden rule;
And all that swells the' unwieldy pomp of state,
And all that binds to earth the golden fool;
And creeping Labour with his patient tool:
Free like the birds they wander unconfined,
Nor dip their wings in Lucre's muddy pool;
Business they hate, in crowded nook enshrined,
That spins her dirty web, and clouds the' ethereal mind.
Ah, why should man, in hard unsocial strife,
And withering care whose vigils never cease,
Fretting away this little thread of life,
Of his sad birthright reap such large increase!
Why should he toil for aught but bread and peace?
Why rear to heaven his clay-built pyramids?
Nor from his tasks himself, poor slave! release;
With anxious thought, which wholesome rest forbids,
Drying the balm of sleep from sorrow's swollen lids.
Despising cheap delights, he loves to scoop
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His marble palace from the rock's hard breast,
And in close dungeon walls himself to coop,
On golden couches wooing pale unrest;
With foreign looms his stately halls are drest,
And grim-wrought tapestry clothes the darkened room;
While in the flowery vale Peace builds her nest,
Amidst the purple heath or yellow broom,
Or where midst rustling corn the nodding poppies bloom.
~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,
1323:The Parting
The chestnut steed stood by the gate
His noble master's will to wait,
The woody park so green and bright
Was glowing in the morning light,
The young leaves of the aspen trees
Were dancing in the morning breeze.
The palace door was open wide,
Its lord was standing there,
And his sweet lady by his side
With soft dark eyes and raven hair.
He smiling took her wary hand
And said, 'No longer here I stand;
My charger shakes his flowing mane
And calls me with impatient neigh.
Adieu then till we meet again,
Sweet love, I must no longer stay.'
'You must not go so soon,' she said,
'I will not say farewell.
The sun has not dispelled the shade
In yonder dewy dell;
Dark shadows of gigantic length
Are sleeping on the lawn;
And scarcely have the birds begun
To hail the summer morn;
Then stay with me a little while,'
She said with soft and sunny smile.
He smiled again and did not speak,
But lightly kissed her rosy cheek,
And fondly clasped her in his arms,
Then vaulted on his steed.
And down the park's smooth winding road
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He urged its flying speed.
Still by the door his lady stood
And watched his rapid flight,
Until he came to a distant wood
That hid him from her sight.
But ere he vanished from her view
He waved to her a last adieu,
Then onward hastily he steered
And in the forest disappeared.
The lady smiled a pensive smile
And heaved a gently sigh,
But her cheek was all unblanched the while
And tearless was her eye.
'A thousand lovely flowers,' she said,
'Are smiling on the plain.
And ere one half of them are dead,
My lord will come again.
The leaves are waving fresh and green
On every stately tree,
And long before they die away
He will return to me!' -Alas! Fair lady, say not so;
Thou canst not tell the weight of woe
That lies in store for thee.
Those flowers will fade, those leaves will fall,
Winter will darken yonder hall;
Sweet spring will smile o'er hill and plain
And trees and flowers will bloom again,
And years will still keep rolling on,
But thy beloved lord is gone.
His absence thou shalt deeply mourn,
And never smile on his return.
~ Anne Brontë,
1324:Tithonus
So when the verdure of his life was shed,
With all the grace of ripened manlihead,
And on his locks, but now so lovable,
Old age like desolating winter fell,
Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn:
Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn
Softly withheld, yet cherished him no less
With pious works of pitying tenderness;
Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes,
And hoary height bent down none otherwise
Than burdened willows bend beneath their weight
Of snow when winter winds turn temperate, -So bowed with years -- when still he lingered on:
Then to the daughter of Hyperion
This counsel seemed the best: for she, afar
By dove-gray seas under the morning star,
Where, on the wide world's uttermost extremes,
Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams,
High in an orient chamber bade prepare
An everlasting couch, and laid him there,
And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he,
Deathless by Jove's compassionless decree,
Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest.
There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed,
Still in an aural, visionary haze
Float round him vanished forms of happier days;
Still at his side he fancies to behold
The rosy, radiant thing beloved of old;
And oft, as over dewy meads at morn,
Far inland from a sunrise coast is borne
The drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea,
Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, -Lisping sweet names of passion overblown,
Breaking with dull, persistent undertone
The breathless silence that forever broods
Round those colossal, lustrous solitudes.
Times change. Man's fortune prospers, or it falls.
Change harbors not in those eternal halls
And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies.
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But through his window there the eastern skies
Fall palely fair to the dim ocean's end.
There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend,
The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o'er
Falter and turn where they can sail no more.
There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow -Cedars and silver poplars, row on row,
Through whose black boughs on her appointed night,
Flooding his chamber with enchanted light,
Lifts the full moon's immeasurable sphere,
Crimson and huge and wonderfully near.
~ Alan Seeger,
1325:There are pieces to the puzzle missing,' Camas said. He was tugging his hair; his eyes glowed eerily in the red light from a stained-glass lamp. 'And pieces that don't yet fit. What, for instance, precipitates the shift from city to shadow city? Is it sorcery? Has it to do with the precarious state of affairs in the House of Greve? The powerless heir, the bastard who cannot act? What secrets are hidden within the secret palace? What is there to gain by anticipating and surviving the shift? Domina Pearl believes that it is possible, if one can remain aware during the transformation, to amass enormous knowledge and power. To rule the shadow city when it emerges, since no one else will remember the previous city, and who ruled then. All will be accepted as it is revealed. All of which is why I am so eager to speak with you. You live in Ombria's past, its ghosts and memories. How far back do you remember? Were you alive before the previous shift? How many transformations have there been? Many? One? None at all? How old are you?'
The illusion of Faey inclined her head gracefully; Camas continued without listening for answers. Faey spoke then, her voice sliding within, beneath his words. 'What do you expect to gain form what you call the transformation?'
Camas interrupted his own sentence with a word. 'Enlightenment. And the power that comes with an unbroken memory of the history of the city. Domina Pearl's knowledge of sorcery may not survive the transformation if she herself is not aware of the shift. I want to stay alive, be aware of the shift form city to shadow, and I will ally myself and my abilities to anyone powerful enough to maintain the integrity of existence, knowledge, memory and experience through the transformation.'
'Such as Domina Pearl?' the sorceress suggested. She kept her voice light, careless, but her eyes were very dark.
'Domina Pearl,' Camas agreed. 'Or you. Or perhaps even Ducon. He is another puzzle piece, I think. He is drawn to the hidden palace, and to the odd, unnoticed places in Ombria where the boundaries are visible between the city and its shadow. He draws them constantly.'
'So you would pledge your loyalty to him or betray him, depending on the moment?'
'Or her. Or you,' Camas answered, nodding briskly. Mag stared at him with wonder. 'Exactly. Depending on the moment. ~ Patricia A McKillip,
1326:The Sending Of The Magi
IN a far Eastern country
It happened long of yore,
Where a lone and level sunrise
Flushes the desert floor,
That three kings sat together
And a spearman kept the door.
Gaspar, whose wealth was counted
By city and caravan;
With Melchior, the seer
Who read the starry plan;
And Balthasar, the blameless,
Who loved his fellow man.
There while they talked, a sudden
Strange rushing sound arose,
And as with startled faces
They thought upon their foes,
Three figures stood before them
In imperial repose.
One in flame-gold and one in blue
And one in scarlet clear,
With the almighty portent
Of sunrise they drew near!
And the kings made obeisance
With hand on breast, in fear.
'Arise,' said they, 'we bring you
Good tidings of great peace!
To-day a power is wakened
Whose working must increase,
Till fear and greed and malice
And violence shall cease.'
The messengers were Michael,
By whom all things are wrought
To shape and hue; and Gabriel
Who is the lord of thought;
And Rafael without whose love
All toil must come to nought.
Then Rafael said to Balthasar,
'In a country west from here
A lord is born in lowliness,
190
In love without a peer.
Take grievances and gifts to him
And prove his kingship clear!
'By this sign ye shall know him;
Within his mother's arm
Among the sweet-breathed cattle
He slumbers without harm,
While wicked hearts are troubled
And tyrants take alarm.'
And Gabriel said to Melchior,
'My comrade, I will send
My star to go before you,
That ye may comprehend
Where leads your mystic learning
In a humaner trend.'
And Michael said to Gaspar,
'Thou royal builder, go
With tribute of thy riches!
Though time shall overthrow
Thy kingdom, no undoing
His gentle might shall know.'
Then while the kings' hearts greatened
And all the chamber shone,
As when the hills at sundown
Take a new glory on
And the air thrills with purple,
Their visitors were gone.
Then straightway up rose Gaspar,
Melchior and Balthasar,
And passed out through the murmur
Of palace and bazar,
To make without misgiving
The journey of the Star.
~ Bliss William Carman,
1327:But when, by the improvement and cultivation of land, the labour of one family can provide food for two, the labour of half the society becomes sufficient to provide food for the whole. The other half, therefore, or at least the greater part of them, can be employed in providing other things, or in satisfying the other wants and fancies of mankind. Clothing and lodging, household furniture, and what is called equipage, are the principal objects of the greater part of those wants and fancies. The rich man consumes no more food than his poor neighbour. In quality it may be very different, and to select and prepare it may require more labour and art; but in quantity it is very nearly the same. But compare the spacious palace and great wardrobe of the one, with the hovel and the few rags of the other, and you will be sensible that the difference between their clothing, lodging, and household furniture, is almost as great in quantity as it is in quality. The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniencies and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary. Those, therefore, who have the command of more food than they themselves can consume, are always willing to exchange the surplus, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for gratifications of this other kind. What is over and above satisfying the limited desire, is given for the amusement of those desires which cannot be satisfied, but seem to be altogether endless. The poor, in order to obtain food, exert themselves to gratify those fancies of the rich; and to obtain it more certainly, they vie with one another in the cheapness and perfection of their work. The number of workmen increases with the increasing quantity of food, or with the growing improvement and cultivation of the lands; and as the nature of their business admits of the utmost subdivisions of labour, the quantity of materials which they can work up, increases in a much greater proportion than their numbers. Hence arises a demand for every sort of material which human invention can employ, either usefully or ornamentally, in building, dress, equipage, or household furniture; for the fossils and minerals contained in the bowels of the earth, the precious metals, and the precious stones. ~ Adam Smith,
1328:La Nue
Oft when sweet music undulated round,
Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea
Thine image from the waves of blissful sound
Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.
And in the country, leaf and flower and air
Would alter and the eternal shape emerge;
Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,
And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.
The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled
Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue
Were windows in a palace pearly-silled
That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.
And in the city, dominant desire
For which men toil within its prison-bars,
I watched thy white feet moving in the mire
And thy white forehead hid among the stars.
Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude,
Radiant there with rosy arms outspread,
Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude,
Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head,
Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills,
Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line,
Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills,
Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine;
The gold all color and grace are folded o'er,
The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, -Thou quiverest at Nature's perfumed core,
40
The pistil of a myriad-petalled flower.
Round thee revolves, illimitably wide,
The world's desire, as stars around their pole.
Round thee all earthly loveliness beside
Is but the radiate, infinite aureole.
Thou art the poem on the cosmic page -In rubric written on its golden ground -That Nature paints her flowers and foliage
And rich-illumined commentary round.
Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tears
Hover about like butterflies and bees.
Thou art the theme the music of the spheres
Echoes in endless, variant harmonies.
Thou art the idol in the altar-niche
Faced by Love's congregated worshippers,
Thou art the holy sacrament round which
The vast cathedral is the universe.
Thou art the secret in the crystal where,
For the last light upon the mystery Man,
In his lone tower and ultimate despair,
Searched the gray-bearded Zoroastrian.
And soft and warm as in the magic sphere,
Deep-orbed as in its erubescent fire,
So in my heart thine image would appear,
Curled round with the red flames of my desire.
~ Alan Seeger,
1329:Where are all my clothes?”

I jerked awake, knocking my elbow against the headboard. Any hopes of it all being a dream were dashed by the sight of Tristan, his arms full of colorful silk dresses, storming about the room. Both my maids and a grey-clad manservant stood in a row, their heads lowered. Covers tucked up around my shoulders, I watched Tristan dash into the closet and emerge with another armload of dresses. He threw them in a pile on the floor. “Why is my closet full of dresses?”

“Are they mine?” I asked with interest.

Silver eyes fixed on me. “Well, they certainly are not mine. Unless you imagine that I dress up in ladies’ clothing and prance about the palace when the mood strikes me?”

A giggle slipped out of Élise, which she promptly smothered with a hand over her mouth.

“You consider this a laughing matter?” Tristan glowered at the girl.

“Sorry, my lord,” she said. “Your clothes are in the other closet.”

“Why?”

“Her Grace thought the larger closet more appropriate for her ladyship’s gowns, my lord.”

“She did, did she?” He stormed back into the closet, returning with another armload. “That’s the last of them.”

“You are wrinkling my dresses,” I said. “Zoé and Élise will waste their entire day pressing them.”

“And then they can hang them somewhere else,” he snapped.

“You’re creating an enormous amount of unnecessary work.”

“It is the role of the aristocracy to create work,” he said, kicking the pile of gowns. “Necessary or otherwise. Without us, who knows what would happen to productivity.”

I rolled my eyes and climbed out of bed. Catching the corner of a sheet, I set to making the bed.

“What are you doing?” Tristan shouted.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Ladies do not make their own beds! It shows initiative, which is broadly considered most unladylike!”

My temper rising, I whirled about. “Dear me,” I shouted. “I must have forgotten that my new purpose in life is to create work.” Jerking all the blankets off the bed, I threw them on the floor. The pillows followed next, and I proceeded to run around the room taking all the cushions off the chairs and tossing them about the room. The last I deliberately aimed at Tristan’s head. It froze midair. “You are making quite the mess of my room.”

“Our room!” I shouted back. ~ Danielle L Jensen,
1330:Mother, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what
the time is.
  There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is
Saturday, our holiday.
  Leave off your work, mother; sit here by the window and tell
me where the desert of Tepantar in the fairy tale is.
  The shadow of the rains has covered the day from end to end.
  The fierce lightning is scratching the sky with its nails.
  When the clouds rumble and it thunders, I love to be afraid
in my heart and cling to you.
  When the heavy rain patters for hours on the bamboo leaves,
and our windows shake and rattle at the gusts of wind, I like to
sit alone in the room, mother, with you, and hear you talk about
the desert of Tepantar in the fairy tale.
  Where is it, mother, on the shore of what sea, at the foot of
what hills, in the kingdom of what king?
  There are no hedges there to mark the fields, no footpath
across it by which the villagers reach their village in the
evening, or the woman who gathers dry sticks in the forest can
bring her load to the market. With patches of yellow grass in the
sand and only one tree where the pair of wise old birds have their
nest, lies the desert of Tepantar.
  I can imagine how, on just such a cloudy day, the young son
of the king is riding alone on a grey horse through the desert, in
search of the princess who lies imprisoned in the giant's palace
across that unknown water.
  When the haze of the rain comes down in the distant sky, and
lightning starts up like a sudden fit of pain, does he remember his
unhappy mother, abandoned by the king, sweeping the cow-stall and
wiping her eyes, while he rides through the desert of Tepantar in
the fairy tale?
  See, mother, it is almost dark before the day is over, and
thee are no travellers yonder on the village road.
  The shepherd boy has gone home early from the pasture, and men
have left their fields to sit on mats under the eaves of their
huts, watching the scowling clouds.
  Mother, I have left all my books on the shelf-do not ask me
to do my lessons now.
  When I grow up and am bid like my father, I shall learn all
that must be learnt.
  But just for today, tell me, mother, where the desert of
Tepantar in the fairy tale is.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Land Of The Exile
,
1331:Peace In A Palace
'You were weeping in the night,' said the Emperor,
'Weeping in your sleep, I am told.'
'It was nothing but a dream,' said the Empress;
But her face grew gray and old.
'You thought you saw our German God defeated?'
'Oh, no!' she said. 'I saw no lightnings fall.
I dreamed of a whirlpool of green water,
Where something had gone down. That was all.
_'All but the whimper of the sea gulls flying,
Endlessly round and round,
Waiting for the faces, the faces from the darkness,
The dreadful rising faces of the drowned._
'It was nothing but a dream,' said the Empress.
'I thought I was walking on the sea;
And the foam rushed up in a wild smother,
And a crowd of little faces looked at me.
They were drowning! They were drowning,' said the Empress,
'And they stretched their feeble arms to the sky;
But the worst was--they mistook me for their mother,
And cried as my children used to cry.
_'Nothing but a whimper of the sea-gulls flying,
Endlessly round and round,
With the cruel yellow beaks that were waiting for the faces,
The little floating faces of the drowned.'_
'It was nothing but a dream,' said the Emperor,
'So why should you weep, dear, eh?'-'Oh, I saw the red letters on a life belt
That the green sea washed my way!'-'What were they?' said the Emperor. 'What were they?'-'Some of them were hidden,' said the Empress,
'But I plainly saw the L and the U!'
'In God's name, stop!' said the Emperor.
'You told me that it was not true!
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_'Told me that you dreamed of the sea gulls flying,
Endlessly round and round,
Waiting for the faces, and the eyes in the faces,
The eyes of the children that we drowned._
'Kiss me and forget it,' said the Emperor,
'Dry your tears on the tassel of my sword.
I am going to offer peace to my people,
And abdicate, perhaps, as overlord.
I shall now take up My Cross as Count of Prussia-Which is not a heavy burden, you'll agree.
Why, before the twenty million dead are rotten
There'll be yachting days again for you and me.
Cheer up!
It would mean a rope for anyone but Me.'
_'Oh, take care!' said the Empress. 'They are flying,
Endlessly round and round.
They have finished with the faces, the dreadful little faces,
The little eyeless faces of the drowned.'_
~ Alfred Noyes,
1332:Vive Anarchy
With the lifting of the curtain,
Distance, dim, but grimly certain,
Breaks my vision of a city, populous and great,
To my senses, sorrow-sated,
Senses sad and satiated, Faintly comes the thunder peal of treasured wrong and
hate
Broken down,
Beaten down,
By awakened people and the iron arm of Fate.
Pallid forms, by famine shrunken,
Helots, harlots, ribald, drunken,
Wine and blood-wet, onward thro' the torchlit highways sweep,
Through a city disunited,
Through a city flame ignited,
To the sound of song and trumpet and the cannon's deep
Distant boom,
Through the gloom,
While the fire fiends madly leaps from tower to temple steep.
Reinforced from slum and alley,
By this wild and weird reveille,
Pours the army of the people where their banners drape,
In a city barricaded,
In a city fusilladed
By the deadly rifle and the Gatling and the grape,
Crashing down,
Smashing down
Lanes and alleys filthy, and the foul abode of rape.
Tyrants flee and cowards falter-,
For a lamp-post and a halter
Wait for every tyrant at the corner of the street,
In the hour of retribution,
In the night of revolution,
When on common ground the tyrant and the helot meet,
Endless wrongs,
Countless wrongs,
Burning in the helot's bosom - fanned to fever heat.
18
Let the tyrant beg no pityHis the palace, his the city,
His the silken raiment and the costly food and wine;
Ours the forms emaciated,
Of the women violated,
Ours the endless torture in the workshop and the mine;
Hunted down,
Hounded down
To the level of the felon and the concubine.
By our women fever-stricken,
Where the foetid odours thicken
In the homes of hunger, where the children cry for bread;
By your soulless apathetic,
Scorning of our wrongs pathetic,
By the seas of blood and tears by generations shed,
Stealing down,
Streaming downNow we ask, with smoking rifle, "vengeance on your head."
Marching on with footsteps steady,
Shotted guns and bayonets ready,
Goes the army of the people, in the days to be,
Through a city barricaded,
Through a city fusilladed,
Where the discontented masses struggle to be free,
Breaking down,
Beating down
Wrongs of ages to the song of "Long Live Anarchy."
~ Edwin James Brady,
1333:What are you doing here, Kiernan?” I asked dully.
His eyes crinkled up for a second in surprise at my tone. “I came to see you. I know it’s been too long, that I took too long, but…” Two spots of color blossomed on his cheeks, like he didn’t want to go on, but then he forged ahead. “But there were all sorts of ceremonies and things, to welcome her. Everyone was called to court. They even made sure that the Baroness of Mossfeld came,” he added with a puff of laughter and a hopeful glance at me. The holdings of Mossfeld were in the most northern reaches of Thorvaldor and the woman who held them was so eccentric that she had not been seen in court since the crowning of the king. Kiernan and I had spent many hours lying on the grass of the palace gardens, wondering exactly what she was like and what she did with herself stuck out on the boggy, sodden land that was Mossfeld.
But I didn’t smile, and I saw Kiernan swallow before he continued. “Anyway, I couldn’t leave. My father, he said that it would be an insult to--to Nalia--if I left to find you while they were still welcoming her. He finally gave me permission yesterday, and I started out this morning.”
“I see that. But why?” I asked. There was a tone in my voice I didn’t recognize, as two-edged and keen as a sword blade. It would cut Kiernan, yes, but it would also cut me where I held it.
I didn’t care.
“This,” I said, throwing my arm out to indicate the cottage and the tub of dye, “isn’t exactly what you’re used to.” He glanced to where I had gestured, blinking and off balance. I shook my head. “No. You’re all fun, all froth and silliness and jokes.” He blanched, hurt, and I almost did myself. It wasn’t true; there was more to Kiernan than that, and we both knew it. Still, I didn’t stop.
“There aren’t any pretty women to kiss here, Kiernan, or games to play or pranks to set. No plays to see, no music halls to go to. There aren’t even any libraries for you to run away from.” I laughed, and it was a high, shrill sound, one I didn’t recognize. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s not just you. Look around. There’s nothing here anyone sane would want anything to do with.”
“There’s you,” he said quietly. “I came here to find you. I would have gone anywhere,” he added more stridently. “To Two Copper district in Vivaskari or the boggy reaches of Mossfeld or the Nameless God’s frozen hell. You’re my friend. I came to find you. ~ Eilis O Neal,
1334:And if someone can lead me to him?” Malaki asks.

“Report back to me first. I don’t want to chance losing him. Oh and by the way—” Des’s eyes inadvertently land on Temper, “be discreet.”

“Why are you looking at me?” Temper’s voice is several octaves louder than everyone else’s.

The Bargainer arches an eyebrow.

“I’m as motherfucking discreet as they come,” she says.

I’m trying really, really hard not to laugh, but the struggle is real.

Malaki manages a sharp nod. “We will be discreet,” he assures Des.

The sorceress huffs. “Y’all need to get your heads checked. I am not the problem.” She turns on Malaki. “And you don’t need to go making promises for me. I never even said I was coming along.”

“And you don’t need to.” The Bargainer stands. “But if you imagined staying behind so that you could have fun with Callie, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. The future Night Queen has official business that will take her away from the palace.”

It takes me a second to realize Des is referring to me.

“Wait,” I say, “I haven’t agreed to be queen.”

“Yeah,” Temper agrees, “my girl hasn’t agreed—what?” She turns on me. “Bitch, have you lost your mind? Take that crown and wear that shit like it’s your birthright.”

Ignoring Temper, Des’s gaze falls on me, his features sharp. “I apologize, the Night King’s consort has official business that will take her away from the palace.”

I narrow my eyes at my mate. I might not have jumped onboard with this whole queen business, but I sure as hell don’t want to be known simply as someone else’s consort.

“Hoooo!” Temper whoops, falling back into her seat. “You better sleep with one eye open, Desmond. I’ve seen my girl make men pay for less.”

He’s still staring intensely at me. “That’s odd. For as long as I’ve known Callie, she’s the one who’s paid for my services. I admit, it’ll be nice to not be the prostitute in our relationship for once.”

Temper snickers, appraising Des all over again. “Fuck one eye. Sleep with both eyes open.”

I shake my head at Des as I stand, my eyes slitted. “It’s time to go.”

We give curt goodbyes to Temper and Malaki, then slip out of the library.

“You do realize how close you were to getting glamoured, don’t you?” I say as we head down the hallway.

Des’s eyes seem to be laughing at me. “You say that like I’d mind. ~ Laura Thalassa,
1335:Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful.

But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it.

Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns.

And then he desired sex.

He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together.

Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet.

But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.

He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”

And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are? ~ Rabih Alameddine,
1336:Aladdin
Aladdin poor the wizard found,
Who moved from cavern’s mouth a stone;
Then bade him go beneath the ground,
And pace through unknown realms alone,
Till from a niche he bore away
A lamp—extinguishing its ray.
The youth obedient instant hied,
When fruits luxuriant met his sight;
The white were pearls in snowy pride,
Diamonds the clear—of brilliant light;
For red the rubies dazzling blazed,
Whereof Aladdin gathered store;
Then on the lamp in rapture gazed,
And from its niche the treasure bore.
Regained his home, he seized anon
The lamp, and cried “straight bring me food;”
The Genii instantly was gone,
But soon again before him stood.
The youth his fear-struck mother bore,
As plates of silver met his view;
Of viands choice, containing store,
And cups, with wine of rosy hue.
Aladdin next by chance descried,
The Sultan’s daughter, witching fair;
Love’s high control was not denied—
He sought to gain the beauty rare.
Before the Sultan lowly bent
His mother, and the jewels spread;
The Prince, astonished, gave consent,
And all Aladdin’s terrors fled.
In gorgeous robes the youth arrayed,
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Vaulted anon his prancing steed;
And of the glittering, gay parade,
Right joyous smiling took the lead.
With loud huzzas then rang the air,
Which louder pealed, as gold amain
By slaves was cast, for mob to share,
That glittered on the vasty plain
Ne’er dreaming lamp so worn and old
More worth commanded than Peru,
Our Princess bartered wealth untold,
For the Magician’s lamp quite new:
So when this change the eunuch made
In scorn the rabble ’gan to shout;
Beholding such a silly trade,
They deemed the wizard fool and lout.
O’erwhelmed with grief, Aladdin prayed
Once more the Genii life would spare;
Beseeching he might be conveyed
Where late had stood his palace fair.
Then swift as thought, the spirit bore
The youth through airy realms above;
Who lighted safe on Afric’s shore,
And gained the chamber of his love
His foe the poison quaffed and fell—
A writhing form the wizard lay;
Aladdin knew how worked the spell,
And tore from vest the lamps, his prey.
The Princess with a panting heart,
Flew to receive affection’s kiss:
Thus met they, never more to part;
From that hour sealed their lasting blis
~ Anonymous Americas,
1337:In ordinary times the Jhelum river flows gently between high stable banks of deep soil, and until the stream shrinks in November, navigation, in spite of the absence of a proper tow-path, is easy. But in the winter the river above Sriiiagar is blocked by shoals, and the boatmen often have to dig out a channel for the heavy grain barges. In times of flood the river overtops its natural banks, and when the flood is high the water pours over the artificial embankments which have been constructed on either side of the river. Great damage is then caused to the crops of maize and linseed, and sometimes stacks of wheat, barley, and rape-seed are swept away. The loss caused by floods is always greatest below Srinagar, as the fall of the country is slight and the flood-water remains on the land rotting the crops. Above Srinagar the fall of the river and the slope of the country cause the flood-water to run down quickly and the crops often recover. In former times the villages lying along the river were obliged to keep the artificial embankments in repair, and flood-gates existed which let out the water of the mountain streams, and protected the country against the floods of the Jhelum. For many years this obligation had not been enforced, and under my supervision the embankments below Srinagar were repaired, and the normal floods of 1892 were kept in check. Above Srinagar the question of repairing embankments is complicated by the presence of the city, the safety of which must not be endangered. It is unfortunate that Srinagar should have been built on its present site. It is not only exposed to constant danger from floods, but is itself the cause of floods, because it checks the drainage of the country. The old Hindus were wise for they chose high land for their cities, and ancient Srinagar stood on ground secure from floods. Akbar, the first of the Mughal rulers, selected the slopes of the Hari-Parbat for his city Nagar, but his successors, without thought for the future, closed the Dal lake to the floods of the Jhelum, and thereby robbed the river of one of the escapes for its flood-water. Later the Pathans built their palace on the left bank of the Jhelum and prevented the river from escaping to the west, and now all the flood-water from the south of the valley must pass through the narrow waterway of Srinagar. There the channel of the river is narrowed by stone embankments, by the piles of encroaching city magnates, and the flow is further ~ Anonymous,
1338:Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was admired by all, but no one dared to ask for her hand in marriage. In despair, the king consulted the god Apollo. He told him that Psyche should be dressed in mourning and left alone on top of a mountain. Before daybreak, a serpent would come to meet and marry her. The king obeyed, and all night the princess waited for her husband to appear, deathly afraid and freezing cold. Finally, she slept. When she awoke, she found herself crowned a queen in a beautiful palace. Every night her husband came to her and they made love, but he had imposed one condition: Psyche could have all she desired, but she had to trust him completely and could never see his face.” How awful, I think, but I don’t dare interrupt him. “The young woman lived happily for a long time. She had comfort, affection, joy, and she was in love with the man who visited her every night. However, occasionally she was afraid that she was married to a hideous serpent. Early one morning, while her husband slept, she lit a lantern and saw Eros, a man of incredible beauty, lying by her side. The light woke him, and seeing that the woman he loved was unable to fulfill his one request, Eros vanished. Desperate to get her lover back, Psyche submitted to a series of tasks given to her by Aphrodite, Eros’s mother. Needless to say, her mother-in-law was incredibly jealous of Psyche’s beauty and she did everything she could to thwart the couple’s reconciliation. In one of the tasks, Psyche opened a box that makes her fall into a deep sleep.” I grow anxious to find out how the story will end. “Eros was also in love and regretted not having been more lenient toward his wife. He managed to enter the castle and wake her with the tip of his arrow. ‘You nearly died because of your curiosity,’ he told her. ‘You sought security in knowledge and destroyed our relationship.’ But in love, nothing is destroyed forever. Imbued with this conviction, they go to Zeus, the god of gods, and beg that their union never be undone. Zeus passionately pleaded the cause of the lovers with strong arguments and threats until he gained Aphrodite’s support. From that day on, Psyche (our unconscious, but logical, side) and Eros (love) were together forever.” I pour another glass of wine. I rest my head on his shoulder. “Those who cannot accept this, and who always try to find an explanation for magical and mysterious human relationships, will miss the best part of life. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1339:We turned onto the thoroughfare and walked north toward the palace, and my spirits lifted. Despite the destruction and death, this was a glorious day for Hytanica. I started to say something to this effect to Galen, but he halted, his face ashen, and the words died on my lips. His hand fell on my shoulder, and I looked at him in confusion, then followed his gaze farther up the road. My eyes fell on Steldor, who was kneeling on the unforgiving stone of the street, a few other men milling around him, and my confusion grew. Shouldn’t Galen be pleased to find his best friend?
I couldn’t see what Steldor was doing, but after a moment he stood, and the men who were with him lifted a flat litter bearing a body. My eyes took in the height and build of the man lying unnaturally still, the nearly black hair, the officer’s insignia on the black leather jerkin, the blood--and my breath caught in my throat.
I tried to run to Steldor, denials raging in my head, but Galen pulled me against his chest. I stared uncomprehendingly at the litter, the image burning itself into my brain, while tears stung my eyes. Cannan’s arms were folded over his chest, his sword tucked beneath his hands. It was really the only evidence any of us needed. As sobs shook me, Galen passed me into the arms of my suitor and advanced upon his best friend, his motion unnaturally stiff. Steldor turned his head at the sound of the approaching footsteps, his dark eyes dry but looking helpless, hopeless and alone.
Cannan had been Galen’s father the same way he had been Steldor’s, and the young men stood side by side, watching the Hytanican soldiers carry the litter toward the palace, not moving until it was out of sight. Both of them seemed lost, not knowing what to do or say, then they wrapped their arms around one another in a fierce embrace, befitting the brothers that they were. They held each other for a long time, almost as unmoving as their deceased father.
I fell back against Grayden, losing what little strength remained to me, and he hugged me, eventually leading me back to my house. Though I was only eighteen, I felt I had stumbled upon one of life’s few truisms: with every step forward came a step backward, with every gain came a loss and with every joy came tears. In the end, the best for which one could hope was to leave the world in better straits than existed on the day of your birth; to have truly lived. And oh, how Cannan, the Captain of the Guard, had lived. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1340:The Light In The Window Pane
A joy from my soul's departed,
A bliss from my heart is flown,
As weary, weary-hearted,
I wander alone - alone!
The night wind sadly sigheth
A withering, wild refrain,
And my heart within me dieth
For the light in the window pane.
The stars overhead are shining,
As brightly as e'er they shone,
As heartless - sad - repining,
I wander alone - alone!
A sudden flash comes streaming,
And flickers adown the lane,
But no more for me is gleaming
The light in the window pane.
The voices that pass are cheerful,
Men laugh as the night winds moan;
They cannot tell how fearful
'Tis to wander alone - alone!
For them, with each night's returning,
Life singeth its tenderest strain,
Where the beacon of love is burning The light in the window pane.
Oh, sorrow beyond all sorrows
To which human life is prone:
Without thee, through all the morrows,
To wander alone - alone!
Oh, dark, deserted dwelling!
Where Hope like a lamb was slain,
No voice from thy lone walls welling,
No light in thy window pane.
But memory, sainted angel!
Rolls back the sepulchral stone,
And sings like a sweet evangel:
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'No - never, never alone!
True grief has its royal palace,
Each loss is a greater gain;
And Sorrow ne'er filled a chalice
That Joy did not wait to drain!
--'Man must be perfected
By suffering,' he said;
'And Death is but the stepping-stone, whereby
We mount towards the gate
Of heaven, soon or late.
Death is the penalty of life; we die,
Because we live; and life
Is but a constant strife
With the immortal Impulse that within
Our bodies seeks control The time-abiding Soul,
That wrestles with us - yet we fain would win.
And what? the victory
Would make us slaves; and we,
Who in our blindness struggle for the prize
Of this illusive state
Called Life, do but frustrate
The higher law - refusing to be wise.'
Rightly he knew, indeed,
Earth's brightest paths but lead
To the true wisdom of that perfect state,
Where Knowledge, heaven-born,
And Love's eternal morn,
Awaiteth those who would be truly great.
With what abiding trust
He rose from out the dust,
As Death's swift chariot passed him by the way;
No visionary dream
Was his - no trifling theme -
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The Soul's great Mystery before him lay:
~ Charles Sangster,
1341:Amy was mentally packing for a midnight flight to the mail coach to Dover (plan C), when Jane’s gentle voice cut through the listing of ovine pedigrees.
"Such a pity about the tapestries," was all she said. Her voice was pitched low but somehow it carried over both the shouting men.
Amy glanced sharply at Jane, and was rewarded by a swift kick to the ankle. Had that been a ‘say something now!’ kick, or a ‘be quiet and sit still’ kick? Amy kicked back in inquiry. Jane put her foot down hard over Amy’s. Amy decided that could be interpreted as either ‘be quiet and sit still’ or ‘please stop kicking me now!'
Aunt Prudence had snapped out of her reverie with what was nearly an audible click. "Tapestries?" she inquired eagerly.
"Why, yes, Mama," Jane replied demurely. "I had hoped that while Amy and I were in France we might be granted access to the tapestries at the Tuilleries."
Jane’s quiet words sent the table into a state of electric expectancy. Forks hovered over plates in mid-air; wineglasses tilted halfway to open mouths; little Ned paused in the act of slipping a pea down the back of Agnes’s dress. Even Miss Gwen stopped glaring long enough to eye Jane with what looked more like speculation than rancour.
"Not the Gobelins series of Daphne and Apollo!" cried Aunt Prudence.
"But, of course, Aunt Prudence," Amy plunged in. Amy just barely restrained herself from turning and flinging her arms around her cousin. Aunt Prudence had spent long hours lamenting that she had never taken the time before the war to copy the pattern of the tapestries that hung in the Tuilleries Palace. "Jane and I had hoped to sketch them for you, hadn’t we, Jane?"
"We had," Jane affirmed, her graceful neck dipping in assent. "Yet if Papa feels that France remains unsafe, we shall bow to his greater wisdom."
At the other end of the table, Aunt Prudence was wavering. Literally. Torn between her trust in her husband and her burning desire for needlepoint patterns, she swayed a bit in her chair, the feather in her small silk turban quivering with her agitation.
"It surely can’t be as unsafe as that, can it, Bertrand?" She leant across the table to peer at her husband through eyes gone nearsighted from long hours over her embroidery frame.
"After all, if dear Edouard is willing to take responsibility for the girls…"
"Edouard will take very good care of us, I’m sure, Aunt Prudence! If you’ll just read his letter, you’ll see – ouch!" Jane had kicked her again. ~ Lauren Willig,
1342:Many, Lorenzo, have held and still hold the opinion, that there is nothing which has less in common with another, and that is so dissimilar, as civilian life is from the military. Whence it is often observed, if anyone designs to avail himself of an enlistment in the army, that he soon changes, not only his clothes, but also his customs, his habits, his voice, and in the presence of any civilian custom, he goes to pieces; for I do not believe that any man can dress in civilian clothes who wants to be quick and ready for any violence; nor can that man have civilian customs and habits, who judges those customs to be effeminate and those habits not conducive to his actions; nor does it seem right to him to maintain his ordinary appearance and voice who, with his beard and cursing, wants to make other men afraid: which makes such an opinion in these times to be very true. But if they should consider the ancient institutions, they would not find matter more united, more in conformity, and which, of necessity, should be like to each other as much as these (civilian and military); for in all the arts that are established in a society for the sake of the common good of men, all those institutions created to (make people) live in fear of the laws and of God would be in vain, if their defense had not been provided for and which, if well arranged, will maintain not only these, but also those that are not well established. And so (on the contrary), good institutions without the help of the military are not much differently disordered than the habitation of a superb and regal palace, which, even though adorned with jewels and gold, if it is not roofed over will not have anything to protect it from the rain. And, if in any other institutions of a City and of a Republic every diligence is employed in keeping men loyal, peaceful, and full of the fear of God, it is doubled in the military; for in what man ought the country look for greater loyalty than in that man who has to promise to die for her? In whom ought there to be a greater love of peace, than in him who can only be injured by war? In whom ought there to be a greater fear of God than in him who, undergoing infinite dangers every day, has more need for His aid? If these necessities in forming the life of the soldier are well considered, they are found to be praised by those who gave the laws to the Commanders and by those who were put in charge of military training, and followed and imitated with all diligence by others. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
1343:The first mile was torture. I passed beneath the massive stone arch at the entrance to the school, pulled off the road and threw up. I felt better and ran down the long palm-lined drive to the Old Quad. Lost somewhere in the thicket to my left was the mausoleum containing the remains of the family by whom the university had been founded. Directly ahead of me loomed a cluster of stone buildings, the Old Quad. I stumbled up the steps and beneath an archway into a dusty courtyard which, with its clumps of spindly bushes and cacti, resembled the garden of a desert monastery. All around me the turrets and dingy stone walls radiated an ominous silence, as if behind each window there stood a soldier with a musket waiting to repel any invader. I looked up at the glittering facade of the chapel across which there was a mosaic depicting a blond Jesus and four angels representing Hope, Faith, Charity, and, for architectural rather than scriptural symmetry, Love. In its gloomy magnificence, the Old Quad never failed to remind me of the presidential palace of a banana republic. Passing out of the quad I cut in front of the engineering school and headed for a back road that led up to the foothills. There was a radar installation at the summit of one of the hills called by the students the Dish. It sat among herds of cattle and the ruins of stables. It, too, was a ruin, shut down for many years, but when the wind whistled through it, the radar produced a strange trilling that could well be music from another planet. The radar was silent as I slowed to a stop at the top of the Dish and caught my breath from the upward climb. I was soaked with sweat, and my headache was gone, replaced by giddy disorientation. It was a clear, hot morning. Looking north and west I saw the white buildings, bridges and spires of the city of San Francisco beneath a crayoned blue sky. The city from this aspect appeared guileless and serene. Yet, when I walked in its streets what I noticed most was how the light seldom fell directly, but from angles, darkening the corners of things. You would look up at the eaves of a house expecting to see a gargoyle rather than the intricate but innocent woodwork. The city had this shadowy presence as if it was a living thing with secrets and memories. Its temperament was too much like my own for me to feel safe or comfortable there. I looked briefly to the south where San Jose sprawled beneath a polluted sky, ugly and raw but without secrets or deceit. Then I stretched and began the slow descent back into town. ~ Michael Nava,
1344:On A Picture Of The Finding Of Moses By Pharoah's
Daughter
This picture does the story express
Of Moses in the bulrushes.
How livelily the painter's hand
By colours makes us understand!
Moses that little infant is.
This figure is his sister. This
Fine stately lady is no less
A personage than a princess,
Daughter of Pharaoh, Egypt's king;
Whom Providence did hither bring
This little Hebrew child to save.
See how near the perilous wave
He lies exposëd in the ark,
His rushy cradle, his frail bark!
Pharaoh, king of Egypt land,
In his greatness gave command
To his slaves, they should destroy
Every new-born Hebrew boy.
This Moses was an Hebrew's son.
When he was born, his birth to none
His mother told, to none revealed,
But kept her goodly child concealed.
Three months she hid him; then she wrought
With bulrushes this ark, and brought
Him in it to this river's side,
Carefully looking far and wide
To see that no Egyptian eye
Her ark-hid treasure should espy.
Among the river-flags she lays
The child. Near him his sister stays.
We may imagine her affright,
When the king's daughter is in sight.
Soon the princess will perceive
The ark among the flags, and give
Command to her attendant maid
85
That its contents shall be displayed.
Within the ark the child is found,
And now he utters mournful sound.
Behold he weeps, as if he were
Afraid of cruel Egypt's heir!
She speaks, she says, 'This little one
I will protect, though he the son
Be of an Hebrew.' Every word
She speaks is by the sister heard.And now observe, this is the part
The painter chose to show his art.
Look at the sister's eager eye,
As here she seems advancing nigh.
Lowly she bends, says, 'Shall I go
And call a nurse to thee? I know
A Hebrew woman liveth near,
Great lady, shall I bring her here?'
See! Pharaoh's daughter answers, 'Go.'No more the painter's art can show.
He cannot make his figures move.On the light wings of swiftest love
The girl will fly to bring the mother
To be the nurse, she'll bring no other.
To her will Pharaoh's daughter say,
'Take this child from me away:
For wages nurse him. To my home
At proper age this child may come.
When to our palace he is brought,
Wise masters shall for him be sought
To train him up, befitting one
I would protect as my own son.
And Moses be a name unto him,
Because I from the waters drew him.'
~ Charles Lamb,
1345:A Sunset

I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! A hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronz¨¨d glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflam¨¨d spaume.

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede. ~ Victor Hugo,
1346:"Though to my feathers in the wet,
I have stood here from break of day.
I have not found a thing to eat,
For only rubbish comes my way.
Am I to live on lebeen-lone?'
Muttered the old crane of Gort.
"For all my pains on lebeen-lone?'
King Guaire walked amid his court
The palace-yard and river-side
And there to three old beggars said,
"You that have wandered far and wide
Can ravel out what's in my head.
Do men who least desire get most,
Or get the most who most desire?'
A beggar said, "They get the most
Whom man or devil cannot tire,
And what could make their muscles taut
Unless desire had made them so?'
But Guaire laughed with secret thought,
"If that be true as it seems true,
One of you three is a rich man,
For he shall have a thousand pounds
Who is first asleep, if but he can
Sleep before the third noon sounds."
And thereon, merry as a bird
With his old thoughts, King Guaire went
From river-side and palace-yard
And left them to their argument.
"And if I win,' one beggar said,
'Though I am old I shall persuade
A pretty girl to share my bed';
The second: "I shall learn a trade';
The third: "I'll hurry' to the course
Among the other gentlemen,
And lay it all upon a horse';
The second: "I have thought again:
A farmer has more dignity.'
One to another sighed and cried:
The exorbitant dreams of beggary.
That idleness had borne to pride,
Sang through their teeth from noon to noon;
And when the second twilight brought
The frenzy of the beggars' moon
None closed his blood-shot eyes but sought
To keep his fellows from their sleep;
All shouted till their anger grew
And they were whirling in a heap.
They mauled and bit the whole night through;
They mauled and bit till the day shone;
They mauled and bit through all that day
And till another night had gone,
Or if they made a moment's stay
They sat upon their heels to rail,,
And when old Guaire came and stood
Before the three to end this tale,
They were commingling lice and blood
"Time's up,' he cried, and all the three
With blood-shot eyes upon him stared.
"Time's up,' he cried, and all the three
Fell down upon the dust and snored.

`Maybe I shall be lucky yet,
Now they are silent,' said the crane.
`Though to my feathers in the wet
I've stood as I were made of stone
And seen the rubbish run about,
It's certain there are trout somewhere
And maybe I shall take a trout
but I do not seem to care.'

~ William Butler Yeats, The Three Beggars
,
1347:For five hundred years my sisterhood has passed down a sacred vow,” says Caspida coldly, “to destroy the one who destroyed our queen. You know this, and you speak these words only to deceive me as you deceived her. You would have me believe that you are capable of love.”
“Believe me when I say I wish that I were not!” Angrily I round on her. “I do not tell you this for myself! Aladdin will die any moment, and the only way to save him is if you make a wish! Please, Caspida—they will kill him at dawn!” I point at the horizon, where the sun is minutes away from rising. “Let me save him, I beg you!”
I drop to my knees before her, doing what I never thought I could: grovel before a human. My pride unravels into smoke, carried away on the wind. Always I have thought myself above these mortals—I, immortal, powerful, able to shift from this form to that. But I let all of that go now, and I beg as I have never begged before. “Do what you like with me after that, but just let me save him!” I dig my fingers into the earth, my eyes damp with tears. My voice falls to a cracked whisper. “Please.”
“Why?”
I raise my face, finding her gaze unyielding. “Because it was my idea. Him wishing to be made a prince. Courting you. Lying all these weeks. I manipulated him and used him, and now they will kill him for it.”
“Why would you lead him into the palace knowing that eventually the truth would come out and he would have to pay the price?”
“Because . . .” I grind my teeth together, wishing the earth would swallow me up. “Because I was trying to win my freedom. Your people had captured the prince of the jinn—Nardukha’s own son. The Shaitan sent me to free him, and in turn, he would free me from my lamp. If I failed, he planned to sink your city into the sea. I had to get into the palace. Aladdin was my only way in.”
“So you don’t deny that you’re a monster. You used him for your own ends.”
I drop my head. “I know what I am. I know nothing can excuse what I did to Roshana, or to Aladdin, or to you. I’ve wronged so many, and there is so much I wish I could take back. I can’t save Roshana. But please—I beg of you—let me save him.”
Caspida lowers to her knees and studies me. I meet her gaze, humbled utterly.
“You want me to believe that you love him,” she whispers.
“Yes.” The word is but a breath, a stir of air in my treacherous lungs. “We’re running out of time. I cannot reverse death or the hours. Time is the strongest magic, and no jinni—not even the Shaitan—can rewrite the past. Once Aladdin is gone, he is gone. Let me save him, and I can help you win your city. ~ Jessica Khoury,
1348:All went smoothly for the first fifteen minutes--my mother was, after all, very adept at making people comfortable. She chatted, though not excessively, primarily with me. As I had predicted, Narian was silent and observant, letting me carry the conversation while he tried to get a feel for the woman across from us, not quite trusting that she was on our side. He was never rude, and never short with her; he simply hid himself behind good etiquette.
During a natural pause in conversation, my mother perused Narian and me, and her mood became contemplative.
“When was it that you fell in love?” she asked. “Was it right under our noses?”
“More or less,” I said with a laugh, glancing at Narian. “We became friends when he first came to Hytanica. All those trips Miranna and I made to Baron Koranis’s estate were really so I could see him.”
Mother smiled and Narian glanced at me as if this were news to him. Then she picked up the thread of the conversation.
“I remember falling in love,” she mused, and I wondered how far she would venture into her story, knowing it was not a wholly happy one. “I was fifteen, going through the very difficult experience of losing my family in a fire. I was brought to live in the palace, for I’d been betrothed for years to Andrius, Alera’s uncle, who later died in the war before we could be married.”
I realized she was not talking to me, and that, though he was still aloof, she had captured Narian’s interest, for his deep blue eyes were resting attentively upon her.
“At the time, I was so lost and alone and frightened. And then Andrius and I grew close. With him, my life made sense again. I had something to hold on to, something to steady me. What was the worst time of my life became the best.”
There was a pause, and she innocently met Narian’s gaze. But her story was not innocent at all. If I could recognize the parallel she was drawing to his life in the aftermath of learning of his Hytanican heritage, then he surely could, as well. He didn’t say a word, however, and she dropped the veiled attempt to connect with him before it became awkward, turning to me instead.
“I’ve told you before, Alera--Andrius lives on in you. I see him in you every day.”
I smiled, tipping my head in acceptance of the compliment.
“And in you--” she said, once more turning to Narian, tapping a finger against her lips in thought “--I see Cannan.”
She was lightly cajoling him, exactly as a parent would do. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in his mind, but he was no longer eager to leave, his eyes never once flicking toward me or the door. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1349:But before I go, I want to tell you a little story. “A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived. “Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention. “The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours. “‘Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something,’ said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. ‘As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill.’ “The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was. “‘Well,’ asked the wise man, ‘did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?’ “The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him. “‘Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,’ said the wise man. ‘You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.’ “Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen. “‘But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?’ asked the wise man. “Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone. “‘Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,’ said the wisest of wise men. ‘The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1350:CHORUS OF SPIRITS:

FIRST SPIRIT:
Palace-roof of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then
Of the Present and the Past,
Of the eternal Where and When,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,
Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earths company;
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;
And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode
Of that Power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away:
Thou remainest suchalway!

SECOND SPIRIT:
Thou art but the minds first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;
But the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam
From the shadow of a dream!

THIRD SPIRIT:
Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!
What is Heaven? and what are ye
Who its brief expanse inherit?
What are suns and spheres which flee
With the instinct of that Spirit
Of which ye are but a part?
Drops which Natures mighty heart
Drives through thinnest veins! Depart!

What is Heaven? a globe of dew,
Filling in the morning new
Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken
On an unimagined world:
Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless, are furled
In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF THE ODE TO HEAVEN.
[Published by Mr. C.D. Locock, Examination, etc., 1903.]

The [living frame which sustains my soul]
Is [sinking beneath the fierce control]
Down through the lampless deep of song
I am drawn and driven along

When a Nation screams aloud
Like an eagle from the cloud
When a...

...

When the night...

...

Watch the look askance and old
See neglect, and falsehood fold...
Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Dated 'Florence, December, 1819' in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry). A transcript exists amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode To Heaven
,
1351:Whatever comes,” she said, “cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off.”
This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time. It had consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not understand and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it seemed as if the child were mentally living a life which held her above the rest of the world. It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and acid things said to her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all. Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh, domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with something like a proud smile in them. At such times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself:
“You don’t know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind, vulgar old thing, and don’t know any better.”
This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing for her. While the thought held possession of her, she could not be made rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her.
“A princess must be polite,” she said to herself.
And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her.
“She’s got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham Palace, that young one,” said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes. “I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never forgets her manners. ‘If you please, cook’; ‘Will you be so kind, cook?’ ‘I beg your pardon, cook’; ‘May I trouble you, cook?’ She drops ’em about the kitchen as if they was nothing. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett,
1352:A Masque Of Venice
(A Dream.)
Not a stain,
In the sun-brimmed sapphire cup that is the skyNot a ripple on the black translucent lane
Of the palace-walled lagoon.
Not a cry
As the gondoliers with velvet oar glide by,
Through the golden afternoon.
From this height
Where the carved, age-yellowed balcony o'erjuts
Yonder liquid, marble pavement, see the light
Shimmer soft beneath the bridge,
That abuts
On a labyrinth of water-ways and shuts
Half their sky off with its ridge.
We shall mark
All the pageant from this ivory porch of ours,
Masques and jesters, mimes and minstrels, while we hark
To their music as they fare.
Scent their flowers
Flung from boat to boat in rainbow radiant showers
Through the laughter-ringing air.
See! they come,
Like a flock of serpent-throated black-plumed swans,
With the mandoline, viol, and the drum,
Gems afire on arms ungloved,
Fluttering fans,
Floating mantles like a great moth's streaky vans
Such as Veronese loved.
But behold
In their midst a white unruffled swan appear.
One strange barge that snowy tapestries enfold,
White its tasseled, silver prow.
Who is here?
Prince of Love in masquerade or Prince of Fear,
Clad in glittering silken snow?
Cheek and chin
Where the mask's edge stops are of the hoar-frosts hue,
And no eyebeams seem to sparkle from within
Where the hollow rings have place.
Yon gay crew
Seem to fly him, he seems ever to pursue.
'T is our sport to watch the race.
At his side
Stands the goldenest of beauties; from her glance,
From her forehead, shines the splendor of a bride,
And her feet seem shod with wings,
To entrance,
For she leaps into a wild and rhythmic dance,
Like Salome at the King's.
'T is his aim
Just to hold, to clasp her once against his breast,
Hers to flee him, to elude him in the game.
Ah, she fears him overmuch!
Is it jest,Is it earnest? a strange riddle lurks half-guessed
In her horror of his touch.
For each time
That his snow-white fingers reach her, fades some ray
From the glory of her beauty in its prime;
And the knowledge grows upon us that the dance
Is no play
'Twixt the pale, mysterious lover and the fayBut the whirl of fate and chance.
Where the tide
Of the broad lagoon sinks plumb into the sea,
There the mystic gondolier hath won his bride.
Hark, one helpless, stifled scream!
Must it be?
Mimes and minstrels, flowers and music, where are ye?
Was all Venice such a dream?
~ Emma Lazarus,
1353:Egypt, Tobago
There is a shattered palm
on this fierce shore,
its plumes the rusting helmet of a dead warrior.
Numb Antony, in the torpor
stretching her inert
sex near him like a sleeping cat,
knows his heart is the real desert.
Over the dunes
of her heaving,
to his heart's drumming
fades the mirage of the legions,
across love-tousled sheets,
the triremes fading.
Ar the carved door of her temple
a fly wrings its message.
He brushes a damp hair
away from an ear
as perfect as a sleeping child's.
He stares, inert, the fallen column.
He lies like a copper palm
tree at three in the afternoon
by a hot sea
and a river, in Egypt, Tobago
Her salt marsh dries in the heat
where he foundered
without armor.
He exchanged an empire for her beads of sweat,
the uproar of arenas,
the changing surf
of senators, for
this silent ceiling over silent sand -
16
this grizzled bear, whose fur,
moulting, is silvered for this quick fox with her
sweet stench. By sleep dismembered,
his head
is in Egypt, his feet
in Rome, his groin a desert
trench with its dead soldier.
He drifts a finger
through her stiff hair
crisp as a mare's fountaining tail.
Shadows creep up the palace tile.
He is too tired to move;
a groan would waken
trumpets, one more gesture
war. His glare,
a shield
reflecting fires,
a brass brow that cannot frown
at carnage, sweats the sun's force.
It is not the turmoil
of autumnal lust,
its treacheries, that drove
him, fired and grimed with dust,
this far, not even love,
but a great rage without
clamor, that grew great
because its depth is quiet;
it hears the river
of her young brown blood,
it feels the whole sky quiver
with her blue eyelid.
She sleeps with the soft engine of a child,
17
that sleep which scythes
the stalks of lances, fells the
harvest of legions
with nothing for its knives,
that makes Caesars,
sputtering at flies,
slapping their foreheads
with the laurel's imprint,
drunkards, comedians.
All-humbling sleep, whose peace
is sweet as death,
whose silence has
all the sea's weight and volubility,
who swings this globe by a hair's trembling breath.
Shattered and wild and
palm-crowned Antony,
rusting in Egypt,
ready to lose the world,
to Actium and sand,
everything else
is vanity, but this tenderness
for a woman not his mistress
but his sleeping child.
The sky is cloudless. The afternoon is mild.
~ Derek Walcott,
1354:I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasies (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:— I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago); And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute’s well-timed law; Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door; A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh—but smile no more. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
1355:The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes - of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis, or terrorists - who vowed to find and kill an author called "Salman Rushdie" . The quest for "Rushdie" formed the main action of the film and "his" death was the film's version of happy ending.

"Rushdie" himself was depicted as a drunk, constantly swigging from a bottle, and a sadist. He lived in what looked very like a palace on what looked very like an island in the Philippines (clearly all novelists had second homes of this kind), being protected by what looked very like the Israeli Army (this presumably being a service offered by Israel to all novelists), and he was plotting the overthrow of Pakistan by the fiendish means of opening chains of discotheques and gambling dens across that pure and virtuous land, a perfidious notion for which, as the British Muslim "leader" Iqbal Sacranie might have said, death was too light a punishment. "Rushdie" was dressed exclusively in a series of hideously coloured safari suits - vermilion safari suits, aubergine safari suits, cerise safari suits - and the camera, whenever it fell upon the figure of this vile personage, invariably started at his feet and then panned [sic] with slow menace up to his face. So the safari suits got a lot of screen time, and when he saw a videotape of the film the fashion insult wounded him deeply. It was, however, oddly satisfying to read that one result of the film's popularity in Pakistan was that the actor playing "Rushdie" became so hated by the film-going public that he had to go into hiding.

At a certain point in the film one of the international gorillay was captured by the Israeli Army and tied to a tree in the garden of the palace in the Philippines so that "Rushdie" could have his evil way with him. Once "Rushdie" had finished drinking form his bottle and lashing the poor terrorist with a whip, once he had slaked his filthy lust for violence upon the young man's body, he handed the innocent would-be murderer over to the Israeli soldiers and uttered the only genuinely funny line in the film. "Take him away," he cried, "and read to him from The Satanic Verses all night!" Well, of course, the poor fellow cracked completely. Not that, anything but that, he blubbered as the Israelis led him away.

At the end of the film "Rushdie" was indeed killed - not by the international gorillay, but by the Word itself, by thunderbolts unleashed by three large Qurans hanging in the sky over his head, which reduced the monster to ash. Personally fried by the Book of the Almighty: there was dignity in that. ~ Salman Rushdie,
1356:Esther Agrees to Help the Jews ESTHER 4 When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes  o and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. 2He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. 3And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews,  p with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them  q lay in sackcloth and ashes. 4When Esther’s young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed. She sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was. 6Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, 7and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him,  r and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. 8Mordecai also gave him  s a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people. 9And Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. 10Then Esther spoke to Hathach and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, 11“All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside  t the inner court without being called,  u there is but one law—to be put to death, except the one  v to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.” 12And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 13Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 15Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16“Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for  w three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law,  x and if I perish, I perish.” 17Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him. ~ Anonymous,
1357:I want to tell you a little story. “A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived. “Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention. “The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours. “‘Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something,’ said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. ‘As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill.’ “The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was. “‘Well,’ asked the wise man, ‘did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?’ “The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him. “‘Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,’ said the wise man. ‘You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.’ “Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen. “‘But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?’ asked the wise man. “Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone. “‘Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,’ said the wisest of wise men. ‘The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.’” The shepherd said nothing. He had understood the story the old king had told him. A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep. The ~ Paulo Coelho,
1358:It is a curious mystery [...] that the exact same notions of the Seven Sages as the bringers of civilization in the remotest antiquity, and of the preservation and repromulgation of “writings on stones from before the flood,” turn up in the supposedly completely distinct and unrelated culture of Ancient Egypt.
Of the greatest interest, at any rate, is the [Temple of Horus]’s idea of itself expressed in the acres of enigmatic inscriptions that cover its walls. These inscriptions, the so-called Edfu Building Texts, take us back to a very remote period called the “Early Primeval Age of the Gods”--and these gods, it transpired, were not originally Egyptian, but lived on a sacred island, the “Homeland of the Primeval Ones,” in the midst of a great ocean. Then, at some unspecified time in the past, a terrible disaster--a true cataclysm of flood and fire [...]-- overtook this island, where “the earliest mansions of the gods” had been founded, destroying it utterly, inundating all its holy places and killing most of its divine inhabitants. Some survived, however, and we are told that this remnant set sail in their ships (for the texts leave us in no doubt that these gods of the early primeval age were navigators) to “wander” the world.
[...] Of particular interest is a passage at Edfu in which we read of a circular, water-filled “channel” surrounding the original sacred domain that lay at the heart of the island of the Primeval Ones--a ring of water that was intended to fortify and protect that domain. In this there is, of course, a direct parallel to Atlantis, where the sacred domain on which stood the temple and palace of the god, whom Plato names as “Poseidon,” was likewise surrounded by a ring of water, itself placed in the midst of further such concentric rings separated by rings of land, again with the purpose of fortification and protection.
Intriguingly, Plato also hints at the immediate cause of the earthquakes and floods that destroyed Atlantis. In the Timaeus, as a prelude to his account of the lost civilization and its demise, he reports that the Egyptian priests from whom Solon received the story began by speaking of a celestial cataclysm: “There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them being by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means. Your own [i.e. the Greeks’] story of how Phaeton, child of the sun, harnessed his father’s chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father’s course and so burned up things on earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is at long intervals a variation in the course of the heavenly bodies and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on earth. ~ Graham Hancock,
1359:Godwin on Fenelon and his Valet *


Following is an excerpt from William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Book II, Chapter II: “Of Justice”:


In a loose and general view I and my neighbour are both of us men; and of consequence entitled to equal attention. But, in reality, it is probable that one of us is a being of more worth and importance than the other. A man is of more worth than a beast; because, being possessed of higher faculties, he is capable of a more refined and genuine happiness. In the same manner the illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his valet, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred.

But there is another ground of preference, beside the private consideration of one of them being further removed from the state of a mere animal. We are not connected with one or two percipient beings, but with a society, a nation, and in some sense with the whole family of mankind. Of consequence that life ought to be preferred which will be most conducive to the general good. In saving the life of Fenelon, suppose at the moment he conceived the project of his immortal Telemachus, should have been promoting the benefit of thousands, who have been cured by the perusal of that work of some error, vice and consequent unhappiness. Nay, my benefit would extend further than this; for every individual, thus cured, has become a better member of society, and has contributed in his turn to the happiness, information, and improvement of others.

Suppose I had been myself the valet; I ought to have chosen to die, rather than Fenelon should have died. The life of Fenelon was really preferable to that of the valet. But understanding is the faculty that perceives the truth of this and similar propositions; and justice is the principle that regulates my conduct accordingly. It would have been just in the valet to have preferred the archbishop to himself. To have done otherwise would have been a breach of justice.

Suppose the valet had been my brother, my father, or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the valet; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expense of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun “my,” that should justify us in overturning the decisions of impartial truth? My brother or my father may be a fool or a profligate, malicious, lying or dishonest. If they be, of what consequence is it that they are mine? ~ William Godwin,
1360:Hear I the creaking gate unclose?
The gleaming latch uplifted?
No'twas the wind that, whirring, rose,
Amidst the poplars drifted!
Adorn thyself, thou green leaf-bowering roof,
Destined the bright one's presence to receive,
For her, a shadowy palace-hall aloof
With holy night, thy boughs familiar weave.
And ye sweet flatteries of the delicate air,
Awake and sport her rosy cheek around,
When their light weight the tender feet shall bear,
When beauty comes to passion's trysting-ground.

Hush! what amidst the copses crept
So swiftly by me now?
No-'twas the startled bird that swept
The light leaves of the bough!
Day, quench thy torch! come, ghostlike, from on high,
With thy loved silence, come, thou haunting Eve,
Broaden below thy web of purple dye,
Which lulled boughs mysterious round us weave.
For love's delight, enduring listeners none,
The froward witness of the light will flee;
Hesper alone, the rosy silent one,
Down-glancing may our sweet familiar be!

What murmur in the distance spoke,
And like a whisper died?
No'twas the swan that gently broke
In rings the silver tide!
Soft to my ear there comes a music-flow;
In gleesome murmur glides the waterfall;
To zephyr's kiss the flowers are bending low;
Through life goes joy, exchanging joy with all.
Tempt to the touch the grapesthe blushing fruit, [15]
Voluptuous swelling from the leaves that bide;
And, drinking fever from my cheek, the mute
Air sleeps all liquid in the odor-tide!

Hark! through the alley hear I now
A footfall? Comes the maiden?
No,'twas the fruit slid from the bough,
With its own richness laden!

Day's lustrous eyes grow heavy in sweet death,
And pale and paler wane his jocund hues,
The flowers too gentle for his glowing breath,
Ope their frank beauty to the twilight dews.
The bright face of the moon is still and lone,
Melts in vast masses the world silently;
Slides from each charm the slowly-loosening zone;
And round all beauty, veilless, roves the eye.

What yonder seems to glimmer?
Her white robe's glancing hues?
No,'twas the column's shimmer
Athwart the darksome yews!

O, longing heart, no more delight-upbuoyed
Let the sweet airy image thee befool!
The arms that would embrace her clasp the void
This feverish breast no phantom-bliss can cool,
O, waft her here, the true, the living one!
Let but my hand her hand, the tender, feel
The very shadow of her robe alone!
So into life the idle dream shall steal!

As glide from heaven, when least we ween,
The rosy hours of bliss,
All gently came the maid, unseen:
He waked beneath her kiss!
~ Friedrich Schiller, The Assignation
,
1361:A Song Of Painting: To General Cao Ba
You, General Cao Ba,
descendant of Cao Cao,
now live as a peasant,
a cold-door commoner.
Your ancestor's heroic age
carved out kingdoms of old,
and its cultural brilliance, its style,
still survive in your work.
To learn calligraphy
you first studied Lady Wei;
your only regret was not surpassing
the great Wang Xizhi .
You said, 'Caught up in my painting,
I give no thought to old age;
riches and rank are to me
no more than clouds floating by.'
Often summoned to court
during the Kaiyuan period,
frequently you ascended the dais
to receive the Emperor's praise.
In the Gallery of Famous Men
the noble faces were fading;
going to work with your brush
you brought back their freshness.
On the ministers' heads you repainted
their hats of office,
at the waists of the fierce generals,
their great feathered arrows.
The Duke of Bao and Duke of E-so lifelike their hair bristles-stand grim, bold and heroic,
as if in the midst of battle.
The late Emperor's imperial horse,
Jade-Flower Dapple,
had been painted by artist after artist,
but none could capture his essence.
One day he was led into the courtyard
12
below the red steps of the palace;
standing there by the palace gates
he embodied the wind of the plains.
At the Emperor's command
you stretched white silk to paint on;
calling up all of your skill,
you formed the image in your mind.
In a flash, from the nine-fold heavens,
the true 'dragon' emerged!
At one stroke, the horse paintings of ages
were obliterated.
When the painting was taken up
and hung above the throne,
the horse on the wall and that in the yard
gazed proudly into each other's face.
Smiling, the Emperor hastened his aide
to bring a handsome reward;
stable-boys and grooms stood long-faced,
jealous of His Majesty's favor.
Your pupil Han Gan was long since
shown all your techniques;
he too can paint horses,
horses in every stance imaginable,
but Gan paints only the outer flesh,
not the strength that lies beneath;
his brush would dampen the spirit
of legendary Hualiu!
The General is a superb painter
because he captures the essence.
In the past you often rendered
likenesses of distinguished men;
in the present troubled times,
uprooted and homeless,
you are reduced to painting portraits
of humble passersby.
So desperate are your straits, you put up
with the snubs of commoners-never in the world
has anyone been as poor as you!
13
But look at the lives of famous men
throughout history-they too were forced to deal
with endless frustrations
~ Du Fu,
1362:Call Me Away
Call me away; there's nothing here,
That wins my soul to stay;
Then let me leave this prospect drear,
And hasten far away.
To our beloved land I'll flee,
Our land of thought and soul,
Where I have roved so oft with thee,
Beyond the world's control.
I'll sit and watch those ancient trees,
Those Scotch firs dark and high;
I'll listen to the eerie breeze,
Among their branches sigh.
The glorious moon shines far above;
How soft her radiance falls,
On snowy heights, and rock, and grove;
And yonder palace walls!
Who stands beneath yon fir trees high?
A youth both slight and fair,
Whose bright and restless azure eye
Proclaims him known to care,
Though fair that brow, it is not smooth;
Though small those features, yet in sooth
Stern passion has been there.
Now on the peaceful moon are fixed
Those eyes so glistening bright,
But trembling teardrops hang betwixt,
And dim the blessed light.
Though late the hour, and keen the blast,
That whistles round him now,
Those raven locks are backward cast,
To cool his burning brow.
His hands above his heaving breast
Are clasped in agony --
39
'O Father! Father! let me rest!
And call my soul to thee!
I know 'tis weakness thus to pray;
But all this cankering care -This doubt tormenting night and day
Is more than I can bear!
With none to comfort, none to guide
And none to strengthen me.
Since thou my only friend hast died -I've pined to follow thee!
Since thou hast died! And did he live
What comfort could his counsel give -To one forlorn like me?
Would he my Idol's form adore -Her soul, her glance, her tone?
And say, "Forget for ever more
Her kindred and thine own;
Let dreams of her thy peace destroy,
Leave every other hope and joy
And live for her alone"?'
He starts, he smiles, and dries the tears,
Still glistening on his cheek,
The lady of his soul appears,
And hark! I hear her speak -'Aye, dry thy tears; thou wilt not weep -While I am by thy side -Our foes all day their watch may keep
But cannot thus divide
Such hearts as ours; and we tonight
Together in the clear moon's light
Their malice will deride.
No fear our present bliss shall blast
And sorrow we'll defy.
Do thou forget the dreary past,
The dreadful future I.'
40
Forget it? Yes, while thou art by
I think of nought but thee,
'Tis only when thou art not nigh
Remembrance tortures me.
But such a lofty soul to find,
And such a heart as thine,
In such a glorious form enshrined
And still to call thee mine -Would be for earth too great a bliss,
Without a taint of woe like this,
Then why should I repine?
~ Anne Brontë,
1363:Her tent was far enough away that she could call for help without necessarily being heard.
Of course, she might also cry out for pleasanter reasons.
Decided, he moved through the thickening dusk, drew aside the tent flap, and stepped inside.

Kassandra was just finishing her bath. It was an indulgence to cart about the canvas-and-wood tub that had to be filled laboriously with buckets when she could have managed with just a basin. She admitted as much, but savored the bath all the same. After the long day, and the days before it, she needed the calming peace of hot water and blessed quiet.
She would have lingered longer but the water cooled rapidly. Rising, she reached for the towel she had left on a stool beside the tub.
Only to have it handed to her.
She gasped and whirled around to find Royce surveying her with obvious appreciation. “You were very far away,” he said.
“I was not!” Grasping the towel, she wrapped it around herself even as she felt ridiculous for doing so. It was hardly as though the man had not seen her naked before. Seen, touched, tasted, savored…Never mind about that now.
“You walk too quietly,” she accused.
“A hideous failing,” he replied, looking pleased with himself. He glanced around the tent. “Cozy.”
“Comfortable, as I am sure yours is.”
He raised a brow and with it, beckoned a blush. She was not a hypocrite. He had shared her bed for four nights and were they in the palace, he would be sharing it again. It was just that they were out in public, as it were, with none of the privacy to be found in her own quarters.
But she had not moved away from him on the ship and, truth be told, she did not want to do so now.
“You are caught,” he said. At her puzzled look, he added, “On the horns of propriety. It’s an awkward place to be.”
“I’m not trying to conceal anything.”
“I realize that, but you are trying not to make a display of what has happened between us, not force people to deal with it at a time when they are deeply concerned and anxious.”
“Yes,” she said on a breath of relief. He truly did understand. “That’s it exactly.”
“Kassandra…” He reached out a hand but let it fall without touching her. “Whatever lies ahead of us, my concern right now is for your safety. You are alone here in this tent and it is set a little apart from the others. If you like, I’ll sleep outside but I’m not leaving you by yourself tonight.”
She had not thought of that, had not considered that he would be worried about her in such a situation. Belatedly, she realized that her own vision had blinded her. She knew this was not the time or place, but he knew nothing of the sort.
And he wanted to protect her. He really did.
Tears stung her eyes but she would not let them fall. The towel was a different matter. She went to him without it. ~ Josie Litton,
1364:His bath chamber across the main room was all that remained, so I backtracked and entered it. The extravagance to which I was accustomed within the Hytanican palace did not range so far as to include the depth and size of his bath, nor the unusual mosaic tiles set into the floor. But what struck me the most were the shelves filled with ointments and bandages, and the long table against the wall that was similar to what one would find in a physician’s examination room. He had in many ways grown up a prince, but this chamber was more telling of his past than all the finery in his wardrobe.
When I returned to the parlor, I felt strangely cold. Narian had once more taken up his place on the sofa, and I went to sit at his feet, wanting to be closer to the fire. He swung around and put one leg on each side of me, then started to massage my back. After a few minutes, he slipped down behind me to wrap his arms around my waist, and I leaned against him. He was warm and safe and all that I wanted. At times I felt that there was no world outside of him, and it was the best feeling I ever had. This was one of those times.
“Were you ever happy here?” I softly inquired.
“Yes,” he answered after a moment of thought. “I was--here in the temple.”
Though I had not handled seeing Miranna’s room very well, I again had a surge of curiosity about the Overlord’s Hall, which Narian had subtly referenced. But I did not ask him to take me there--seeing it would not help me, and it would not help him. He needed to forget that place.
“Then tell me something about your childhood. Something pleasant.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the vibration of his chest as he began to speak.
“I remember when that mural on my wall was painted. I was perhaps six or seven. The High Priestess commissioned an artist, and gave her freedom to paint something colorful and unique, something that would amuse me. I was permitted to watch, but at that age…”
“Watching wasn’t enough,” I guessed, and he laughed.
“The artist was on a ladder, and she had her palette with her, but she’d left the majority of her paints on the floor. I was into them before she could say a word, and I spread paint everywhere. In my hair, on my clothes, the floors, the wall where she was trying to create her masterpiece, everywhere.” He was reminiscing now instead of just telling me a story, seeing it unfold in his mind. “I’d forgotten, honestly forgotten, that I’d been told not to touch the paints. Nan was furious--we were supposed to go to a banquet that night and I’d--”
“Nan?” I asked, and he tensed for a moment.
“That’s what I used to call the High Priestess, when I was young.”
Smiling at the idea, I nestled against him and said, “Go on.”
He continued the story, and I listened contentedly, eventually falling asleep in his embrace. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1365:Despite the brightness of the sun, I shivered in the brisk November air, for I had not taken a cloak with me when I had left my parlor. As if by magic, one fell about my shoulders, and I knew without looking that Narian had joined us. His mere presence bolstered my courage and brought my thoughts into focus. I scanned the throng of eager Hytanicans, some of whom were gathered inside the Central Courtyard with more outside its walls, then raised my hands to quiet them. Taking a deep breath, I began to speak.
“Spread the word. Tell your families and friends. Let it be known across the Recorah River Valley that I am proud to be Queen of this Kingdom of Hytanica!”
Cheers exploded, rising and falling in waves, and I let myself enjoy the sights and sounds of victory for several minutes. Then I once more raised my hands to quell the crowd.
“Be it known that Commander Narian stands with me as a loyal citizen of Hytanica. Without him, I would not have been able to travel to Cokyri and safely return. And without him, I would not have been able to begin negotiations for lasting peace with the High Priestess. I believe a trade treaty that is fair for both of our countries will soon be signed. Regardless, we stand here now and forevermore as a people free of Cokyrian rule.”
Jubilant shouts greeted these words, and I took Narian’s hand in mine, raising it high into the air. The people did not know that we were in love. They did not know that we were bound to each other according to Cokyrian custom and would soon be joined in marriage under Hytanican law. But this was a step forward, and that was enough for now.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother appear at Narian’s other side to likewise take his hand and hold it aloft in a show of support. When the rest of my family followed her lead, my father next to my mother, Miranna and Temerson at my side, tears spilled down my cheeks. I met Narian’s mystified blue eyes and smiled, then gazed out at our people, a member of a united royal family, the man I loved among us.
When the noise had subsided, I addressed the sorrow that hid beneath the joy, for it was essential to pay tribute to those who had fought bravely and tirelessly, but had not lived to see this day.
“We all know the terrible price that was paid for our freedom. Remember those who died in the war. Honor them in your hearts, and join with me in honoring them with a memorial on the palace grounds. Let those who gave their lives for this kingdom never be forgotten.” I paused, permitting a moment of silence for our lost loved ones, then finished, “Embrace your families. Return to your homes. And know that you go in peace.”
This received perhaps the greatest response of anything I had said, and to the tumultuous cries of my tired but elated people, Narian and I reentered the palace. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1366:You need to come with us right now," one of the queen's guards said. "If you resist, we'll take you by force."

"Leave him alone!" I yelled, looking from face to face. That angry darkness exploded within me. How could they still not believe? Why were they still coming after him? "He hasn't done anything! Why can't you guys accept that he's really a dhampir now?"

The man who'd spoken arched an eyebrow. "I wasn't talking to him."

"You're...you're here for me?" I asked. I tried to think of any new spectacles I might have caused recently. I considered the crazy idea that the queen had found out I'd spent the night with Adrian and was pissed off about it. That was hardly enough to send the palace guard for me, though...or was it? Had I really gone too far with my antics?

"What for?" demanded Dimitri. That tall, wonderful bod of his—the one that could be so sensual sometimes—was filled with tension and menace now.

The man kept his gaze on me, ignoring Dimitri. "Don't make me repeat myself: Come with us quietly, or we will make you." The glimmer of handcuffs showed in his hands.

My eyes went wide. "That's crazy! I'm not going anywhere until you tel me how the hell this—"

That was the point at which they apparently decided I wasn't coming quietly. Two of the royal guardians lunged for me, and even though we technically worked for the same side, my instincts kicked in. I didn't understand anything here except that I would not be dragged away like some kind of master criminal. I shoved the chair I'd been sitting in earlier at the one of the guardians and aimed a punch at the other. It was a sloppy throw, made worse because he was taller than me. That height difference allowed me to dodge his next grab, and when I kicked hard at his legs, a grunt told me I'd hit home.

[...]

Meanwhile, other guardians were joining the fray. Although I got a couple of good punches in, I knew the numbers were too overwhelming. One guardian caught hold of my arm and began trying to put the cuffs on me. He stopped when another set of hands grabbed me from the other side and jerked me away.

Dimitri.

"Don't touch her," he growled.
There was a note in his voice that would have scared me if it had been directed toward me. He shoved me behind him, putting his body protectively in front of mine with my back to the table. Guardians came at us from all directions, and Dimitri began dispatching them with the same deadly grace that had once made people call him a god. [...] The queen's guards might have been the best of the best, but Dimitri...well, my former lover and instructor was in a category all his own. His fighting skills were beyond anyone else's, and he was using them all in defense me.

"Stay back," he ordered me. "They aren't laying a hand on you. ~ Richelle Mead,
1367:Nee and I walked on in silence for a time, then she said in a guarded voice, “What think you of my cousin?”
“So that is the famous Lady Tamara Chamadis! Well, she really is as pretty as I’d heard,” I said. “But…I don’t know. Somehow she embodies everything I’d thought a courtier would be.”
“Fair enough.” Nee nodded. “Then I guess it’s safe for me to say--at risk of appearing a detestable gossip--watch out.”
I touched the top of my hand where I could still feel the Duke of Savona’s kiss. “All right. But I don’t understand why.”
“She is ambitious,” Nee said slowly. “Even when we were young she never had the time for any of lower status. I believe that if Galdran Merindar had shown any interest in sharing his power, she would have married him.”
“She wants to rule the kingdom?” I asked, glancing behind us. The secluded little pool was bounded by trees and hidden from view.
“She wants to reign over Court,” Nee stated. “Her interest in the multitudes of ordinary citizens extends only to the image of them bowing down to her.”
I whistled. “That’s a pretty comprehensive judgment.”
“Perhaps I have spoken ill,” she said contritely. “You must understand that I don’t like my cousin, having endured indifference or snubs since we were small, an heir’s condescension for a third child of a secondary branch of the family who would never inherit or amount to much.”
“She seemed friendly enough just now.”
“The first time she ever addressed me as cousin in public,” Nee said. “My status appears to have changed since I went away to Tlanth, affianced to a count, with the possible new king riding escort.” Her voice took on an acidic sort of humor.
“And what about the Duke of Savona?” I asked, his image vivid in my mind’s eye.
“In what sense?” She paused, turning to study my face. “He is another whose state of mind is impossible to guess.”
I was still trying to disentangle all my observations from that brief meeting. “Is he, well, twoing with Lady Tamara?”
She smiled at the term. “They both are experts at dalliance, but until last year I had thought they had more interest in each other than in anyone else,” she said carefully. “Though even that is difficult to say for certain. Interest and ambition sometimes overlap and sometimes not.”
As we wound our way along the path back toward Athanarel in the deepening gloom, I saw warm golden light inside the palace windows. With a glorious flicker, glowglobes appeared along the pathway, suspended in the air like great rainbow-sheened bubbles, their light soft and benevolent.
“I’m not certain what you mean by that last bit,” I said at last. “As for the first, you said ‘until last year.’ Does that mean that Lady Tamara has someone else in view?”
“But of course,” Nee said blandly. “The Marquis of Shevraeth.”
I laughed all the way up the steps into the Residence. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1368:Two men were advancing towards the car along the cross track. One man carried a short wooden bench on his back, the other a big wooden object about the size of an upright piano. Richard hailed them, they greeted him with every sign of pleasure. Richard produced cigarettes and a cheerful party spirit seemed to be developing. Then Richard turned to her. “Fond of the cinema? Then you shall see a performance.” He spoke to the two men and they smiled with pleasure. They set up the bench and motioned to Victoria and Richard to sit on it. Then they set up the round contrivance on a stand of some kind. It had two eye-holes in it and as she looked at it, Victoria cried: “It’s like things on piers. What the butler saw.” “That’s it,” said Richard. “It’s a primitive form of same.” Victoria applied her eyes to the glass-fronted peephole, one man began slowly to turn a crank or handle, and the other began a monotonous kind of chant. “What is he saying?” Victoria asked. Richard translated as the singsong chant continued: “Draw near and prepare yourself for much wonder and delight. Prepare to behold the wonders of antiquity.” A crudely coloured picture of Negroes reaping wheat swam into Victoria’s gaze. “Fellahin in America,” announced Richard, translating. Then came: “The wife of the great Shah of the Western world,” and the Empress Eugénie simpered and fingered a long ringlet. A picture of the King’s Palace in Montenegro, another of the Great Exhibition. An odd and varied collection of pictures followed each other, all completely unrelated and sometimes announced in the strangest terms. The Prince Consort, Disraeli, Norwegian Fjords and Skaters in Switzerland completed this strange glimpse of olden far-off days. The showman ended his exposition with the following words: “And so we bring to you the wonders and marvels of antiquity in other lands and far-off places. Let your donation be generous to match the marvels you have seen, for all these things are true.” It was over. Victoria beamed with delight. “That really was marvellous!” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it.” The proprietors of the travelling cinema were smiling proudly. Victoria got up from the bench and Richard who was sitting on the other end of it was thrown to the ground in a somewhat undignified posture. Victoria apologized but was not ill pleased. Richard rewarded the cinema men and with courteous farewells and expressions of concern for each other’s welfare, and invoking the blessing of God on each other, they parted company. Richard and Victoria got into the car again and the men trudged away into the desert. “Where are they going?” asked Victoria. “They travel all over the country. I met them first in Transjordan coming up the road from the Dead Sea to Amman. Actually they’re bound now for Kerbela, going of course by unfrequented routes so as to give shows in remote villages.” “Perhaps someone will give them a lift? ~ Agatha Christie,
1369:At some unseen signal the long line of guards around me stopped and their spears thudded to the floor with a noise that sounded like doom.
Then a tall figure with a long black cloak walked past us, plumed and coroneted helm carried in his gloved right hand. For a moment I didn’t recognize the Marquis; somewhere along the way he’d gotten rid of his anonymous clothing and was now clad in a long black battle tunic, Remalna’s crowned sun stitched on its breast. At his side hung his sword; his hair was braided back. He passed by without so much as a glance at me. His eyes were slack lidded, his expression bored.
He stopped before a dais, on which was a throne made of carved wood--a piece of goldwood so beautifully veined with golds and reds and umbers it looked like fire--and bowed low.
I was tempted to try hopping on my one good foot in order to get a glimpse of the enemy on the throne, but I didn’t--and a moment later was glad I hadn’t, for I saw the flash of a ring as Galdran waved carelessly at the guards. The four in front promptly stepped to each side, affording a clear field of vision between the King and me. I saw a tall, massively built man whose girth was running to portliness. Long red hair with gems braided into it, large nose, large ears, high forehead, pale blue eyes. He wore a long, carefully cultivated mustache. His mouth stretched in a cruel smile.
“So you won your wager, Shevraeth, eh?” he said. The tone was jovial, but there was an ugly edge to the voice that scared me.
“As well, Your Majesty,” the Marquis drawled. “The dirt, the stretches of boredom…really, had it taken two days more, I could not have supported it, much as I’d regret the damage to my reputation for reneging on a bet.”
Galdran fingered his mustache, then waved at me. “Are you certain someone hasn’t been making a game of you? That looks like a scullery wench.”
“I assure you, Your Majesty, this is Lady Meliara Astiar, Countess of Tlanth.”
Galdran stepped down from his dais and came within about five paces of me, and looked me over from head to heels. The cruel smile widened. “I never expected much of that half-mad old man, but this is really rich!” He threw back his head and laughed.
And from all sides of the room laughter resounded up the walls, echoing from the rafters.
When it had died, Galdran said, “Cheer up, wench. You’ll have your brother soon for company, and your heads will make a nice matched set over the palace gates.” Once again he went off into laughter, and he gestured to the guards to take me away.
I opened my mouth to yell a parting insult but I was jerked to one side, which hurt my leg so much all I could do was gasp for breath. The echoes of the Court’s laughter followed into the plain-walled corridor that the soldiers took me down, and then a heavy steel door slammed shut, and there was no sound beyond the marching of the guard and my own harsh breathing. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1370:He watched her pace toward him.
She stopped just short of his chair and looked down at him. Her loose hair slipped over her shoulder. “I remember something. I’m not sure if it happened or not. Will you tell me?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“I remember lying with you on the lawn of the imperial palace’s spring garden.”
He shifted. Lamplight pulsed over his face. He shook his head.
“I remember finding you in your suite.” This memory was coming to her now. It had a similar flavor as the last one. “I promised to tell you my secrets. You held a book. Or kindling? You were making a fire.”
“That didn’t happen.”
“I kissed you.” She touched the hollow at the base of his neck. His pulse was wild.
“Not then,” he said finally.
“But I have before.” There was a rush of images. It was as if the melody she’d imagined while lying in the dark had been dunked in the green liquor. All the cold stops gained heat and ran together. It was easy to remember Arin, especially now. Her hand slid to his chest. The cotton of his shirt was hot. “Your kitchens. A table. Honey and flour.”
His heart slammed against her palm. “Yes.”
“A carriage.”
“Yes.”
“A balcony.”
Breath escaped him like a laugh. “Almost.”
“I remember falling asleep in your bed when you weren’t here.”
He pulled back slightly, searched her face. “That didn’t happen.”
“Yes it did.”
His mouth parted, but he didn’t speak. The blacks of his eyes were bright. She wondered what it would be like to give her body what it wanted. It knew something she didn’t. Her heart sped, her blood was lush in her veins.
“The first day,” she said. “Last summer. Your hair was a mess. I wanted to sweep it back and make you meet my eyes. I wanted to see you.”
His chest rose and fell beneath her hand. “I don’t know. I can’t--I don’t know what you wanted.”
“I never said?”
“No.”
She lowered her mouth to his. She tasted him: the raw burn of liquor on his tongue. She felt him swallow, heard the low, dry sound of it.
He pulled her down to him, tangled his hands in her hair, sucked the breath from her lips. She became uncertain whose breath was whose. He kissed her back, fingertips fanning across her face, then gone, nowhere. Then: a light touch along the curve of her hip, just barely. A stone skipping the surface of the water. “Strange,” he murmured into her mouth.
She wasn’t listening. She was rippling, the sensation spreading wide. Stone on water, dimpled pockets of pressure. The wait for the stone to finally drop down.
Suddenly she knew--or thought she knew--what he found strange as he traced where a dagger should have been. To see a part of her missing. She felt her missing pieces, the stark gaps. She was arrested by the thought (it pierced her, sharp and surreal) that she had become transparent, that if he touched her again his hand would go right through her, into air, into the empty spaces of who she was now. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1371:I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of my blood,
They discredit Adamhood.

Eyes of gods! ye must have seen,
O'er your ramparts as ye lean,
The general debility,
Of genius the sterility,
Mighty projects countermanded,
Rash ambition broken-handed,
Puny man and scentless rose
Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
Rebuild or ruin: either fill
Of vital force the wasted rill,
Or, tumble all again in heap
To weltering chaos, and to sleep.

Say, Seigneurs, are the old Niles dry,
Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That mortals miss the loyal heats
Which drove them erst to social feats,
Now to a savage selfness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one;
With. science poorly mask their hurt,
And vex the gods with question pert,
Immensely curious whether you
Still are rulers, or Mildew.
Masters, I'm in pain with you;
Masters, I'll be plain with you.
In my palace of Castile,
I, a king, for kings can feel;
There my thoughts the matter roll,
And solve and oft resolve the whole,
And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise,
Ye shall not fail for sound advice,
Before ye want a drop of rain,
Hear the sentiment of Spain.

You have tried famine: no more try it;
Ply us now with a full diet;
Teach your pupils now with plenty,
For one sun supply us twenty:
I have thought it thoroughly over,
State of hermit, state of lover;
We must have society,
We cannot spare variety.
Hear you, then, celestial fellows!
Fits not to be over zealous;
Steads not to work on the clean jump,
Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump;

Men and gods are too extense,
Could you slacken and condense?
Your rank overgrowths reduce,
Till your kinds abound with juice;
Earth crowded cries, "Too many men,"
My counsel is, Kill nine in ten,
And bestow the shares of all
On the remnant decimal.
Add their nine lives to this cat;
Stuff their nine brains in his hat;
Make his frame and forces square
With the labors he must dare;
Thatch his flesh, and even his years
With the marble which he rears;
There growing slowly old at ease,
No faster than his planted trees,
He may, by warrant of his age,
In schemes of broader scope engage:
So shall ye have a man of the sphere,
Fit to grace the solar year.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alphonso Of Castile
,
1372:May I ask you a personal question?”
She looked up in query and made the graceful little gesture that I had learned was an invitation.
“Isn’t Shevraeth a friend of yours?”
“Yes,” she said cautiously.
“Then why the fan, and the careful words when you asked about your friend Elenet?”
Nee set her cup down, her brow slightly furrowed. “We are friends to a degree…Though we all grew up at Court, I was never one of his intimates, nor even one of his flirts. Those all tended to be the leaders of fashion. So I don’t really know how close he was to any of them, except perhaps for Savona. It took everyone by surprise to find out that he was so different from the person we’d grown up with.” She shrugged. “He was always an object of gossip, but I realized recently that though we heard much about what he did, we never heard what he thought.”
“You mean he didn’t tell anyone,” I said.
“Exactly. Anyway, Elenet is an old friend, of both of us, which is complicated by her family’s machinations. Her safety is important to me. Yet in referring to it, I don’t want to seem one of the busybodies or favor-seekers.”
“I don’t think you could,” I said.
She laughed. “Anyone can do anything, with determination and an inner conviction of being right. Whether they really are right…” She shrugged.
“Well, if he wants to be king, he’ll just plain have to get used to questions and toadies and all the rest of it,” I said. Remembering the conversation at dinner and wondering if I’d made an idiot of myself, I added crossly, “I don’t have any sympathy at all. In fact, I wish he hadn’t come up here. If he needed rest from the fatigue of taking over a kingdom, why couldn’t he go to that fabulous palace in Renselaeus? Or to Shevraeth, which I’ll just bet has an equally fabulous palace?”
Nee sighed. “Is that a rhetorical or a real question?”
“Real. And I don’t want to ask Bran because he’s so likely to hop out with my question when we’re all together and fry me with embarrassment,” I finished bitterly.
She gave a sympathetic grin. “Well, I suspect it’s to present a united front, politically speaking. You haven’t been to Court, so you don’t quite comprehend how much you and your brother have become heroes--symbols--to the kingdom. Especially you, which is why there were some murmurs and speculations when you never came to the capital.”
I shook my head. “Symbol for failure, maybe. We didn’t win--Shevraeth did.”
She gave me an odd look midway between surprise and curiosity. “But to return to your question, Vidanric’s tendency to keep his own counsel ought to be reassuring as far as people hopping out with embarrassing words are concerned. If I were you--and I know it’s so much easier to give advice than to follow it--I’d sit down with him, when no one else is at hand, and talk it out.”
Just the thought of seeking him out for a private talk made me shudder. “I’d rather walk down the mountain in shoes full of snails. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1373:Citizens of Luna, I ask that you stop what you’re doing to listen to this message. My name is Selene Blackburn. I am the daughter of the late Queen Channary, niece to Princess Levana, and the rightful heir to Luna’s throne. You were told that I died thirteen years ago in a nursery fire, but the truth is that my aunt, Levana, did try to kill me, but I was rescued and taken to Earth. There, I have been raised and protected in preparation for the time when I would return to Luna and reclaim my birthright.

In my absence, Levana has enslaved you. She takes your sons and turns them into monsters. She takes your shell infants and slaughters them. She lets you go hungry, while the people in Artemisia gorge themselves on rich foods and delicacies. But Levana’s rule is coming to an end. I have returned and I am here to take back what’s mine.

Soon, Levana is going to marry Emperor Kaito of Earth and be crowned the empress of the Eastern Commonwealth, an honor that could not be given to anyone less deserving. I refuse to allow Levana to extend her tyranny. I will not stand aside while my aunt enslaves and abuses my people here on Luna, and wages a war across Earth. Which is why, before an Earthen crown can be placed on Levana’s head, I will bring an army to the gates of Artemisia.

I ask that you, citizens of Luna, be that army. You have the power to fight against Levana and the people that oppress you. Beginning now, tonight, I urge you to join me in rebelling against this regime. No longer will we obey her curfews or forgo our rights to meet and talk and be heard. No longer will we give up our children to become her disposable guards and soldiers. No longer will we slave away growing food and raising wildlife, only to see it shipped off to Artemisia while our children starve around us. No longer will we build weapons for Levana’s war. Instead, we will take them for ourselves, for our war.

Become my army. Stand up and reclaim your homes from the guards who abuse and terrorize you. Send a message to Levana that you will no longer be controlled by fear and manipulation. And upon the commencement of the royal coronation, I ask that all able-bodied citizens join me in a march against Artemisia and the queen’s palace. Together we will guarantee a better future for Luna. A future without oppression. A future in which any Lunar, no matter the sector they live in or the family they were born to, can achieve their ambitions and live without fear of unjust persecution or a lifetime of slavery.

I understand that I am asking you to risk your lives. Levana’s thaumaturges are powerful, her guards are skilled, her soldiers are brutal. But if we join together, we can be invincible. They can’t control us all. With the people united into one army, we will surround the capital city and overthrow the imposter who sits on my throne. Help me. Fight for me. And I will be the first ruler in the history of Luna who will also fight for you. ~ Marissa Meyer,
1374:A Snow-White Lily
There was a snow-white lily
Grew by a cottage door:
Such a white and wonderful lily
Never was seen before.
The earth and the ether brought it
Sustenance, raiment, grace,
And the feet of the west wind sought it,
And smiled in its smiling face.
Tall were its leaves and slender,
Slender and tall its stem;
Purity, all its splendour,
Beauty, its diadem.
Still from the ground it sprouted,
Statelier year by year,
Till loveliness clung about it,
And was its atmosphere.
And the fame of this lily was bruited
'Mong men ever more and more;
They came, and they saw, and uprooted
Its life from the cottage door.
For they said, ``'Twere shame, 'twere pity,
It here should dwell half despised.
We must carry it off to the city,
Where lilies are loved and prized.''
The city was moved to wonder,
And burst into praise and song,
And the multitude parted asunder
To gaze on it borne along.
Along and aloft 'twas uplifted,
From palace to palace led;
Men vowed 'twas the lily most gifted
Of lilies living or dead.
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And wisdom, and wealth, and power,
Bowed down to it more and more:Yet it never was quite the same flower
That bloomed by the cottage door.
For no longer the night-dews wrought it
Raiment, and food, and grace;
Nor the feet of the west wind sought it,
To dance in its dimpling face.
'Twas pursued by the frivolous rabble,
With poisonous lips and eyes;
They drenched it with prurient babble,
And fed it with fulsome lies.
Thus into the lily there entered
The taint of the tainted crew,
Till itself in itself grew centred,
And it flattery drank like dew.
Then tongues began words to bandy
As to whose might the lily be.
``'Tis mine,'' said the titled dandy;
Said the plutocrat, ``'tis for me.''
Thus over the lily they wrangled,
Making the beautiful base,
Till its purity seemed all mangled,
And its gracefulness half disgrace.
Next they who had first enthroned it,
And blatantly hymned its fame,
Now, curdling their smiles, disowned it,
And secretly schemed its shame.
The lily began to wither,
Since the world was no longer sweet;
And hands that had brought it thither,
Flung it into the street.
A sensitive soul and tender
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The flung-away lily found:
He had seen it in hours of splendour,
So he lifted it from the ground.
He carried it back to the garden
Where in olden days it grew,
And he knelt, and prayed for it pardon
From the sun, and the breeze, and the dew.
Then the breeze, since it knows no malice,
And the sun that detesteth strife,
And the dew whose abode is the chalice,
Would have coaxed back the lily to life.
But the lily would not waken,
Nor ever will waken more;
And feet and fame have forsaken
Its place by the cottage door.
~ Alfred Austin,
1375:What?” I yelled. And I opened my mouth to complain Nobody told me anything, but I recalled a certain interview, not long ago, that had ended rather abruptly when a candleholder had--ah--changed hands. Grimacing, I said in a more normal voice, “When did this happen?”
“That’s the joke on us.” Bran laughed. “They’ve been at it as long as we have. Longer, even.”
I looked from father to son and read nothing in those bland, polite faces. “Then…why…didn’t you respond to our letter?”
As I spoke the words, a lot of things started making sense.
I thought back to what Ara’s father had said, and then I remembered Shevraeth’s words about the purpose of a court. When I glanced at Prince Alaerec, he saluted me with his wineglass; just a little gesture, but I read in it that he had comprehended a good deal of my thoughts.
Which meant that my face, as usual, gave me away--and of course this thought made my cheeks burn.
He said, “We admire--tremendously--your courageous efforts to right the egregious wrongs obtaining in Remalna.”
Thinking again of Ara’s father and Master Kepruid the innkeeper, I said, “But the people don’t welcome armies trampling through their houses and land, even armies on their side. I take it you’ve figured out some miraculous way around this?”
Bran slapped his palm down on the table. “That’s it, Mel--where we’ve been blind. We were trying to push our way in from without, but Shevraeth, here, has been working from within.” He nodded in the Prince’s direction. “Both--all three of ‘em, in fact.”
I blinked, trying to equate with a deadly plot an old, imperious voice whose single purpose seemed to be the safety of her clothing. “The Princess is part of this, too?”
“She is the one who arranged your escape from Athanarel,” Shevraeth said to me. “The hardest part was finding your spy.”
“You knew about Azmus?”
“I knew you had to have had some kind of contact in Remalna-city, from some of the things you said during our earlier journey. We had no idea who, or what, but we assumed that this person would display the same level of loyalty your compatriots had when you first fell into our hands, and I had people wait to see who might be lurking around the palace, watching.”
Questions crowded my thoughts. But I pushed them all aside, focusing on the main one. “If you’re rebelling, then you must have someone in mind for the throne. Who?”
Bran pointed across the table at Shevraeth. “He seems to want to do it, and I have to say, he’d be better at it than I.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” I said without thinking.
Bran winced and rubbed his chin. “Mel…”
“Please, my dear Lord Branaric,” the Prince murmured. “Permit the lady to speak. I am interested to hear her thoughts on the matter.”
Rude as I’d been before, my response had shocked even me, and I hadn’t intended to say anything more. Now I sneaked a peek at the Marquis, who just sat with his goblet in his fingers, his expression one of mild questioning. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1376:driveway, her hip scraping as she tumbled, her skin torn and bleeding. She knew she should have worn trousers. The world rocked to a stop, balanced itself out and she opened her eyes. The Infected were standing looking at her, and Dusk strode through them, his eyes narrowed and his lips curled in hatred. And then Valkyrie was up and running. She was sore, she felt blood on her legs and arms, but she ignored the pain. She looked back, saw the mass of Infected surge after her. She passed the club gates and took the first road to her left, losing a shoe in the process and cursing herself for not wearing boots. It was narrow, and dark, with fields on one side and a row of back gardens on the other. She came to a junction. Up one way she could see headlights, so she turned down the other, leading the Infected away from any bystanders. She darted in off the road, running behind the Pizza Palace and the video store, realising her mistake when she heard the voices around the next corner. The pub had a back door that smokers used. She veered off to her right, ran for the garden wall and leaped over it. She stayed low, and wondered for a moment if she’d managed to lose the Infected so easily. Dusk dropped on to her from above and she cried out. He sent her reeling. “I’m not following the rules any more,” he said. She looked at him, saw him shaking. He took a syringe from his coat and let it drop. “No more rules. No more serum. This time, there’ll be nothing to stop me tearing you limb from limb.” He grunted as the pain hit. “I’m sorry I cut you,” Valkyrie tried, backing away. “Too late. You can run if you want. Adrenaline makes the blood taste sweeter.” He smiled and she saw the fangs start to protrude through his gums. He brought his hands to his shirt, and then, like Superman, he ripped the shirt open. Unlike Superman, however, he took his flesh with it, revealing the chalk-white skin of the creature underneath. Valkyrie darted towards him and his eyes widened in surprise. She dived, snatched the syringe from the ground and plunged it into his leg. Dusk roared, kicked her on to her back, his transformation interrupted. He tried to rip off the rest of his humanity, but his human skin tore at the neck. This wasn’t the smooth shucking she’d seen the previous night. This was messy and painful. Valkyrie scrambled up. The Infected had heard Dusk’s anguished cries, and they were closing in. he Edgley family reunion was taking up the main function hall, at the front of the building, leaving the rear of the golf club in darkness. That was probably a good thing, Tanith reflected, as she watched Skulduggery fly backwards through the air. The Torment-spider turned to her and she dodged a slash from one of his talons. She turned and ran, but he was much faster. Tanith jumped for the side of the building and ran upwards, a ploy that had got her out of a lot of trouble in the past, but then, she had never faced a giant spider before. His talons clacked as he followed her up, chattering as he came. ~ Derek Landy,
1377:Then ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you.”
“What?” I blurted, flabbergasted by what he was offering.
“I cannot risk you getting hurt, Shaselle, and your curiosity cannot disrupt what we have planned. If giving you information will keep you from disrupting things, I will do so.”
“How are you doing it? Where are the weapons coming from? How are you getting them into the city?” Questions tumbled from my mouth, in no particular order, for my mind was in chaos.
Straightforward as ever, Cannan expounded. “When London regained consciousness in the spring, he and I recognized the need to move quickly if we were to establish a stash of weapons. As soon as he could travel, he left the city to entreat aid form the neighboring kingdoms. Men from Sarterad and Emotana began leaving weapons in the forest for us, and London’s men took them into the palace through the escape tunnel we used to remove the royal family at the time of the Cokyrian siege. The Cokyrians, other than Narian, do not know of the tunnel’s existence, and he has neither closed it nor been monitoring it. In the night, we used servants within the palace to move the armaments out in delivery boxes, whereupon they were taken to Steldor, Galen and Halias. Select Hytanicans on the work crews hid them inside the buildings during the reconstruction work. Everything has been put in place.”
“What will you do now?”
“We wait.”
I stood up and paced, agitated. “What are you waiting for?”
“The right time.”
“To do what exactly? Tell me that.”
“To take back our kingdom.”
This was a non-answer, one that gave me no information I could not have deduced on my own.
“When, Uncle? I want to know when. I can--”
“You don’t need to know when, Shaselle. You’re not part of this.”
He was watching me, arms still crossed, and I stopped pacing, pulling the cloak tighter around me.
“But I could be. I’m not just a curious child, Uncle, I can do things. I could help. If you would just tell me what to do, I wouldn’t be a problem!”
The wind rattled the barn door, and Alcander whinnied, making me jump.
“You’re scared of the wind, Shaselle,” Cannan said, shaking his head. “You’re a young woman, and this is dangerous. This is a game you’ve not trained to play, a game you could never handle.”
“That’s not true,” I argued, resentment bubbling inside me at his denigrating words.
“I’m sorry, but it is. If we’re discovered, every one of us will be executed before we even have a chance to revolt. And if we do revolt, there’s a very strong possibility we will die in the fighting, whether we’re successful or not. In case you’ve forgotten, a number of good men have already died.”
His words hit me hard, breaking through my bitterness. Forced to contemplate a hangman’s noose, my zeal faded.
“I don’t want any of you to die,” I murmured, a tremble in my voice.
He shrugged. “We’re not eager for that end, either. But someone has to take a stand. Someone has to speak for Hytanica before we let her die. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1378:Wordsworth At Dove Cottage
Wise Wordsworth, to avert your ken,
From half of human fate.
What is there in the ways of men,
Their struggles, or their state,
To make the calm recluse forswear
The garden path, the fire-side chair,
To journey with the Great?
The narrowest hamlet lends the heart
A realm as rich and wide
As kingdoms do, to play its part;
Who reaps not, that hath tried,
More rapture from the wayside flower
Than all the stairs and robes of power
And avenues of pride?
Whether we scan it from below,
Or bask in it above,
We weary of life's glittering show;
We tire of all save Love.
As, when fatigued with wood-notes shrill,
We listen with contentment still
To cooings of the dove.
In this low cottage nested near
Mountain and lake, you dwelt;
'Twas here you tilled the ground, 'twas here
You loved, and wrote, and knelt.
Hence, wheresoe'er your kindred dwell,
Your songs sincere our hearts compel
To feel the thing you felt.
Glory there is that lives entombed
In spacious-soaring shrine;
A tenement more narrow-roomed
Sufficient is for thine.
A homely temple haply found
Where peasants toil and streamlets sound,
Adorned not, but divine.
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Your sacred music still is heard,
When notes profane have died;
Like some familiar home-bred word,
You in our lives abide.
And when with trackless feet we rove
By meadow, mountain, mere, or grove,
We feel you at our side.
Thrice-happy bard! who found at home
All joys that needful be;
Whose longings were not forced to roam
Beyond your household Three:Your own proud genius, steadfast, calm,
A wife whose faith was household balm,
And heavenly Dorothy.
What is it sweetens tasteless Fame?
Makes shadowy Glory bliss?
What is the guerdon poets claim?
What should it be but this?A heart attuned to understand,
A listening ear, a loving hand,
A smile, a tear, a kiss!
Leave them but these, and let who will
Crave plaudits from the crowd,
Its vapid incense, aves shrill,
And favour of the proud.
The sweetest minister of Fame
Is she who broods upon one's name,
But calls it not aloud.
And this at least, in full, you had,
From sister, and from wife:
They made your gravest moments glad,
They havened you from strife;
Hallowed your verse, revered your tread,
Maintained a nimbus round your head,
And deified your life.
Hence, long as gentle brows shall bend
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Over your rustic page,
Their pious love shall still befriend
The poet and the sage;
For, when we cross your cottage sill,
Virtue, no less than Genius, will
Invite the Pilgrimage.
The tallest tower that ever rose
Hath but a span to soar;
Palace and fane are passing shows,
But Time will be no more,
When Wordsworth's home no longer leads
Men's far-off feet to Grasmere's meads,
And sanctifies its shore.
~ Alfred Austin,
1379:He remembered an old tale which his father was fond of telling him—the story of Eos Amherawdur (the Emperor Nightingale). Very long ago, the story began, the greatest and the finest court in all the realms of faery was the court of the Emperor Eos, who was above all the kings of the Tylwydd Têg, as the Emperor of Rome is head over all the kings of the earth. So that even Gwyn ap Nudd, whom they now call lord over all the fair folk of the Isle of Britain, was but the man of Eos, and no splendour such as his was ever seen in all the regions of enchantment and faery. Eos had his court in a vast forest, called Wentwood, in the deepest depths of the green-wood between Caerwent and Caermaen, which is also called the City of the Legions; though some men say that we should rather name it the city of the Waterfloods. Here, then, was the Palace of Eos, built of the finest stones after the Roman manner, and within it were the most glorious chambers that eye has ever seen, and there was no end to the number of them, for they could not be counted. For the stones of the palace being immortal, they were at the pleasure of the Emperor. If he had willed, all the hosts of the world could stand in his greatest hall, and, if he had willed, not so much as an ant could enter into it, since it could not be discerned. But on common days they spread the Emperor's banquet in nine great halls, each nine times larger than any that are in the lands of the men of Normandi. And Sir Caw was the seneschal who marshalled the feast; and if you would count those under his command—go, count the drops of water that are in the Uske River. But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy matter, for Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset. He lit it with the sun and moon. There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass; and when his clerks sang before him all the jewels rose shining out of the earth, and all the stars bent shining down from heaven, so enchanting was the melody. Then was great bliss in all the regions of the fair folk. But Eos was grieved because mortal ears could not hear nor comprehend the enchantment of their song. What, then, did he do? Nothing less than this. He divested himself of all his glories and of his kingdom, and transformed himself into the shape of a little brown bird, and went flying about the woods, desirous of teaching men the sweetness of the faery melody. And all the other birds said: "This is a contemptible stranger." The eagle found him not even worthy to be a prey; the raven and the magpie called him simpleton; the pheasant asked where he had got that ugly livery; the lark wondered why he hid himself in the darkness of the wood; the peacock would not suffer his name to be uttered. In short never was anyone so despised as was Eos by all the chorus of the birds. But wise men heard that song from the faery regions and listened all night beneath the bough, and these were the first who were bards in the Isle of Britain. ~ Arthur Machen,
1380:After Reading Trollope's History Of Florence
My books are on their shelves again
And clouds lie low with mist and rain.
Afar the Arno murmurs low
The tale of fields of melting snow.
List to the bells of times agone
The while I wait me for the dawn.
Beneath great Giotto's Campanile
The gray ghosts throng; their whispers steal
From poets' bosoms long since dust;
They ask me now to go. I trust
Their fleeter footsteps where again
They come at night and live as men.
The rain falls on Ghiberti's gates;
The big drops hang on purple dates;
And yet beneath the ilex-shades-Dear trysting-place for boys and maids-There comes a form from days of old,
With Beatrice's hair of gold.
The breath of lands or lilied streams
Floats through the fabric of my dreams;
And yonder from the hills of song,
Where psalmists brood and prophets throng,
The lone, majestic Dante leads
His love across the blooming meads.
Along the almond walks I tread
And greet the figures of the dead.
Mirandula walks here with him
Who lived with gods and seraphim;
Yet where Colonna's fair feet go
There passes Michael Angelo.
In Rome or Florence, still with her
Stands lone and grand her worshipper.
In Leonardo's brain there move
Christ and the children of His love;
35
And Raphael is touching now,
For the last time, an angel's brow.
Angelico is praying yet
Where lives no pang of man's regret,
And, mixing tears and prayers within
His palette's wealth, absolved from sin,
He dips his brush in hues divine;
San Marco's angel faces shine.
Within Lorenzo's garden green,
Where olives hide their boughs between,
The lovers, as they read betimes
Their love within Petrarca's lines,
Stand near the marbles found at Rome,
Lost shades that search in vain for home.
They pace the paths along the stream,
Dark Vallombrosa in their dream.
They sing, amidst the rain-drenched pines,
Of Tuscan gold that ruddier shines
Behind a saint's auroral face
That shows e'en yet the master's trace.
But lo, within the walls of gray,
E're yet there falls a glint of day,
And far without, from hill to vale,
Where honey-hearted nightingale
Or meads of pale anemones
Make sweet the coming morning breeze-I hear a voice, of prophet tone,
A voice of doom, like his alone
That once in Gadara was heard;
The old walls trembled--lo, the bird
Has ceased to sing, and yonder waits
Lorenzo at his palace gates.
Some Romola in passing by
Turns toward the ruler, and his sigh
Wanders amidst the myrtle bowers
Or o'er the city's mantled towers,
36
For she is Florence! 'Wilt thou hear
San Marco's prophet? Doom is near.'
'Her liberties,' he cries, 'restore!
This much for Florence--yea, and more
To men and God!' The days are gone;
And in an hour of perfect dawn
I stand beneath the cypress trees
That shiver still with words like these.
~ Eugene Field,
1381:All Hail To The Czar!
All hail to the Czar! By the fringe of the foam
That thunders, untamed, around Albion's shore,
See multitudes throng, dense as sea-birds whose home
Is betwixt the deaf rocks and the ocean's mad roar;
And across the ridged waters stand straining their eyes
For a glimpse of the Eagle that comes from afar:
Lo! it swoops towards the beach, and they greet it with cries
That silence the billows-``All hail to the Czar!''
All hail to the Czar! England's noblest and best,
Her oldest, her newest, her proudest are there,
And they vie in obeisance before the great guest,
For the prize of his nod, for the alms of his stare.
To the seat of their Empire they draw him along,
Where the Palace flies open to welcome his car,
And Prince, Press, and People, with leader and song,
Ring the change on the paean-``All hail to the Czar!''
All hail to the Czar! the bold Monarch who shook
From the heart of the Lion its insolent lust,
That once from the strongest no outrage would brook,
Till it crouched at his feet, till it crawled in the dust!
Who the laurels bequeathed to us tore from our brow,
Who extinguished our fame that once shone like a star,
Made our rulers to tremble, our heralds to bow,
And our bosoms to mock us-``All hail to the Czar!''
All hail to the Czar! O yes! show him your ships,
Had your courage not failed, he had seen before now,
As they dally at anchor, the gag on their lips,
And the peace-loving holiday trim on their prow!
Yes! show him your army, that mighty array
He so rashly defied when he ventured to mar
The last work of its hands, and remind it to say,
But with bayonets inverted-``All hail to the Czar!''
All hail to the Czar! As ye revel and feast,
I marvel the ghosts of the bootlessly slain
Do not come from their cold lonely graves in the East,
132
From the hillside that looks o'er the desolate main,
Which they perished to save, ye surrender, to live,
To the man ye now slaver, all base as ye are!
Do not stalk through the banquet-hall, pallid, and give
The gay toast ere ye drink it-``All hail to the Czar!''
All hail to the Czar! For his daughter he gave,
Like Atrides of old, without shrinking or qualm,
Though not that the white ships might move o'er the wave,
But that ours still might ride in immovable calm!
What Religion could once, now can Statecraft persuade;
And if ye would devote to the furies of war
Half as freely your sons as he gave up his maid,
Without shame might ye shout then-``All hail to the Czar!''
All hail to the Czar! Are ye then sunk so low,
O ye sons of the once fearless masters of earth!
That ye pour out the wine for an insolent foe,
That in depths of dishonour ye simulate mirth?
That, like unto mongrel hounds beaten and cowed,
Ye, crouched, lick alternately smiter and scar?Oh, rather my country lay deaf in its shroud,
Than had lived to hear silent-``All hail to the Czar!''
~ Alfred Austin,
1382:This boat is of shato-wood, and its gunwales are
     cut magnolia,
Musicians with jewelled flutes and with pipes of gold
Fill full the sides in rows, and our wine
Is rich for a thousand cups.
We carry singing girls, drift with the drifting water,
Yet Sennin needs
A yellow stork for a charger, and all our seamen
Would follow the white gulls or ride them.
Kutsu's prose song
Hangs with the sun and moon.

King So's terraced palace
                   is now but barren hill,
But I draw pen on this barge
Causing the five peaks to tremble,
And I have joy in these words
                   like the joy of blue islands.
(If glory could last forever
Then the waters of Han would flow northward.)

And I have moped in the Emperor's garden, await-
    ing an order-to-write !
I looked at the dragon-pond, with its willow-
    coloured water
Just reflecting the sky's tinge,
And heard the five-score nightingales aimlessly singing.

The eastern wind brings the green colour into the
     island grasses at Yei-shu,
The purple house and the crimson are full of Spring
     softness.
South of the pond the willow-tips are half-blue and
     bluer,
Their cords tangle in mist, against the brocade-like
     palace.
Vine-strings a hundred feet long hang down from
     carved railings,
And high over the willows, the fine birds sing to
     each other, and listen,
CryingKwan, Kuan,' for the early wind, and the
     feel of it.
The wind bundles itself into a bluish cloud and
     wanders off.
Over a thousand gates, over a thousand doors are
     the sounds of spring singing,

And the Emperor is at Ko.
Five clouds hang aloft, bright on the purple sky,
The imperial guards come forth from the golden
     house with their armour a-gleaming.
The Emperor in his jewelled car goes out to inspect
     his flowers,
He goes out to Hori, to look at the wing-flapping
     storks,
He returns by way of Sei rock, to hear the new
     nightingales,
For the gardens at Jo-run are full of new nighting-
     gales,
Their sound is mixed in this flute,
Their voice is in the twelve pipes here.


This poem is from CATHAY (London: Elkin Mathews, 1915), the volume of Chinese poems
  The book's widely-applauded publication prompted T.S. Eliot to remark that Pound had "reinvented Chinese poetry for our time."
   CATHAY is comprised of 18 translations of various early Chinese poems, eleven poems by T'ang Dynasty poet Li Po ("Rihaku"), and the Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Seafarer," which Pound included for timeline comparison of 8th-Century English poetry with 8th-Century Chinese poetry.
   CATHAY ranks among the most pivotal publications in the entire history of translation and of modern poetry in English.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, The River Song
,
1383:The November Pansy
This is not June,--by Autumn's stratagem
Thou hast been ambushed in the chilly air;
Upon thy fragile crest virginal fair
The rime has clustered in a diadem;
The early frost
Has nipped thy roots and tried thy tender stem,
Seared thy gold petals, all thy charm is lost.
Thyself the only sunshine: in obeying
The law that bids thee blossom in the world
Thy little flag of courage is unfurled;
Inherent pansy-memories are saying
That there is sun,
That there is dew and colour and warmth repaying
The rain, the starlight when the light is done.
These are the gaunt forms of the hollyhocks
That shower the seeds from out their withered purses;
Here were the pinks; there the nasturtium nurses
The last of colour in her gaudy smocks;
The ruins yonder
Show but a vestige of the flaming phlox;
The poppies on their faded glory ponder.
Here visited the vagrant humming-bird,
The nebulous darting green, the ruby-throated;
The warm fans of the butterfly here floated;
Those two nests reared the robins, and the third
Was left forlorn
Muffled in lilacs, whence the perfume stirred
The tremulous eyelids of the dewy morn.
Thy sisters of the early summer-time
Were masquers in this carnival of pleasure;
Each in her turn unrolled her golden treasure,
And thou hast but the ashes of the prime;
'Tis life's own malice
That brings the peasant of a race sublime
To feed her flock around her ruined palace.
124
Yet for withstanding thus the autumn's dart
Some deeper pansy-insight will atone;
It comes to souls neglected and alone,
Something that prodigals in pleasure's mart
Lose in the whirl;
The peasant child will have a purer heart
Than the vain favourite of the vanished earl.
And far above this tragic world of ours
There is a world of a diviner fashion,
A mystic world, a world of dreams and passion
That each aspiring thing creates and dowers
With its own light;
Where even the frail spirits of trees and flowers
Pause, and reach out, and pass from height to height.
Here will we claim for thee another fief,
An upland where a glamour haunts the meadows,
Snow peaks arise enrobed in rosy shadows,
Fairer the under slopes with vine and sheaf
And shimmering lea;
The paradise of a simple old belief,
That flourished in the Islands of the Sea.
A snow-cool cistern in the fairy hills
Shall feed thy roots with moisture clear as dew;
A ferny shield to temper the warm blue
That heaven is; a thrush that thrills
To answer his mate,
And when above the ferns the shadow fills,
Fireflies to render darkness consolate.
Here muse and brood, moulding thy seed and die
And re-create thy form a thousand fold,
Mellowing thy petals to more lucent gold,
Till they expand, tissues of amber sky;
Till the full hour,
And the full light and the fulfilling eye
Shall find amid the ferns the perfect flower.
125
~ Duncan Campbell Scott,
1384:Proletaria
THE SUNNY rounds of Earth contain
An obverse to its Day,
Our fertile Vagrancy’s domain,
Wan Proletaria.
From pole to pole of Poverty
We stumble through the years,
With hazy-lanterned Memory
And Hope that never nears.
Wherever Plenty’s crop invites
Our pitiful brigades,
Lurk cannoneers of Vested Rights,
Juristic ambuscades;
And here hangs Rent, that squalid cage
Within which Mammon thrusts,
Bound with the fetter of a wage,
The helots of his lusts.
With palsied Doubt as guide, we wind
Among the lanes of Need,
Where meagre Hungers scouting find
But slavered baits of Greed.
The wet-lipped Lamias of Caste,
Awaiting our advance,
Our choicest squadrons’ fealty blast
With magic smile and glance:
Delilah-limbed temptations flit
Among our drowsy rows,
And on our willing captains fit
The badges of our foes.
What wonder sometimes if in stealth
Our starker outposts wait,
And, in the prowling eyes of Wealth,
Dash vitriol of Hate;
33
Or if our Samsons, ere too late,
Their treasons should make good
By whelming in the temple’s fate
Their viper owners’ brood!
Our polyandrous dam has borne
To Satan and to God
The hordes of Night, the clans of Morn,
That through our valleys plod.
Ah, motherhood of misery
For Christ-child as for pest!
The greater her fertility
The drier grows her breast!
Too many linger on the track;
A few outstrip the time:
Some, God has tattooed yellow, black,
And some disguised with crime.
Art’s living archives here abound,
Carraras of Despair,
And those weird masks of Sight and Sound
The Tragic Muses wear.
Tho’ blind and dull, ’tis we supply
The Painter’s dazzling dreams;
The rolling flood of Poetry
From our dumb chaos streams.
Nay, when your world is over-tired,
And Genius comatose,
Our race, by Nemesis inspired,
Old Order overthrows:
With earthquake-life we thrill your land,
Refill the cruse of Art,
Revitalize spent Wisdom, and—
Resume our weary part.
The palace of successful Guilt
34
Is mortared with our shame;
On hecatombs of Us are built
The soaring towers of Fame.
We are the gnomes of Titan works
Whose throbbings never cease;
Our unregarded signet lurks
On every masterpiece.
The floating isles, that shuttling tie
All peoples into one
By adept steermen’s sorcery
Of magnet, steam, and sun;
Religion’s dolmens, Sphinxes, spires,
Her Biblic armouries;
The helot lightning of the wires
That mesh your lands and seas;
The viaducts ’tween Near and Far,
Whereon, o’er range and mead,
Bacchantic Trade’s triumphant car
And iron tigers speed;
The modern steely crops that rise
Where technic Jasons sow:
—All these but feebly symbolize
The largesse we bestow.
And our reward? In this wan land,
In clientage of Greed,
Despised, polluted, maimed and banned,
To wander and—to breed
~ Bernard O'Dowd,
1385:I.

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop-
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

II.

Now,-the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
Twelve abreast.

III.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone-
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.

IV.

Now,-the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
Through the chinks-
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.

V.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away-
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.

VI.

But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,-and then,
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

VII.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force-
Gold, of course.
Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.


~ Robert Browning, Love Among The Ruins
,
1386:December 25, 4:30 p.m.

Dear America,

It’s been seven hours since you left. Twice now I’ve started to go to your room to ask how you liked your presents and then remembered you weren’t here. I’ve gotten so used to you, it’s strange that you aren’t around, drifting down the halls. I’ve nearly called a few times, but I don’t want to seem possessive. I don’t want you to feel like I’m a cage to you. I remember how you said the palace was just that the first night you came here. I think, over time, you’ve felt freer, and I’d hate to ruin that freedom, I’m going to have to distract myself until you come back.

I decided to sit and write to you, hoping maybe it would feel like I was talking to you. It sort of does, I can imagine you sitting here, smiling at my idea, maybe shaking your head at me as if to say I’m being silly. You do that sometimes, did you know? I like that expression on you. You’re the only person who wears it in a way that doesn’t come across like you think I’m completely hopeless. You smile at my idiosyncrasies, accept that they exist, and continue to be my friend. And, in seven short hours, I’ve started to miss that.

I’ve wonder what you’ve done in that time. I’m betting by now you’ve flown across the country, made it to your home, and are safe. I hope you are safe. I can’t imagine what a comfort you must be to your family right now. The lovely daughter has finally returned!

I keep trying to picture you home. I remember you telling me it was small, that you had a tree house, and that your garage was where you father and sister did all their work. Beyond that I’ve had to resort to my imagination. I imagine you curled up in a hug with you sister or kicking around a ball with your little brother. I remember that, you know? That you said he liked to play ball.

I tried to imagine walking into your house with you. I would have liked that, to see you where you grew up. I would love to see you brother run around or be embraced by your mother. I think it would be comforting to sense the presence of people near you, floorboards creaking and doors shutting. I would have liked to sit in one part of the house and still probably be able to smell the kitchen. I’ve always imagined that real homes are full of the aromas of whatever’s being cooked. I wouldn’t do a scrap of work. Nothing having to do with armies or budgets or negotiations. I’d sit with you, maybe try to work on my photography while you played the piano. We’d be Fives together, like you said. I could join your family for dinner, talking over one another in a collection of conversations instead of whispering and waiting our turns. And maybe I’d sleep in a spare bed or on the couch. I’d sleep on the floor beside you if you’d let me.

I think about that sometimes. Falling asleep next to you, I mean, like we did in the safe room. It was nice to hear your breaths as they came and went, something quiet and close keeping me from feeling so alone. This letter has gotten foolish, and I think you know how I detest looking like a fool. But still I do. For you.

Maxon ~ Kiera Cass,
1387:It doesn’t matter what they think. Dance with me.”
He took her hand, and for the first time in a long while, she felt safe. He pulled her to the center of the floor and into the motions of the dance.
Ronan didn’t speak for a few moments, then touched a slim braid that curved in a tendril along Kestrel’s cheek. “This is pretty.”
The memory of Arin’s hands in her hair made her stiffen.
“Gorgeous?” Ronan tried again. “Transcendent? Kestrel, the right adjective hasn’t been invented to describe you.”
She attempted a light tone. “What will ladies do, when this kind of exaggerated flirtation is no longer the fashion? We shall be spoiled.”
“You know it’s not mere flirtation,” Ronan said. “You’ve always known.”
And Kestrel had, it was true that she had, even if she hadn’t wanted to shake the knowledge out of her mind and look at it, truly see it. She felt a dull spark of dread.
“Marry me, Kestrel.”
She held her breath.
“I know things have been hard lately,” Ronan continued, “and that you don’t deserve it. You’ve had to be so strong, so proud, so cunning. But all of this unpleasantness will go away the instant we announce our engagement. You can be yourself again.”
But she was strong. Proud. Cunning. Who did he think she was, if not the person who mercilessly beat him at every Bite and Sting game, who gave him Irex’s death-price and told him exactly what to do with it? Yet Kestrel bit back her words. She leaned into the curve of his arm. It was easy to dance with him. It would be easy to say yes.
“Your father will be happy. My wedding gift to you will be the finest piano the capital can offer.”
Kestrel glanced into his eyes.
“Or keep yours,” he said hastily. “I know you’re attached to it.”
“It’s just…you are very kind.”
He gave a short, nervous laugh. “Kindness has little to do with it.”
The dance slowed. It would end soon.
“So?” Ronan had stopped, even though the music continued and dancers swirled around them. “What…well, what do you think?”
Kestrel didn’t know what to think. Ronan was offering everything she could want. Why, then, did his words sadden her? Why did she feel like something had been lost? Carefully, she said, “The reasons you’ve given aren’t reasons to marry.”
“I love you. Is that reason enough?”
Maybe. Maybe it would have been. But as the music drained from the air, Kestrel saw Arin on the fringes of the crowd. He watched her, his expression oddly desperate. As if he, too, were losing something, or it was already lost.
She saw him and didn’t understand how she had ever missed his beauty. How it didn’t always strike her as it did now, like a blow.
“No,” Kestrel whispered.
“What?” Ronan’s voice cut into the quiet.
“I’m sorry.”
Ronan swiveled to find the target of Kestrel’s gaze. He swore.
Kestrel walked away, pushing past slaves bearing trays laden with glasses of pale gold wine. The lights and people blurred in her stinging eyes. She walked through the doors, down a hall, out of the palace, and into the cold night, knowing without seeing or hearing or touching him that Arin was at her side. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1388:A beggar came to an emperor’s palace. The emperor was just in the garden so he heard the beggar. The man on the gate was going to give something, but the beggar said, ”I have one condition. I always take from the master, never from servants.”
The emperor heard. He was taking a walk so he came to look at this beggar, because beggars don’t have conditions. If you are a beggar how can you have conditions? ”Seems to be a rare beggar.” So he came to look – and he WAS a rare beggar. The emperor had never seen such an emperor-like man before; he was nothing. This man had some glory around him, a grace. Tattered his dress was, almost naked, but the begging bowl was very very precious.
The emperor said, ”Why this condition?”
The beggar said, ”Because servants are themselves beggars and I don’t want to be rude to anybody. Only masters can give. How can servants give? So if you are ready, you can give and I will accept it. But then too I have a condition, and that is: my begging bowl has to be completely filled.”
A small begging bowl! The emperor started laughing. He said, ”You seem to be mad. Do you think I cannot fill your begging bowl?” And then he ordered his ministers to bring precious stones, incomparable, unique, and fill the begging bowl with them. But they got into a difficulty, because the more they filled the begging bowl, the stones would fall in it and they would not even make a sound, they would simply disappear. And the begging bowl remained empty.
Then the emperor was in a fix, his whole ego was at stake. He, a great emperor who ruled the whole earth, could not fill a begging bowl! He ordered, ”Bring everything, but this begging bowl has to be filled!”
His treasures... for days together all his treasuries were emptied, but the begging bowl remained empty. There was no more left. The emperor had become a beggar, all was lost. The emperor fell to the beggar’s feet and said, ”Now I am also a beggar and I beg only one thing. Tell me the secret of this bowl, it seems to be magical!”
The beggar said, ”Nothing. It is made of human mind, nothing magical.”

Every human mind is just this begging bowl. You go on filling it, it remains empty. You throw the whole world, worlds together, and they simply disappear without making any sound. You go on giving and it is always begging.

Give love, and the begging bowl is there, your love has disappeared. Give your whole life, and the begging bowl is there, looking at you with complaining eyes. ”You have not given anything. I am still empty.” And the only proof that you have given is if the begging bowl is full – and it is never full. Of course, the logic is clear: you have not given.
You have achieved many many things – they have all disappeared in the begging bowl. The mind is a self-destructive process. Before the mind disappears you will remain a beggar. Whatsoever you can gain will be in vain; you will remain empty.

And if you dissolve this mind, through emptiness you become filled for the first time. You are no more, but you have become the whole. If you are, you will remain a beggar. If you are not, you become the emperor. ~ Osho,
1389:The Owl Describing Her Young Ones
Why was that baleful Creature made,
Which seeks our Quiet to invade,
And screams ill Omens through the Shade?
'Twas, sure, for every Mortals good,
When, by wrong painting of her Brood,
She doom'd them for the Eagle's Food:
Who proffer'd Safety to her Tribe,
Wou'd she but shew them or describe,
And serving him, his Favour bribe.
When thus she did his Highness tell;
In Looks my Young do all excel,
Nor Nightingales can sing so well.
You'd joy to see the pretty Souls,
With wadling Steps and frowzy Poles,
Come creeping from their secret Holes.
But I ne'er let them take the Air,
The Fortune-hunters do so stare;
And Heiresses indeed they are.
This ancient Yew three hundred Years,
Has been possess'd by Lineal Heirs:
The Males extinct, now All is Theirs.
I hope I've done their Beauties right,
Whose Eyes outshine the Stars by Night;
Their Muffs and Tippets too are White.
The King of Cedars wav'd his Power,
And swore he'd fast ev'n from that Hour,
Ere he'd such Lady Birds devour.
Th' Agreement seal'd, on either part,
The Owl now promis'd, from her Heart,
All his Night-Dangers to divert;
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As Centinel to stand and whoop,
If single Fowl, or Shoal, or Troop
Should at his Palace aim or stoop.
But home, one Evening without Meat,
The Eagle comes, and takes his Seat,
Where they did these Conditions treat.
The Mother-Owl was prol'd away,
To seek abroad for needful Prey,
And forth the Misses came to play.
What's here ! the hungry Monarch cry'd,
When near him living Flesh he spy'd,
With which he hop'd to be supply'd.
But recollecting, 'twas the Place,
Where he'd so lately promis'd Grace
To an enchanting, beauteous Race;
He paus'd a while, and kept his Maw,
With sober Temperance, in awe,
Till all their Lineaments he saw.
What are these Things, and of what Sex,
At length he cry'd, with Vultur's Becks,
And Shoulders higher than their Necks?
These wear no Palatines, nor Muffs,
Italian Silks, or Doyley Stuffs,
But motley Callicoes, and Ruffs.
Nor Brightness in their Eyes is seen,
But through the Film a dusky Green,
And like old Margery is their Mien.
Then for my Supper they're design'd,
Nor can be of that lovely Kind,
To whom my Pity was inclin'd.
No more Delays; as soon as spoke,
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The Plumes are stripped, the Grisles broke,
And near the Feeder was to choak.
When now return'd the grizly Dame,
(Whose Family was out of Frame)
Against League-Breakers does exclaim.
How! quoth the Lord of soaring Fowls,
(Whilst horribly she wails and howls)
Were then your Progeny but Owls?
I thought some Phoenix was their Sire,
Who did those charming Looks inspire,
That you'd prepar'd me to admire.
Upon your self the Blame be laid;
My Talons you've to Blood betray'd,
And ly'd in every Word you said.
Faces or Books, beyond their Worth extoll'd,
Are censur'd most, and thus to pieces pulled.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,
1390:Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father.

But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.

Are those real islands?' asked the young prince.

Of course they are real islands,' said the man in evening dress.

And those strange and troubling creatures?'

They are all genuine and authentic princesses.'

Then God must exist!' cried the prince.

I am God,' replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.

The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.

So you are back,' said the father, the king.

I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully.

The king was unmoved.

Neither real islands, nor real princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully.

The king was unmoved.

Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God exist.'

I saw them!'

Tell me how God was dressed.'

God was in full evening dress.'

Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?'

The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled.

That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.'

At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress.

My father the king has told me who you are,' said the young prince indignantly. 'You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.'

The man on the shore smiled.

It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father's spell, so you cannot see them.'

The prince pensively returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes.

Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?'

The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves.

Yes, my son, I am only a magician.'

Then the man on the shore was God.'

The man on the shore was another magician.'

I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.'

There is no truth beyond magic,' said the king.

The prince was full of sadness.

He said, 'I will kill myself.'

The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.

Very well,' he said. 'I can bear it.'

You see, my son,' said the king, 'you too now begin to be a magician. ~ John Fowles,
1391:Whoa,” I murmured, trying to calm the animal enough to set it loose, not wanting it to come to harm.
I gripped the reins, but the horse, its eyes wild with fear, snapped its head back, catching my hand in the leather strap, and I inhaled sharply from the sting. How long had the poor thing been out here? My senses on full alert, I glanced behind me at the busy street, weighing my options. Seeing no one, I hoisted up my skirt, and unsheathed the dagger I had kept. The instant I cut the reins, the horse bolted past me, almost knocking me over. Its owner would not be happy, but at least the animal would live to see another day.
It wasn’t until someone clamped an arm around my waist, seizing the knife, that I realized I was no longer alone. So much for having reliable senses.
“Well, aren’t you just incorrigible?”
Imprisonment or execution was the punishment for bearing weapons in this new Hytanica. The dagger itself was a small loss, but I had to get away. I brought my elbow back, my mother’s reluctance to let me leave the house flashing like lightning in my brain. If I were arrested, killed, she would never forgive herself, even though she would bear no fault.
Empress, the bruises you’ve given me are too many to count!”
I whirled around, dismayed that I had not succeeded in getting the Cokyrian to release me, at the same time recognizing the voice and the curse. Saadi pushed me against the side of the shop, leaning in so close to me that I could feel his breath upon my cheek, and his pale blue eyes stared me into submission.
“I can’t call you a horse thief for what you just did,” he told me, glancing after the gelding. “At least, not a very good horse thief. But I can, and I must, bring you in for this little utensil of yours. Some niece of the captain you are.”
“Are you going to take me to your sister?” I spat, and he grimaced, contemplating me for an instant before disregarding the barb. Gripping me by the upper arm, he hauled me toward the thoroughfare.
“Come on. To the Bastion.”
Though my question about Rava appeared to have had its intended effect, I was numb with fear. What if he did take me to her? Rava had been the one to order me lashed for my failed prank, she’d been the one to inflict punishment upon Steldor. It seemed no one could exert control over her, a thought that made me ill.
The nearer we came to our destination, the more rapidly my heart beat, and by the time we reached the palace gates, I was again fighting Saadi.
“Let…me…go!” I howled, unexpectedly pulling out of his grasp, but one of the Cokyrian sentries caught me, laughing at my plight.
“Need some help, Saadi?” the burly man offered, shoving me back at my captor, who was rather slight in comparison to his comrade.
“No,” Saadi grumbled and the sentry moved ahead to open the gates for us.
As we passed through, the large man called, “Rava is at the city headquarters, minding the peacekeeping force. If you were looking for her, that is.”
“I wasn’t.” Even though my circumstances were inarguably bleak, a wave of relief washed over me. She, at least, would not be the one to show me the error of my ways. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1392:Well, if he wants to be king, he’ll just plain have to get used to questions and toadies and all the rest of it,” I said. Remembering the conversation at dinner and wondering if I’d made an idiot of myself, I added crossly, “I don’t have any sympathy at all. In fact, I wish he hadn’t come up here. If he needed rest from the fatigue of taking over a kingdom, why couldn’t he go to that fabulous palace in Renselaeus? Or to Shevraeth, which I’ll just bet has an equally fabulous palace?”
Nee sighed. “Is that a rhetorical or a real question?”
“Real. And I don’t want to ask Bran because he’s so likely to hop out with my question when we’re all together and fry me with embarrassment,” I finished bitterly.
She gave a sympathetic grin. “Well, I suspect it’s to present a united front, politically speaking. You haven’t been to Court, so you don’t quite comprehend how much you and your brother have become heroes--symbols--to the kingdom. Especially you, which is why there were some murmurs and speculations when you never came to the capital.”
I shook my head. “Symbol for failure, maybe. We didn’t win--Shevraeth did.”
She gave me an odd look midway between surprise and curiosity. “But to return to your question, Vidanric’s tendency to keep his own counsel ought to be reassuring as far as people hopping out with embarrassing words are concerned. If I were you--and I know it’s so much easier to give advice than to follow it--I’d sit down with him, when no one else is at hand, and talk it out.”
Just the thought of seeking him out for a private talk made me shudder. “I’d rather walk down the mountain in shoes full of snails.”
It was Nee’s turn to shudder. “Life! I’d rather do almost anything than that--”
A “Ho!” outside the door interrupted her.
Bran carelessly flung the tapestry aside and sauntered in. “There y’are, Nee. Come out on the balcony with me? It’s actually nice out, and we’ve got both moons up.” He extended his hand.
Nee looked over at me as she slid her hand into his. “Want to come?”
I looked at those clasped hands, then away. “No, thanks,” I said airily. “I think I’ll practice my fan, then read myself to sleep. Good night.”
They went out, Bran’s hand sliding round her waist. The tapestry dropped into place on Nee’s soft laugh.
I got up and moved to my window, staring out at the stars.
It seemed an utter mystery to me how Bran and Nimiar enjoyed looking at each other. Touching each other. Even the practical Oria, I realized--the friend who told me once that things were more interesting than people--had freely admitted to liking flirting.
How does that happen? I shook my head, thinking that it would never happen to me. Did I want it to?
Suddenly I was restless and the castle was too confining.
Within the space of a few breaths I had gotten rid of my civilized clothing and soft shoes and had pulled my worn, patched tunic, trousers, and tough old mocs from the trunk in the corner.
I slipped out of my room and down the stair without anyone seeing me, and before the moons had traveled the space of a hand across the sky, I was riding along the silver-lit trails with the wind in my hair and the distant harps of the Hill Folk singing forlornly on the mountaintops. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1393:And you really are the Countess of Tlanth?”
I nodded.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Emis over on Nikaru Farm is going to be soooo jealous when she finds out. She thinks she’s so very fine a lady, just because she has a cousin in service at Athanarel and her brother in the Guard. There is no news from Athanarel if she doesn’t know it first, or more of it than anyone.”
“What is the news?” I asked, feeling the old fear close round me.
She pursed her lips. “Maybe Mama is right about my tongue running like a fox in the wild. Are you certain you want all this now?”
“Very much,” I said.
“It comes to this: The Duke of Savona and the Marquis of Shevraeth have another wager, on which one can find you first. The King thinks it great sport, and they have people on all the main roads leading west to the mountains.”
“Did they say anything about my escape?”
She shook her head. “Luz overheard some merchants at the Harvest--that’s the inn down the road at Garval--saying they thought it was wizard work or a big conspiracy. I went with Papa when he returned to the Three Rings in Remalna-city, and everyone was talking about it.” She grinned. “Elun Kepruid--he’s the innkeeper’s son at Three Rings, and he likes me plenty--was telling me all the real gossip from the palace. The King was very angry, and at first wanted to execute all the guards who had duty the night you got out, except the ones he really wanted had disappeared, and everyone at Court thought there was a conspiracy, and they were afraid of attack. But then the lords started the wagers and turned it all into a game. Savona swore he’d fling you at the King’s feet inside of two weeks. Baron Debegri, who was just returned from the mountains, said he’d bring your head--then take it and fling it at your brother’s feet. He’s a hard one, the Baron, Emis’s brother said.” She grimaced. “Is this too terrible to hear?”
“No…No. I just need…to think.”
She put her chin on her hands. “Did you see the Duke?”
“Which duke?”
“Savona.” She sighed. “Emis has seen him--twice. She gets to visit her cousin at Winter Festival. She says he’s even more handsome than I can imagine. Four duels…Did you?”
I shook my head. “All I saw was the inside of my cell. And the King. And that Shevraeth,” I added somewhat bitterly.
“He’s supposed to have a head for nothing but clothes. And gambling.” Ara shrugged dismissively. “Everybody thinks it’s really Debegri who--well, got you.”
“What got me was a trap. And it was my own fault.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Mama says I ought not to ask much about what happened. She says the less I know, the less danger there is to my family. You think that’s true?”
Danger to her family. It was a warning. I nodded firmly. “Just forget it, and I’ll make you a promise. If I live through this mess, and things settle down, I’ll tell you everything. How’s that?”
Ara clapped her hands and laughed. “That’s nacky! Especially if you tell me all about your palace in Tlanth. How Emis’s nose will turn purple from envy--when I can tell her, that is!”
I thought of our old castle, with its broken windows and walls, the worn, shabby furnishings and overgrown garden, and sighed. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1394:Who is it from?” Savona asked.
I looked up at him, trying to divine whether the secret knowledge lay behind his expression of interest.
“Of course she cannot tell,” Tamara said, her tone mock chiding--a masterpiece of innuendo, I realized. “But…perhaps a hint, Countess?”
“I can’t, because it’s a secret to me, too.” I looked around. Nothing but interest in all the faces, from Savona’s friendly skepticism to Shevraeth’s polite indifference. Shevraeth looked more tired than ever. “The best kind, because I get the ring and don’t have to do anything about it!”
Everyone laughed.
“Now that,” Savona said, taking my arm, “is a direct challenge, is it not? Geral? Danric? I take you to witness.” We started strolling along the pathway. “But first, to rid myself of this mysterious rival. Have you kissed anyone since yesterday? Winked? Sent a posy-of-promise?” He went on with so many ridiculous questions I couldn’t stop laughing.
The others had fallen in behind. Conversations crossed the group, preventing it from breaking into smaller groups. Before too long Tamara brought us all together again. She was now the center of attention as she summoned Savona to her side to admire a new bracelet.
This was fine with me. I did not like being the center, and I felt jangled and uneasy. Had I betrayed myself in any important way? Had I been properly polite to Shevraeth? The few times he spoke I was careful to listen and to smile just like the others.
When I found myself on the edge of the group, I slipped away and hastened back to the Residence. In my room, I found Mora sewing. She looked at me in surprise, and hastily got to her feet to curtsy.
“Never mind that,” I said. “Tell me, who brings letters and things?”
“The runners, my lady,” she said.
“Can you find out who sent a runner?” When she hesitated, I said, “Look, I just want to find out who gave me these gifts. I know under the old king, people could be bribed. Is that true now? Please, speak plain. I won’t tell anyone what you tell me, and I won’t make trouble.”
Mora pursed her lips. “There are times when the runners can be bribed, my lady,” she said carefully. “But not all of them. Were it to get out, they could lose their position.”
“So everyone belowstairs doesn’t know everything?”
“No, my lady. Many people use personal runners to deliver things to the palace runners; and the loyal ones don’t talk.”
“Ah hah!” I exclaimed. “Then, tell me this: Can something be returned along the same route, even though I don’t know to whom it’s going?”
She thought a bit, then nodded. “I think that can be arranged.”
“Good. Then let me pen a message, and please see that it gets sent right away.” I dived down onto the cushions beside the desk, rummaged about, and came up with pen and writing paper. On the paper I wrote: The gifts are beautiful, and I thank you, but what do they mean?
I signed my name, sealed the letter, and handed it to Mora.
She left at once, and I was severely tempted to try to follow her, except I’d promised not to make trouble. And if I were caught at it, I suspected that the servants involved might get into trouble. I decided to look at this whole matter as a kind of challenge. I’d find some clever way of solving the mystery without involving anyone innocent. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1395:Realisation
Hers was a lonely, shadowed lot;
Or so the unperceiving thought,
Who looked no deeper than her face,
Devoid of chiselled lines of grace –
No farther than her humble grate,
And wondered how she bore her fate.
Yet she was neither lone nor sad;
So much of love her spirit had,
She found an ever-flowing spring
Of happiness in everything.
So near to her was Nature’s heart
It seemed a very living part
Of her own self; and bud and blade,
And heat and cold, and sun and shade,
And dawn and sunset, Spring and Fall,
Held raptures for her, one and all.
The year’s four changing seasons brought
To her own door what thousands sought
In wandering ways and did not find –
Diversion and content of mind.
She loved the tasks that filled each day –
Such menial duties; but her way
Of looking at them lent a grace
To things the world deemed commonplace.
Obscure and without place or name,
She gloried in another’s fame.
Poor, plain and humble in her dress,
She thrilled when beauty and success
And wealth passed by, on pleasure bent;
They made earth seem so opulent.
Yet none of quicker sympathy,
When need or sorrow came, than she.
And so she lived, and so she died.
She woke as from a dream. How wide
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And wonderful the avenue
That stretched to her astonished view!
And up the green ascending lawn
A palace caught the rays of dawn.
Then suddenly the silence stirred
With one clear keynote of a bird;
A thousand answered, till ere long
The air was quivering bits of song.
She rose and wandered forth in awe,
Amazed and moved by all she saw,
For, like so many souls who go
Away from earth, she did not know
The cord was severed.
Down the street,
With eager arms stretched forth to greet,
Came one she loved and mourned in youth;
Her mother followed; then the truth
Broke on her, golden wave on wave,
Of knowledge infinite. The grave,
The body and the earthly sphere
Were gone! Immortal life was here!
They led her through the Palace halls;
From gleaming mirrors on the walls
She saw herself, with radiant mien,
And robed in splendour like a queen,
While glory round about her shone.
‘All this, ’ Love murmured, ‘is your own.’
And when she gazed with wondering eye,
And questioned whence and where and why,
Love answered thus: ‘All Heaven is made
By thoughts on earth; your walls were laid,
Year after year, of purest gold;
The beauty of your mind behold
In this fair palace; ay, and more
Waits farther on, so vast your store.
I was not worthy when I died
To take my place here at your side;
I toiled through long and weary years
From lower planes to these high spheres;
And through the love you sent from earth
I have attained a second birth.
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Oft when my erring soul would tire
I felt the strength of your desire;
I heard you breathe my name in prayer,
And courage conquered weak despair.
Ah! earth needs heaven, but heaven indeed
Of earth has just as great a need!
Across the terrace with a bound
There sped a lambkin with a hound
(Dumb comrades of the old earth land)
And fondled her caressing hand.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
1396:A third assumption: a commitment to monogamy is an admirable consequence of love, stemming from a deep-seated generosity and an intimate interest in the other’s flourishing and well-being. A call for monogamy is a sure indication that one partner has the other’s best interests at heart. To Rabih’s new way of thinking, it seems anything but kind or considerate to insist that a spouse return to his room alone to watch CNN and eat yet another club sandwich while perched on the edge of his bed, when he has perhaps only a few more decades of life left on the planet, an increasingly dishevelled physique, an at best intermittent track record with the opposite sex, and a young woman from California standing before him who sincerely wishes to remove her dress in his honour. If love is to be defined as a genuine concern for the well-being of another person, then it must surely be deemed compatible with granting permission for an often harassed and rather browbeaten husband to step off the elevator on the eighteenth floor, in order to enjoy ten minutes of rejuvenating cunnilingus with a near-stranger. Otherwise it may seem that what we are dealing with is not really love at all but rather a kind of small-minded and hypocritical possessiveness, a desire to make one’s partner happy if, but only if, that happiness involves oneself. It’s past midnight already, yet Rabih is just hitting his stride, knowing there might be objections but sidestepping them nimbly and, in the process, acquiring an ever more brittle sense of self-righteousness. A fourth assumption: monogamy is the natural state of love. A sane person can only ever want to love one other person. Monogamy is the bellwether of emotional health. Is there not, wonders Rabih, an infantile idealism in our wish to find everything in one other being – someone who will be simultaneously a best friend, a lover, a co-parent, a co-chauffeur and a business partner? What a recipe for disappointment and resentment in this notion, upon which millions of otherwise perfectly good marriages regularly founder. What could be more natural than to feel an occasional desire for another person? How can anyone be expected to grow up in hedonistic, liberated circles, experience the sweat and excitement of nightclubs and summer parks, listen to music full of longing and lust and then, immediately upon signing a piece of paper, renounce all outside sexual interest, not in the name of any particular god or higher commandment but merely from an unexplored supposition that it must be very wrong? Is there not instead something inhuman, indeed ‘wrong’, in failing to be tempted, in failing to realize just how short of time we all are and therefore with what urgent curiosity we should want to explore the unique fleshly individuality of more than one of our contemporaries? To moralize against adultery is to deny the legitimacy of a range of sensory high points – Rabih thinks of Lauren’s shoulder blades – in their own way just as worthy of reverence as more acceptable attractions such as the last moments of ‘Hey Jude’ or the ceilings of the Alhambra Palace. Isn’t the rejection of adulterous possibilities tantamount to an infidelity towards the richness of life itself? To turn the equation on its head: would it be rational to trust anyone who wasn’t, under certain circumstances, really pretty interested in being unfaithful? ~ Alain de Botton,
1397:Don’t provoke Cheat,” Arin said as they stepped out of the carriage and onto the dusky path that led to the governor’s palace, which looked eerie to Kestrel because its impressive façade was the same as the night before, but the lights burning in the windows were now few.
“Kestrel, do you hear me? You can’t toy with him.”
“He started it.”
“That’s not the point.” Gravel crunched under Arin’s heavy boots as he stalked up the path. “Don’t you understand that he wants you dead? He’d leap at the chance,” Arin said, hands in pockets, head down, almost talking to himself. He strode ahead, his long legs quicker than hers. “I can’t--Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize--my prize--it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won’t harm you, I swear that he won’t, but you must…hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you’re not better off dead. Swallow your pride.”
“Maybe that’s not as easy for me as it is for you.”
He wheeled on her. “It’s not easy for me,” he said through his teeth. “You know that it’s not. What do you think I have had to swallow, these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?”
They stood before the palace door. “Truly,” she said, “I haven’t the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else.”
He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: “You can make people feel so small.”
Kestrel went hot with shame--then was ashamed of her own shame. Who was he, that she should apologize? He had used her. He had lied. Nothing he said meant anything. If she was to feel shame, it should be for having been so easily fooled.
He ran fingers through his cropped hair, but slowly, anger gone, replaced by something heavier. He didn’t look at her. His breath smoked the chill air. “Do what you want to me. Say anything. But it frightens me how you refuse to see the danger you risk with others. Maybe now you’ll see.” He opened the door to the governor’s home.
The smell struck her first. Blood and decaying flesh. It pushed at Kestrel’s gut. She fought not to gag.
Bodies were piled in the reception hall. Lady Neril was lying facedown, almost in the same place where she had stood the night of the ball, greeting guests. Kestrel recognized her by the scarf in her fist, fabric bright in the guttering torchlight. There were hundreds of dead. She saw Captain Wensan, Lady Faris, Senator Nicon’s whole family, Benix…
Kestrel knelt next to him. His large hand felt like cold clay. She could hear her tears drip to his clothes. They beaded on his skin.
Quietly, Arin said, “He’ll be buried today, with the others.”
“He should be burned. We burn our dead.” She couldn’t look at Benix anymore, but neither could she get to her feet.
Arin helped her, his touch gentle. “I’ll make certain it’s done right.”
Kestrel forced her legs to move, to walk past bodies heaped like rubble. She thought that she must have fallen asleep after all, and that this was an evil dream.
She paused at the sight of Irex. His mouth was the stained purple of the poisoned, but he had sticky gashes in his side, and one final cut to the neck. Even poisoned, he had fought.
Tears came again.
Arin’s hold tightened. He pushed her past Irex. “Don’t you dare weep for him. If he weren’t dead, I would kill him myself. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1398:Le Poison (The Poison)
Le vin sait revêtir le plus sordide bouge
D'un luxe miraculeux,
Et fait surgir plus d'un portique fabuleux
Dans l'or de sa vapeur rouge,
Comme un soleil couchant dans un ciel nébuleux.
L'opium agrandit ce qui n'a pas de bornes,
Allonge l'illimité,
Approfondit le temps, creuse la volupté,
Et de plaisirs noirs et mornes
Remplit l'âme au delà de sa capacité.
Tout cela ne vaut pas le poison qui découle
De tes yeux, de tes yeux verts,
Lacs où mon âme tremble et se voit à l'envers...
Mes songes viennent en foule
Pour se désaltérer à ces gouffres amers.
Tout cela ne vaut pas le terrible prodige
De ta salive qui mord,
Qui plonge dans l'oubli mon âme sans remords,
Et charriant le vertige,
La roule défaillante aux rives de la mort!
Poison
Wine knows how to adorn the most sordid hovel
With marvelous luxury
And make more than one fabulous portal appear
In the gold of its red mist
Like a sun setting in a cloudy sky.
Opium magnifies that which is limitless,
Lengthens the unlimited,
Makes time deeper, hollows out voluptuousness,
And with dark, gloomy pleasures
Fills the soul beyond its capacity.
All that is not equal to the poison which flows
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From your eyes, from your green eyes,
Lakes where my soul trembles and sees its evil side...
My dreams come in multitude
To slake their thirst in those bitter gulfs.
All that is not equal to the awful wonder
Of your biting saliva,
Charged with madness, that plunges my remorseless soul
Into oblivion
And rolls it in a swoon to the shores of death.
— Translated by William Aggeler
Poisons
Wine can conceal a sordid room
In rich, miraculous disguise,
And make such porticoes arise
Out of its flushed and crimson fume
As makes the sunset in the skies.
Opium the infinite enlarges,
And lengthens all that is past measure.
It deepens time, and digs its treasure,
With sad, black raptures it o'ercharges
The soul, and surfeits it with pleasure.
Neither are worth the drug so strong
That you distil from your green eyes,
Lakes where I see my soul capsize
Head downwards: and where, in one throng,
I slake my dreams, and quench my sighs.
But to your spittle these seem naught —
It stings and burns. It steeps my thought
And spirit in oblivious gloom,
And, in its dizzy onrush caught,
Dashes it on the shores of doom.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
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Le Poison
wine clothes the sordid walls of hovels old
with pomp no palace knows,
evokes long peristyles in pillared rows
from vaporous red and gold;
like sunset with her cloud-built porticoes.
and opium widens all that has no bourn
in its unbounded sea;
moments grow hours, pleasures cease to be
in souls that, overworn,
drown in its black abyss of lethargy.
dread poisons, but more dread the poisoned well
of thy green eyes accurst;
tarns where I watch my trembling soul, reversed
my dreams innumerable
throng to those bitter gulfs to slake their thirst.
dread magic, but thy mouth more dread than these:
its wine and hellebore
burn, floods of Lethe, in my bosom's core,
till winds of madness seize
and dash me swooning on Death's barren shore!
— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
~ Charles Baudelaire,
1399:King Claudius
My mind now moves to distant places.
I'm walking the streets of Elsinore,
through its squares, and I recall
the very sad storythat unfortunate king
killed by his nephew
because of some fanciful suspicions.
In all the homes of the poor
he was mourned secretly
(they were afraid of Fortinbras).
A quiet, gentle man,
a man who loved peace
(his country had suffered much
from the wars of his predecessor),
he behaved graciously toward everyone,
humble and great alike.
Never high-handed, he always sought advice
in the kingdom's affairs
from serious, experienced people.
Just why his nephew killed him
was never actually explained.
The prince suspected him of murder,
and the basis of his suspicion was this:
walking one night along an ancient battlement
he thought he saw a ghost
and he had a conversation with this ghost;
what he supposedly heard from the ghost
were certain accusations against the king.
It must have been a fit of fancy,
an optical illusion
(the prince was nervous in the extreme;
while he was studying at Wittenberg,
many of his fellow students thought him a maniac).
A few days later he went
to his mother's room to discuss
certain family affairs. And suddenly,
while he was talking, he lost his self-control,
started shouting, screaming
that the ghost was there in front of him.
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But his mother saw nothing at all.
And that same day, for no apparent reason,
he killed an old gentleman of the court.
Since the prince was due to sail for England
in a day or two,
the king hustled him off post-haste
in order to save him.
But the people were so outraged
by the monstrous murder
that rebels rose up
and tried to storm the palace gates,
led by the dead man's son,
the noble lord Laertes
(a brave young man, also ambitious;
in the confusion, some of his friends called out:
'Long live King Laertes!').
Later, once the kingdom had calmed down
and the king was lying in his gravehe was killed by his nephew, the prince,
who never went to England
but escaped from the ship on his way therea certain Horatio came forward
and tried to exonerate the prince
by telling some stories of his own.
He said that the voyage to England
had been a secret plot, and orders
had been given to kill the prince there
(but this was never clearly ascertained).
He also spoke of poisoned winewine poisoned by the king.
It's true that Laertes spoke of this too.
But couldn't he have been lying?
Couldn't he have been mistaken?
And when did he say all this?
While dying of his wounds, his mind reeling,
his talk seemingly delirious.
As for the poisoned weapons,
it was shown later that the poisoning
hadn't been done by the king at all:
Laertes himself had done it.
But Horatio, whenever pressed,
would produce even the ghost as a witness:
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the ghost said this and that,
the ghost did this and that!
Because of all this, though letting Horatio talk,
most people in their hearts
pitied the poor king,
who, with all these ghosts and fairy tales,
was unjustly killed and disposed of.
Yet Fortinbras, who profited
by winning the throne so easily,
gave full attention and weight
to every word Horatio said.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
1400:I’d been proud of the parlor, over which I had spent a great deal of time. The ceiling had inlaid tiles in the same summer-sky blue that comprised the main color of the rugs and cushions and the tapestry on the wall opposite the newly glassed windows. Now I sneaked a look at the Marquis, dreading an expression of amusement or disdain. But his attention seemed to be reserved for the lady as he led her to the scattering of cushions before the fireplace, where she knelt down with a graceful sweeping of her skirts. Bran went over and opened the fire vents.
“If I’d known of your arrival, it would have been warm in here.”
Bran looked over his shoulder in surprise. “Well, where d’you spend your days? Not still in the kitchens?”
“In the kitchens and the library and wherever else I’m needed,” I said; and though I tried to sound cheery, it came out sounding resentful. “I’ll be back after I see about food and drink.”
Feeling very much like I was making a cowardly retreat, I ran down the long halls to the kitchen, cursing my bad luck as I went. There I found Julen, Oria, the new cook, and his assistant all standing in a knot talking at once. As soon as I appeared, the conversation stopped.
Julen and Oria turned to face me--Oria on the verge of laughter.
“The lady can have the new rose room, and the lord the corner suite next to your brother. But they’ve got an army of servants with them, Countess,” Julen said heavily. Whenever she called me Countess, it was a sure sign she was deeply disturbed over something. “Where’ll we house them? There’s no space in our wing, not till we finish the walls.”
“And who’s to wait on whom?” Oria asked as she carefully brought my mother’s good silver trays out from the wall-shelves behind the new-woven coverings. “Glad we’ve kept these polished,” she added.
“I’d say find out how many of those fancy palace servants are kitchen trained, and draft ‘em. And then see if some of the people from that new inn will come up, for extra wages. Bran can unpocket the extra pay,” I said darkly, “if he’s going to make a habit of disappearing for half a year and reappearing with armies of retainers. As for housing, well, the garrison does have a new roof, so they can all sleep there. We’ve got those new Fire Sticks to warm ‘em up with.”
“What about meals for your guests?” Oria said, her eyes wide.
I’d told Oria last summer that she could become steward of the house. While I’d been ordering books on trade, and world history, and governments, she had been doing research on how the great houses were currently run; and it was she who had hired Demnan, the new cook. We’d eaten well over the winter, thanks to his genius.
I looked at Oria. “This is it. No longer just us, no longer practice, it’s time to dig out all your plans for running a fine house for a noble family. Bran and his two Court guests will need something now after their long journey, and I have no idea what’s proper to offer Court people.”
“Well, I do,” Oria said, whirling around, hands on hips, her face flushed with pleasure. “We’ll make you proud, I promise.”
I sighed. “Then…I guess I’d better go back.”
As I ran to the parlor, pausing only to ditch my blanket in an empty room, I steeled myself to be polite and pleasant no matter how much my exasperating brother inadvertently provoked me--but when I pushed aside the tapestry at the door, they weren’t there.
And why should they be? This was Branaric’s home, too. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1401:Branaric came in. “Ready?”
“Nearly,” I said, my fingers quickly starting the braid. I suppose you don’t have extra gloves, or another hat?” I eyed the battered object he held in his hand. “No, obviously not. Well, I can ride bareheaded. Who’s to see me that I care about?”
He smiled briefly, then gave me a serious look. “Are you certain you don’t want to join the alliance?”
“Yes.”
He sank down heavily onto the bed and pulled from his tunic a flat-woven wallet. “I don’t know, Mel. What’s toward? You wouldn’t even listen yesterday, or hardly. Isn’t like you, burn it!”
“I don’t trust these cream-voiced courtiers as far as I can spit into a wind,” I said as I watched him pull from the wallet a folded paper. “And I don’t see why we should risk any of our people, or our scarce supplies, to put one of them on the throne. If he wants to be king, let him get it on his own.”
Bran sighed, his fingers working at the shapeless brim of his hat. “I think you’re wrong.”
“You’re the one who was willed the title,” I reminded him. “I’m not legally a countess--I haven’t sworn anything at Court. Which means it’s just a courtesy title until you marry. You can do whatever you want, and you have a legal right to it.”
“I know all that. Why are you telling me again? I remember we both promised when Papa died that we’d be equals in war and in peace. You think I’ll renege, just because we disagree for the first time? If so, you must think me as dishonest as you paint them.” He jerked his thumb back at the rest of the Renselaeus palace. I could see that he was upset.
“I don’t question you, Bran. Not at all. What’s that paper?”
Instead of answering, he tossed it to me. I unfolded it carefully, for it was so creased and battered it was obvious it had seen a great deal of travel. Slowly and painstakingly I puzzled out the words--then looked up in surprise. “This is Debegri’s letter about the colorwoods!”
“Shevraeth asked about proof that the Merindar’s were going to break the Covenant. I brought this along, thinking that--if we were to join them--they could use it to convince the rest of Court of Galdran’s treachery.”
“You’d give it to them?” I demanded.
Bran sighed. “I thought it a good notion, but obviously you don’t. Here. You do whatever you think best. I’ll bide by it.” He dropped the wallet onto my lap. “But I wish you’d give them a fair listen.”
I folded the letter up, slid it inside the waterproof wallet, and then put it inside my tunic. “I guess I’ll have to listen to the father, at any rate, over breakfast.” As I wrapped my braid around my head and tucked the end under, I added, “Which we’d better get to as soon as possible, so we have a full day of light on the road.”
“You go ahead--it was you the Prince invited. I’ll chow with Shevraeth. And be ready whenever you are.”
It was with a great sense of relief that I went to the meal, knowing that I’d only have to face one of them. And for the last time ever, I vowed as the ubiquitous servants bowed me into a small dining room.
The Prince was already seated in a great chair. With a graceful gesture he indicated the place opposite him, and when I was seated, he said, “My wife will regret not having had a chance to meet you, Lady Meliara.”
Wondering what this was supposed to mean, I opened my hands. I hoped it looked polite--I was not going to lie and say I wished I might have met her, for I didn’t, even if it was true that she had aided my palace escape. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1402:We cannot provide a definition of those products from which the age takes it name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture.

They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. The cleverer writers poked fun at their own work. Many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors.

In some periods interviews with well-known personalities on current problems were particularly popular. Noted chemists or piano virtuosos would be queried about politics, for example, or popular actors, dancers, gymnasts, aviators, or even poets would be drawn out on the benefits and drawbacks of being a bachelor, or on the presumptive causes of financial crises, and so on.

All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a subject of current topical interest.

It is very hard indeed for us to put ourselves in the place of those people so that we can truly understand them. But the great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness.

If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned the facts.

What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment.

A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out.

Incidentally, there appear to have been certain games which were regular concomitants of the feature article. The readers themselves took the active role in these games, which put to use some of their glut of information fodder.

Thousands upon thousands spent their leisure hours sitting over squares and crosses made of letters of the alphabet, filling in the gaps according to certain rules.

But let us be wary of seeing only the absurd or insane aspect of this, and let us abstain from ridiculing it. For these people with their childish puzzle games and their cultural feature articles were by no means innocuous children or playful Phaeacians.

Rather, they dwelt anxiously among political, economic, and moral ferments and earthquakes, waged a number of frightful wars and civil wars, and their little cultural games were not just charming, meaningless childishness.

These games sprang from their deep need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary world as innocuous as possible.

They assiduously learned to drive automobiles, to play difficult card games and lose themselves in crossword puzzles--for they faced death, fear, pain, and hunger almost without defenses, could no longer accept the consolations of the churches, and could obtain no useful advice from Reason.

These people who read so many articles and listened to so many lectures did not take the time and trouble to strengthen themselves against fear, to combat the dread of death within themselves; they moved spasmodically on through life and had no belief in a tomorrow. ~ Hermann Hesse,
1403:Witch Of Our Wilderness
I know not why I love your baffling face,
Or, lonely, to your cold caresses steal,
Or what the charm persuades my wearied eyes
Follow the clues that gleam and, wavering, go,
Or spell the syllables of poems new
I fancy floating through your gloom or grace!
Sphinx of green riddles Time shall not unseal!
Mystical knot no stratagem, unties!
I do not comprehend you, but I know
I am not happy long away from you!
Ardent we come, but that averted gaze
Discrowns emotion, and your lips austere,
Native to one in whom the gods confide,
For us breathe only murmurs dim and lone
As are the lullabies of crooning dew
Or dwindling dirges of benighted fays
For queen marooned in a forgotten mere;
Yet though 'tis not for man your witch-words ride
Forsaken winds that know not why they moan,
I am not happy long away from you!
Do you ignore our presence, or disdain
Our pert intrusion on your fettered trees?
Is all our knowledge darkness to the light
That through their woody crevices you pour,
Garnered for them from suns we never knew?
Or can it be your brooding peace is pain?
Do sighs innumerable build the breeze
That mournful walks the soughing waste to-night?
But tell me why, if woe be all your store,
I am not happy long away from you!
You sprawl your reticence of green and gray
Over the no more mute basaltic deep,
Below the sister deafness of the sky;
Nor myriad boughs' hypnotic undertones,
Shadows in orgy, nor haphazard hue
Of flower, nor green delirium will say
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One shining word to beacon us who creep
Amid their bedlamry and forms awry:
Yet, Miser, though for bread you give me stones,
I am not happy long away from you!
Although we gather only in your glades
The tasteless berries of monotony,
Withering leaf, frustrated blossom, white
Skeleton eucalypt's unmeaning woe,
Or wrack of huddled tea-trees, knouted all askew
To serve an old wind's whim, yet from wan shades
Entities ambushed seem to bear to me,
On a rhythm craftsman never tameth quite,
The Song all poets soaring seek, and so
I am not happy long away from you!
Are you the long-forgotten hermitage
Wherein immortal cities crept to sleep?
And do their rooted folk unresting try,
With perfumes wild of some Atlantis old,
To link our dormant hearts akin anew?
Or young auspicious years do they presage
To something watching in me cradled deep,
That knows unknown to me the reason why,
m an orb's dim throes, by iron stars controlled,
I am not happy long away from you!
Though fierce assault not pilgrim prayer avail,
Nor shall we glimpse, however far we seek,
The long importuned palace of your pride,
Yet you-if darkly-to my faith disclose
That duly will Hy-Brasil globe in view!
Ay, can it be that glinting is the Grail?
Do fairies gather ferns along that creek?
Is very God the Merlin that you hide?
Ah, can I wonder, necromantic Rose,
I am not happy long away from you!
We listen long for words the world awaits,
Nor quite lose hope that we shall overhear
Strange Huntsmen faint hallooing, or surprise
The filmy spears the dark earth-legions throw
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Across the void against the retinue
Auroral of the solar potentates;
Yet, though your tongues betray the expectant ear
And dappled melancholy foils our eyes,
Your trees of whispering knowledge call me so,
I am not happy long away from you!
~ Bernard O'Dowd,
1404:Beowulf (Episode 11)
THEN from the moorland, by misty crags,
with God's wrath laden, Grendel came.
The monster was minded of mankind now
sundry to seize in the stately house.
Under welkin he walked, till the wine-palace there,
gold-hall of men, he gladly discerned,
flashing with fretwork. Not first time, this,
that he the home of Hrothgar sought, -yet ne'er in his life-day, late or early,
such hardy heroes, such hall-thanes, found!
To the house the warrior walked apace,
parted from peace; the portal opended,
though with forged bolts fast, when his fists had
struck it,
and baleful he burst in his blatant rage,
the house's mouth. All hastily, then,
o'er fair-paved floor the fiend trod on,
ireful he strode; there streamed from his eyes
fearful flashes, like flame to see.
He spied in hall the hero-band,
kin and clansmen clustered asleep,
hardy liegemen. Then laughed his heart;
for the monster was minded, ere morn should dawn,
savage, to sever the soul of each,
life from body, since lusty banquet
waited his will! But Wyrd forbade him
to seize any more of men on earth
after that evening. Eagerly watched
Hygelac's kinsman his cursed foe,
how he would fare in fell attack.
Not that the monster was minded to pause!
Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior
for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder,
the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams,
swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus
the lifeless corse was clear devoured,
e'en feet and hands. Then farther he hied;
for the hardy hero with hand he grasped,
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felt for the foe with fiendish claw,
for the hero reclining, -- who clutched it boldly,
prompt to answer, propped on his arm.
Soon then saw that shepherd-of-evils
that never he met in this middle-world,
in the ways of earth, another wight
with heavier hand-gripe; at heart he feared,
sorrowed in soul, -- none the sooner escaped!
Fain would he flee, his fastness seek,
the den of devils: no doings now
such as oft he had done in days of old!
Then bethought him the hardy Hygelac-thane
of his boast at evening: up he bounded,
grasped firm his foe, whose fingers cracked.
The fiend made off, but the earl close followed.
The monster meant -- if he might at all -to fling himself free, and far away
fly to the fens, -- knew his fingers' power
in the gripe of the grim one. Gruesome march
to Heorot this monster of harm had made!
Din filled the room; the Danes were bereft,
castle-dwellers and clansmen all,
earls, of their ale. Angry were both
those savage hall-guards: the house resounded.
Wonder it was the wine-hall firm
in the strain of their struggle stood, to earth
the fair house fell not; too fast it was
within and without by its iron bands
craftily clamped; though there crashed from sill
many a mead-bench -- men have told me -gay with gold, where the grim foes wrestled.
So well had weened the wisest Scyldings
that not ever at all might any man
that bone-decked, brave house break asunder,
crush by craft, -- unless clasp of fire
in smoke engulfed it. -- Again uprose
din redoubled. Danes of the North
with fear and frenzy were filled, each one,
who from the wall that wailing heard,
God's foe sounding his grisly song,
cry of the conquered, clamorous pain
from captive of hell. Too closely held him
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he who of men in might was strongest
in that same day of this our life.
~ Anonymous Olde English,
1405:The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor.

But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals.

You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs.

My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species. ~ Matt Ridley,
1406:The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor.

But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary ... You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals.

You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs.

My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species. ~ Matt Ridley,
1407:/Farsi Being humble is right for you now. Don't thrash around showing your strength. You're naked in the bee-house! It doesn't matter how powerful your arms and legs are. To God, that is more of a lie than your weakness is. In his doorway your prestige and your physical energy are just dust on your face. Be helpless and completely poor. And don't try to meet his eye! That's like signing a paper that honors yourself. If you can take care of things, do so! But when you're living at home with God, you neither sew the world together with desires nor tear it apart with disappointments. In that place existence itself is illusion. All that is, is one. Lost in that, your personal form becomes a vast, empty mosque. When you hold on to yourself, you're a fire-worshipping temple. Dissolve, and let everything get done. When you don't, you're an untrained colt, full of erratic loving and biting. Loyal sometimes, then treacherous. Be more like the servant who owns nothing and is neither hungry nor satisfied, who has no hopes for anything, and no fear of anyone. An owl living near the king's palace is considered a bird of misfortune, ragged and ominous. But off in the woods, sitting alone, its feathers grow splendid and sleek like the Phoenix restored. Musk should not be kept near water or heat. The dampness and the dryness spoil its fragrance. But when the musk is at home in the musk bladder, fire and wetness mean nothing. In God's doorway your guilt and your virtue don't count. Whether you're Muslim, or Christian, or fire-worshipper, the categories disappear. You're seeking, and God is what is sought, the essence beyond any cause. External theological learning moves like a moon and fades when the sun of experience rises. We are here for a week, or less. We arrive and leave almost simultaneously. To be is not to be. The Qur'an says, "They go hastening, with the Light running on before them." Clear the way! Muhammed says, "How fine!" A sigh goes out, and there is union. Forget how you came to this gate, your history. Let that be as if it had not been. Do you think the day plans its course by what the rooster says? God does not depend on any of his creatures. Your existence or non-existence is insignificant. Many like you have come here before. When the fountain of light is pouring, there's no need to urge it on! That's like a handful of straw trying to help the sun. "This way! Please, let this light through!" The sun doesn't need an announcer. The lamp you carry is your self-reliance. The sun is something else! Half a sneeze might extinguish your lantern, whereas all a winter's windiness cannot put That out. The road you must take has no particular name. It's the one composed of your own sighing and giving up. What you've been doing is not devotion. Your hoping and worrying are like donkeys wandering loose, sometimes docile, or suddenly mean. Your face looks wise at times, and ashamed at others. There is another way, a pure blankness where those are one expression. Omar once saw a group of boys on the road challenging each other to wrestle. They were all claiming to be champions, but when Omar, the fierce and accomplished warrior, came near, they scattered. All but one, Abdullah Zubair. Omar asked, "Why didn't you run?" "Why should I? You are not a tyrant, and I am not guilty." When someone knows his own inner value, he doesn't care about being accepted or rejected by anyone else. The prince here is strong and just. Stand wondering in his presence. There is nothing but That. [1841.jpg] -- from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks

~ Hakim Sanai, Naked in the Bee-House
,
1408:In Nunhead Cemetary
It is the clay what makes the earth stick to his spade;
He fills in holes like this year after year;
The others have gone; they were tired, and half afraid
But I would rather be standing here;
There is nowhere else to go. I have seen this place
From the windows of the train that's going past
Against the sky. This is rain on my face It was raining here when I saw it last.
There is something horrible about a flower;
This, broken in my hand, is one of those
He threw it in just now; it will not live another hour;
There are thousands more; you do not miss a rose.
One of the children hanging about
Pointed at the whole dreadful heap and smiled
This morning after THAT was carried out;
There is something terrible about a child.
We were like children last week, in the Strand;
That was the day you laughed at me
Because I tried to make you understand
The cheap, stale chap I used to be
Before I saw the things you made me see.
This is not a real place; perhaps by-and-by
I shall wake - I am getting drenched with all this rain:
To-morrow I will tell you about the eyes of the Chrystal Palace train
Looking down on us, and you will laugh and I shall see what you see again.
Not here, not now. We said 'Not yet
Across our low stone parapet
Will the quick shadows of the sparrows fall.
But still it was a lovely thing
Through the grey months to wait for Spring
With the birds that go a-gypsying
In the parks till the blue seas call.
10
And next to these, you used to care
For the Lions in Trafalgar Square,
Who'll stand and speak for London when her bell of Judgement tolls And the gulls at Westminster that were
The old sea-captains souls.
To-day again the brown tide splashes step by step, the river stair,
And the gulls are there!
By a month we have missed our Day:
The children would have hung about
Round the carriage and over the way
As you and I came out.
We should have stood on the gulls' black cliffs and heard the sea
And seen the moon's white track,
I would have called, you would have come to me
And kissed me back.
You have never done that: I do not know
Why I stood staring at your bed
And heard you, though you spoke so low,
But could not reach your hands, your little head;
There was nothing we could not do, you said,
And you went, and I let you go!
Now I will burn you back, I will burn you through,
Though I am damned for it we two will lie
And burn, here where the starlings fly
To these white stones from the wet sky - ;
Dear, you will say this is not I It would not be you, it would not be you!
If for only a little while
You will think of it you will understand,
If you will touch my sleeve and smile
As you did that morning in the Strand
I can wait quietly with you
Or go away if you want me to God! What is God? but your face has gone and your hand!
Let me stay here too.
11
When I was quite a little lad
At Christmas time we went half mad
For joy of all the toys we had,
And then we used to sing about the sheep
The shepherds watched by night;
We used to pray to Christ to keep
Our small souls safe till morning light - ;
I am scared, I am staying with you to-night Put me to sleep.
I shall stay here: here you can see the sky;
The houses in the street are much too high;
There is no one left to speak to there;
Here they are everywhere,
And just above them fields and fields of roses lie If he would dig it all up again they would not die.
~ Charlotte Mary Mew,
1409:Eventually they climb sixteen steps into the Gallery of Mineralogy. The guide shows them a gate from Brazil and violet amethysts and a meteorite on a pedestal that he claims is as ancient as the solar system itself. Then he leads them single file down two twisting staircases and along several corridors and stops outside an iron door with a single keyhole. “End of tour,” he says.

A girl says, “But what’s through there?”

“Behind this door is another locked door, slightly smaller.”

“And what’s behind that?”

“A third locked door, smaller yet.”

“What’s behind that?”

“A fourth door, and a fifth, on and on until you reach a thirteenth, a little locked door no bigger than a shoe.”

The children lean forward. “And then?”

“Behind the thirteenth door”—the guide flourishes one of his impossibly wrinkled hands—“is the Sea of Flames.”

Puzzlement. Fidgeting. “Come now. You’ve never heard of the Sea of Flames?”

The children shake their heads. Marie-Laure squints up at the naked bulbs strung in three-yard intervals along the ceiling; each sets a rainbow-colored halo rotating in her vision.

The guide hangs his cane on his wrist and rubs his hands together. “It’s a long story. Do you want to hear a long story?”

They nod.

He clears his throat. “Centuries ago, in the place we now call Borneo, a prince plucked a blue stone from a dry riverbed because he thought it was pretty. But on the way back to his palace, the prince was attacked by men on horseback and stabbed in the heart.”

“Stabbed in the heart?”

“Is this true?”

A boy says, “Hush.”

“The thieves stole his rings, his horse, everything. But because the little blue stone was clenched in his fist, they did not discover it. And the dying prince managed to crawl home. Then he fell unconscious for ten days. On the tenth day, to the amazement of his nurses, he sat up, opened his hand, and there was the stone.

“The sultan’s doctors said it was a miracle, that the prince never should have survived such a violent wound. The nurses said the stone must have healing powers. The sultan’s jewelers said something else: they said the stone was the largest raw diamond anyone had ever seen. Their most gifted stonecutter spent eighty days faceting it, and when he was done, it was a brilliant blue, the blue of tropical seas, but it had a touch of red at its center, like flames inside a drop of water. The sultan had the diamond fitted into a crown for the prince, and it was said that when the young prince sat on his throne and the sun hit him just so, he became so dazzling that visitors could not distinguish his figure from light itself.”

“Are you sure this is true?” asks a girl.
“Hush,” says the boy.

“The stone came to be known as the Sea of Flames. Some believed the prince was a deity, that as long as he kept the stone, he could not be killed. But something strange began to happen: the longer the prince wore his crown, the worse his luck became. In a month, he lost a brother to drowning and a second brother to snakebite. Within six months, his father died of disease. To make matters even worse, the sultan’s scouts announced that a great army was gathering in the east.

"The prince called together his father’s advisers. All said he should prepare for war, all but one, a priest, who said he’d had a dream. In the dream the Goddess of the Earth told him she’d made the Sea of Flames as a gift for her lover, the God of the Sea, and was sending the jewel to him through the river. But when the river dried up, and the prince plucked it out, the goddess became enraged. She cursed the stone and whoever kept it. ~ Anthony Doerr,
1410:On Seeing A Pupil Of Kung-Sun Dance The Chien-Ch`i
On the nineteenth day of the tenth month of the second year of Ta-li (15
November 767), in the residence of Yuan Ch`ih, Lieutenant-Governor of K`ueichou, I saw Li Shih-er-niang of Lin-ying dance the chien-ch`i.
Impressed by the brilliance and thrust of her style, I asked her whom she had
studied under. ``I am a pupil of Kung-sun'', was the reply.
I remember in the fifth year of K`ai-yuan (717) when I was still a little lad seeing
Kung-sun dance the chien-ch`i
and the hun-t`o at Yen-ch`eng. For purity of technique and self-confident attack
she was unrivaled in her day.
From the ``royal command performers'' and the ``insiders'' of the Spring
Garden and Pear Garden schools in the palace down to the ``official call''
dancers outside, there was no one during the early years of His Sagely Pacific
and Divinely Martial Majesty who understood this dance as she did. Where now is
that lovely figure in its gorgeous costume? Now even I am an old, white-haired
man; and this pupil of hers is well past her prime.
Having found out about the pupil's antecedents, I now realized that what I had
been watching was a faithful
reproduction of the great dancer's interpretation. The train of reflections set off
by this discovery so moved me
that I felt inspired to compose a ballad on the chien-ch`i.
Some years ago, Chang Hsu, the great master of the ``grass writing'' style of
calligraphy, having several times
seeen Kung-sun dance the West River chien-ch`i at Yeh-hsein, afterwards
discovered, to his immense
gratification, that his calligraphy had greatly improved. This gives one some idea
of the sort of person Kung-sun
was.
In time past there was a lovely woman called Kung-sun, whose chien-ch`i
astonished the whole world. Audiences numerous as the hills watched awestruck
as she danced, and, to their reeling senses, the world seemed to go on rising and
falling, long after she had finished dancing. Her flashing swoop was like the nine
suns falling, transfixed by the Mighty Archer's arrows; her
soaring flight like the lords of the sky driving their dragon teams aloft; her
47
advance like the thunder gathering up its dreadful rage; her stoppings like seas
and rivers locked in the cold glint of ice.
The crimson lips, the pearl-encrusted sleeves are now at rest. But in her latter
years there had been a pupil to whom she transmitted the fragrance of her art.
And now in the city of the White Emperor the handsome woman from Lin-ying
performs this dance with superb spirit. Her answers to my questions have
revealed that there was good reason to admire, my ensuing
reflections fill me with painful emotion.
Of the eight thousand women who served our late Emperor, Kung-sun was from
the first the leading performer of the chien-ch`i. Fifty years have now gone by
like a flick of the hand - fifty years in which rebellions and disorders darkened the
royal house. The pupils of the Pear Garden have vanished like the mist. And now
here is this dancer, with the cold winter sun
shining on her fading features.
South of the Hill of Golden Grain the boughs of the trees already interlace. On
the rocky walls of Ch`u-t`ang the dead grasses blow forlornly. At the glittering
feast the shrill flutes have once more concluded. When pleasure is at its height,
sorrow follows.
The moon rises in the east; and I depart, an old man who does not know where
he is going, but whose feet, calloused from much walking in the wild mountains,
make him wearier and wearier of the pace.
~ Du Fu,
1411:The Poet's Song
There came no change from week to week
On all the land, but all one way,
Like ghosts that cannot touch nor speak,
Day followed day.
Within the palace court the rounds
Of glare and shadow, day and night,
Went ever with the same dull sounds,
The same dull flight:
The motion of slow forms of state,
The far-off murmur of the street,
The din of couriers at the gate,
Half-mad with heat;
Sometimes a distant shout of boys
At play upon the terrace walk,
The shutting of great doors, and noise
Of muttered talk.
In one red corner of the wall,
That fronted with its granite stain
The town, the palms, and, beyond all,
The burning plain,
As listless as the hour, alone,
The poet by his broken lute
Sat like a figure in the stone,
Dark-browed and mute.
He saw the heat on the thin grass
Fall till it withered joint by joint,
The shadow on the dial pass
From point to point.
He saw the midnight bright and bare
Fill with its quietude of stars
218
The silence that no human prayer
Attains or mars.
He heard the hours divide, and still
The sentry on the outer wall
Make the night wearier with his shrill
Monotonous call.
He watched the lizard where it lay,
Impassive as the watcher's face;
And only once in the long day
It changed its place.
Sometimes with clank of hoofs and cries
The noon through all its trance was stirred;
The poet sat with half-shut eyes,
Nor saw, nor heard.
And once across the heated close
Light laughter in a silver shower
Fell from fair lips: the poet rose
And cursed the hour.
Men paled and sickened; half in fear,
There came to him at dusk of eve
One who but murmured in his ear
And plucked his sleeve:
'The king is filled with irks, distressed,
And bids thee hasten to his side;
For thou alone canst give him rest.'
The poet cried:
'Go, show the king this broken lute!
Even as it is, so am I!
The tree is perished to its root,
The fountain dry.
'What seeks he of the leafless tree,
The broken lute, the empty spring?
Yea, tho' he give his crown to me,
I cannot sing!'
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II
That night there came from either hand
A sense of change upon the land;
A brooding stillness rustled through
With creeping winds that hardly blew;
A shadow from the looming west,
A stir of leaves, a dim unrest;
It seemed as if a spell had broke.
And then the poet turned and woke
As from the darkness of a dream,
And with a smile divine supreme
Drew up his mantle fold on fold,
And strung his lute with strings of gold,
And bound the sandals to his feet,
And strode into the darkling street.
Through crowds of murmuring men he hied,
With working lips and swinging stride,
And gleaming eyes and brow bent down;
Out of the great gate of the town
He hastened ever and passed on,
And ere the darkness came, was gone,
A mote beyond the western swell.
And then the storm arose and fell
From wheeling shadows black with rain
That drowned the hills and strode the plain;
Round the grim mountain-heads it passed,
Down whistling valleys blast on blast,
Surged in upon the snapping trees,
And swept the shuddering villages.
That night, when the fierce hours grew long,
Once more the monarch, old and grey,
Called for the poet and his song,
And called in vain. But far away,
By the wild mountain-gorges, stirred,
220
The shepherds in their watches heard,
Above the torrent's charge and clang,
The cleaving chant of one that sang.
~ Archibald Lampman,
1412:few years later, Demeter took a vacation to the beach. She was walking along, enjoying the solitude and the fresh sea air, when Poseidon happened to spot her. Being a sea god, he tended to notice pretty ladies walking along the beach. He appeared out of the waves in his best green robes, with his trident in his hand and a crown of seashells on his head. (He was sure that the crown made him look irresistible.) “Hey, girl,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “You must be the riptide, ’cause you sweep me off my feet.” He’d been practicing that pickup line for years. He was glad he finally got to use it. Demeter was not impressed. “Go away, Poseidon.” “Sometimes the sea goes away,” Poseidon agreed, “but it always comes back. What do you say you and me have a romantic dinner at my undersea palace?” Demeter made a mental note not to park her chariot so far away. She really could’ve used her two dragons for backup. She decided to change form and get away, but she knew better than to turn into a snake this time. I need something faster, she thought. Then she glanced down the beach and saw a herd of wild horses galloping through the surf. That’s perfect! Demeter thought. A horse! Instantly she became a white mare and raced down the beach. She joined the herd and blended in with the other horses. Her plan had serious flaws. First, Poseidon could also turn into a horse, and he did—a strong white stallion. He raced after her. Second, Poseidon had created horses. He knew all about them and could control them. Why would a sea god create a land animal like the horse? We’ll get to that later. Anyway, Poseidon reached the herd and started pushing his way through, looking for Demeter—or rather sniffing for her sweet, distinctive perfume. She was easy to find. Demeter’s seemingly perfect camouflage in the herd turned out to be a perfect trap. The other horses made way for Poseidon, but they hemmed in Demeter and wouldn’t let her move. She got so panicky, afraid of getting trampled, that she couldn’t even change shape into something else. Poseidon sidled up to her and whinnied something like Hey, beautiful. Galloping my way? Much to Demeter’s horror, Poseidon got a lot cuddlier than she wanted. These days, Poseidon would be arrested for that kind of behavior. I mean…assuming he wasn’t in horse form. I don’t think you can arrest a horse. Anyway, back in those days, the world was a rougher, ruder place. Demeter couldn’t exactly report Poseidon to King Zeus, because Zeus was just as bad. Months later, a very embarrassed and angry Demeter gave birth to twins. The weirdest thing? One of the babies was a goddess; the other one was a stallion. I’m not going to even try to figure that out. The baby girl was named Despoine, but you don’t hear much about her in the myths. When she grew up, her job was looking after Demeter’s temple, like the high priestess of corn magic or something. Her baby brother, the stallion, was named Arion. He grew up to be a super-fast immortal steed who helped out Hercules and some other heroes, too. He was a pretty awesome horse, though I’m not sure that Demeter was real proud of having a son who needed new horseshoes every few months and was constantly nuzzling her for apples. At this point, you’d think Demeter would have sworn off those gross, disgusting men forever and joined Hestia in the Permanently Single Club. Strangely, a couple of months later, she fell in love with a human prince named Iasion (pronounced EYE-son, I think). Just shows you how far humans had come since Prometheus gave them fire. Now they could speak and write. They could brush their teeth and comb their hair. They wore clothes and occasionally took baths. Some of them were even handsome enough to flirt with goddesses. ~ Rick Riordan,
1413:To Love And Time
TO MRS. MULSO.
On Stella's brow as lately envious Time
His crooked lines with iron pencil traced,
That brow, erewhile like ivory tablets smooth,
With Love's high trophies hung, and victories graced,
Digging him little caves in every cell,
And every dimple, once where Love was wont to dwell;
He spied the God: and wondered still to spy,
Who higher held his torch in Time's despite;
Nor seemed to care for aught that he could do.
Then sternly thus he sought him thence to' affright:
The sovereign boy entrenched in a smile,
At his sour crabbed speech sat mocking all the while.
“What dost thou here, fond boy? Away, for shame!
Mine is this field, by conquest fairly won;
Love cannot reap his joys where Time has ploughed,
Thou and thy light-winged troop should now begone.
Go revel with fresh Youth in scenes of folly,
Sage Thought I bring, and Care, and pale-eyed Melancholy.
“Thy streams are froze, that once so briskly ran,
Thy bough is shaken by the mellow year;
Boreas and Zephyr dwell not in one cave,
And swallows spread their wings when winter's near;
See where Florella's cheeks soft bloom disclose,
Go seek the springing bud, and leave the faded rose.”
Thus spake old Time, of Love the deadliest foe,—
Ah me, that gentle Love such foes should meet!
But nothing daunted he returned again,
Tempering with looks austere his native sweet;
And, “Fool!” said he, “to think I e'er shall fly
From that rich palace where my choicest treasures lie.
“Dost thou not see,—or art thou blind with age,—
How many Graces on her eyelids sit,
Linking those viewless chains that bind the soul,
And sharpening smooth discourse with pointed wit;
How many where she moves attendant wait,
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The slow smooth step inspire, or high commanding gait?
“Each one a several charm around her throws,
Some to attract, some powerful to repell,
Some mix the honeyed speech with winning smiles,
Or call wild Laughter from his antic cell;
Severer some, to strike with awful fear
Each rude licentious tongue that wounds the virtuous ear.
“Not one of them is of thy scythe in dread,
Or for thy cankered malice careth aught,
Thy shaking fingers never can untwist
The magic cæstus by their cunning wrought;
And I, their knight, their bidding must obey,
For where the Graces are, will Love for ever stay.
“In my rich fields now boast the ravage done,
Those lesser spoils,—her brow, her cheek, her hair,
All that the touches of decay can feel,—
Take these, she has enough besides to spare;
I cannot thee dislodge, nor shalt thou me,
So thou and I, old Time, perforce must once agree.
“Nor is the boasted ravage all thine own,
Nor was the field by conquest fairly gained;
For leagued with Sickness, Life and Nature's foe,
That fiend accurst thy savage wars maintained;
His hand the furrows sunk where thou didst plough,
He undermined the tree, where thou didst shake the bough.
“But both unite, for both I here defy;
Spoil ye have made, but have no triumphs won;
And though the daffodil more freshly blooms,
Spreading her gay leaves to the morning sun,
Yet never will I leave the faded rose,
Whilst the pale lovely flower such sweetness still bestows.”
This said, exulting Cupid clapped his wings.
The sullen power, who found his rage restrained,
And felt the strong controul of higher charms,
Shaking his glass, vowed while the sands would run
For many a year the strife should be maintained:
But Jove decreed no force should Love destroy,
Nor time should quell the might of that immortal boy.
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~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,
1414:The morning following Shaselle’s arrest and release, I descended the Grand Staircase to the entry hall below and was drawn toward the antechamber by raised voices. I entered to find one of my worst nightmares unfolding--Steldor and Narian were in heated argument, both seeming to have discounted where they were and who might overhear. They stood opposite one another across the room from me, Steldor likely having come from Cannan’s office, while Narian had probably been passing through on his way to the Hearing Hall. I stared transfixed, not knowing what they were arguing about, but certain they would not appreciate my interference.
“What business have you in the Bastion?” my betrothed demanded.
“Business that is not yours, Cokyrian,” Steldor spat.
Narian glowered at the former King. “Much as you might detest the thought, Steldor, I am no longer your enemy.”
“These scars on my back argue differently.”
“I was merciful in leaving you alive. You asked for execution and I ordered a lashing. If not for your ridiculous pride, you’d acknowledge that.”
Steldor laughed mirthlessly. “I owe you nothing after all you’ve taken from me.”
“Alera is not a possession,” Narian astutely shot back.
“Alera hadn’t entered my mind.” The curl in Steldor’s lip revealed the lie, and the hostility he exuded would have made most men run in the other direction. But Narian wasn’t most men.
“And yet I see you around this Bastion, her home, more than any soldier or son need be. You yearn for any chance glimpse of her.”
“I come to the palace on business, you mongrel pup.”
“Then pray tell, what business is that?”
I stood miserably by, for it was apparent neither of them was aware of my presence. Still, the argument had come full circle, and I prayed it would soon be over.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Steldor seethed. “You are not my superior.” His dark eyes glinted malevolently, a look he had once or twice directed at me during our unfortunate marriage.
“True enough. But you are nonetheless one of my subjects.”
Steldor’s fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, telling me how close he was to unleashing his hellish temper. Before I could intervene, he threw a right cross at Narian’s chin, which the commander adroitly dodged, stepping back and raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I suggest you walk away, Steldor,” he said, unnervingly calm.
“I did so once,” my former husband retorted. “I don’t intend to do so again.”
Narian perused his opponent, judging his strengths and weaknesses, then struck Steldor in the middle of his chest with the heel of his palm, sending him staggering backward. In a flash, a dagger appeared in Steldor’s hand, and panic seized me. Would they spill each other’s blood right here, right now?
“Stop!” I cried. “Both of you!”
They straightened warily at the sound of my voice, and I hurried to stand between them, so distraught my hands were shaking.
“I don’t know what this is about,” I beseeched, hoping Cannan would hear and lend assistance. “But please, for my sake, leave things be.”
They glared at each other over the top of my head, then Steldor moved away, his eyes on Narian until he could place a hand on the door leading into the Grand Entry.
“Queen Alera,” he pointedly acknowledged me. “I humbly honor your request.”
With a disdainful smirk for Narian, he tossed the knife onto the floor, then exited, pulling the door firmly closed behind him. Narian crossed to snatch up the weapon, examining it carefully before showing it to me.
“Do you plan to tell me that you recognize this blade?” he asked, and I stared at him, dumbfounded. With a stiff nod, he strode through the same door Steldor had used, leaving me alone. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1415:The door to the captain’s office was open, the room vacant but for the memories it held, and I staggered forward to sink into a chair. I closed my eyes, filled with a dreadful, yearning sorrow. Cannan had been such a powerful presence in the palace--in our lives--for so many years that it felt as though the heart of our kingdom had been taken from us. He had been Captain of the Guard for thirty years, and had not failed once in his duties; he had saved more lives than he had ever taken in war; and he had raised Steldor to be the man he was today--a bold, brave, sacrificing man. The son was his father in many, many ways.
I was startled out of my thoughts by a knock, and turned to see Steldor standing in the doorway. He glanced around the office, his expression composed, and yet it held a deep and immutable sorrow.
“I was told I would find you here,” he said.
“How are you?” I asked, nervously twining my hands.
“As good as can be expected, I suppose.”
“And Galen?”
“He has Tiersia.”
I nodded, averting my gaze. I knew his answer had been an honest one, and had not been meant to hurt me, but sadness filled me. I wanted him to have someone--he deserved to have someone. Only that someone could not be me.
“Let’s go to my drawing room,” I suggested, for Cannan’s office was not a place that would allow us to talk about the future, and that was what we needed to do. Steldor stepped aside, allowing me to exit first. He spent one last moment absorbing the look and feel of his father’s office, then respectfully closed the door.
When we reached the Queen’s Drawing Room at the front of the palace, we walked over to the bay window that granted a view of the Eastern Courtyard to talk, much as we had when he had told me of his plan to annul our marriage. But this time, I was the one who needed to speak. I slipped my hand into his, and he glanced at me in mild surprise.
“I’m sorry about your father’s passing. I know how close you were to him. His strength and guidance will be missed by all. Despite our kingdom’s glory, Hytanica is less without him.”
Steldor did not respond, but gazed stoically out the window. Then he nodded twice and took a deep breath, reining in his emotions. Even now, with me, he was proud, not knowing that I wanted to hold him and let him cry, and that if he did, I would not, even for an instant, find him weak. He ran a hand through his dark hair and turned to face me, silently begging me to change the subject, and I obliged.
“”And how is the rest of your family?”
“Amid our losses, there is also some good news. Shaselle has a suitor.”
“Do you approve of her choice? After all, you are the man of the family now.”
“There’s no accounting for taste.” He smirked, seeming thankful for my attempt at normalcy. “Actually, Lord Grayden is a good man--a man who met my father’s approval and, I believe, would have met Baelic’s. When the time is right, I expect a betrothal.” Again a smile played across his features. “Now I just have to worry about the other three girls in the family.”
I laughed, lacing my fingers through his when I felt he might pull away. I did not know how he would react to my coming proposal--and whether he would admit it or not, he needed some comfort now.
“Steldor,” I said, my tone and demeanor once more serious, “when I see Galen, I will reinstate him as Sergeant at Arms.”
“An excellent decision.”
I nodded, then continued. “But our military needs to be reformed. It needs a strong and passionate leader, someone who will do Cannan and all of his work justice. I cannot think of anyone more suited to taking over the position of Captain of the Guard than you.”
He did not immediately reply, but his eyes went to our hands, and he raised mine to his lips as he had so often done before. ~ Cayla Kluver,
1416:My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
1417:Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides
Behind thy pearly veil's
Opaque, mysterious woof?
Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long
Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads,
Nigh me I still can mark
Cool fields of beaded grass.
No more; for on the rim of the globed world
I seem to stand and stare at nothingness.
But songs of unseen birds
And tranquil roll of waves
Bring sweet assurance of continuous life
Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams,
Of tissue subtler still
Than the wreathed fog, arise,
And cheat my brain with airy vanishings
And mystic glories of the world beyond.
A whole enchanted town
Thy baffling folds concealAn Orient town, with slender-steepled mosques,
Turret from turret springing, dome from dome,
Fretted with burning stones,
And trellised with red gold.
Through spacious streets, where running waters flow,
Sun-screened by fruit-trees and the broad-leaved palm,
Past the gay-decked bazaars,
Walk turbaned, dark-eyed men.
Hark! you can hear the many murmuring tongues,
While loud the merchants vaunt their gorgeous wares.
The sultry air is spiced
With fragrance of rich gums,
77
And through the lattice high in yon dead wall,
See where, unveiled, an arch, young, dimpled face,
Flushed like a musky peach,
Peers down upon the mart!
From her dark, ringleted and bird-poised head
She hath cast back the milk-white silken veil:
'Midst the blank blackness there
She blossoms like a rose.
Beckons she not with those bright, full-orbed eyes,
And open arms that like twin moonbeams gleam?
Behold her smile on me
With honeyed, scarlet lips!
Divine Scheherazade! I am thine.
I come! I come!-Hark! from some far-off mosque
The shrill muezzin calls
The hour of silent prayer,
And from the lattice he hath scared my love.
The lattice vanisheth itself-the street,
The mart, the Orient town;
Only through still, soft air
That cry is yet prolonged. I wake to hear
The distant fog-horn peal: before mine eyes
Stands the white wall of mist,
Blending with vaporous skies.
Elusive gossamer, impervious
Even to the mighty sun-god's keen red shafts!
With what a jealous art
Thy secret thou dost guard!
Well do I know deep in thine inmost folds,
Within an opal hollow, there abides
The lady of the mist,
The Undine of the airA slender, winged, ethereal, lily form,
78
Dove-eyed, with fair, free-floating, pearl-wreathed hair,
In waving raiment swathed
Of changing, irised hues.
Where her feet, rosy as a shell, have grazed
The freshened grass, a richer emerald glows:
Into each flower-cup
Her cool dews she distills.
She knows the tops of jagged mountain-peaks,
She knows the green soft hollows of their sides,
And unafraid she floats
O'er the vast-circled seas.
She loves to bask within the moon's wan beams,
Lying, night-long upon the moist, dark earth,
And leave her seeded pearls
With morning on the grass.
Ah! that athwart these dim, gray outer courts
Of her fantastic palace I might pass,
And reach the inmost shrine
Of her chaste solitude,
And feel her cool and dewy fingers press
My mortal-fevered brow, while in my heart
She poured with tender love
Her healing Lethe-balm!
See! the close curtain moves, the spell dissolves!
Slowly it lifts: the dazzling sunshine streams
Upon a newborn world
And laughing summer seas.
Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance
Through crystal air. On the horizon's marge,
Like a huge purple wraith,
The dusky fog retreats.
~ Emma Lazarus,
1418:Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
  Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
  Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
  From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
  The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
  Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
  Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
  Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven
  In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows
  Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
  In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
  With thy voice is loud.
As, when night is bare,
  From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;
  What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
  Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden
  In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
  Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
  In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
  Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
  In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
  Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
  In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
  Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
  On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
  All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
  What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
  Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
  Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine, would be all
  But an empty vaunt
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
  Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
  What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
  Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
  Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
  Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
  Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
  And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
  With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
  Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
  Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
  Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
  That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
  That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
  From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
Composed at Leghorn, 1820, and published with "Prometheus Unbound" in the same year. There is a transcript in the Harvard manuscript.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, To A Skylark
,
1419:Fragment Of A Greek Tragedy
CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.
ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.
CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with feet for oars?
ALCMAEON: Plying with speed my partnership of legs.
CHORUS: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
ALCMAEON: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
CHORUS: To learn your name would not displease me much.
ALCMAEON: Not all that men desire do they obtain.
CHORUS: Might I then hear at what thy presence shoots.
ALCMAEON: A shepherd's questioned mouth informed me that-CHORUS: What? for I know not yet what you will say.
ALCMAEON: Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
CHORUS: Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.
ALCMAEON: This house was Eriphyle's, no one else's.
CHORUS: Nor did he shame his throat with shameful lies.
ALCMAEON: May I then enter, passing through the door?
CHORUS: Go chase into the house a lucky foot.
And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good,
And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
For that is much the safest plan.
ALCMAEON: I go into the house with heels and speed.
CHORUS
Strophe
In speculation
I would not willingly acquire a name
For ill-digested thought;
But after pondering much
To this conclusion I at last have come:
22
LIFE IS UNCERTAIN.
This truth I have written deep
In my reflective midriff
On tablets not of wax,
Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there,
For many reasons: LIFE, I say, IS NOT
A STRANGER TO UNCERTAINTY.
Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls
This fact did I discover,
Nor did the Delphine tripod bark it out,
Nor yet Dodona.
Its native ingunuity sufficed
My self-taught diaphragm.
Antistrophe
Why should I mention
The Inachean daughter, loved of Zeus?
Her whom of old the gods,
More provident than kind,
Provided with four hoofs, two horns, one tail,
A gift not asked for,
And sent her forth to learn
The unfamiliar science
Of how to chew the cud.
She therefore, all about the Argive fields,
Went cropping pale green grass and nettle-tops,
Nor did they disagree with her.
But yet, howe'er nutritious, such repasts
I do not hanker after:
Never may Cypris for her seat select
My dappled liver!
Why should I mention Io? Why indeed?
I have no notion why.
Epode
But now does my boding heart,
Unhired, unaccompanied, sing
A strain not meet for the dance.
Yes even the palace appears
To my yoke of circular eyes
23
(The right, nor omit I the left)
Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak,
Garnished with woolly deaths
And many sphipwrecks of cows.
I therefore in a Cissian strain lament:
And to the rapid
Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest
Resounds in concert
The battering of my unlucky head.
ERIPHYLE (within): O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
CHORUS: I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
ERIPHYLE: He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.
CHORUS: I would not be reputed rash, but yet
I doubt if all be gay within the house.
ERIPHYLE: O! O! another stroke! that makes the third.
He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
CHORUS: If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
But thine arithmetic is quite correct.
~ Alfred Edward Housman,
1420:The Venetians catalogue everything, including themselves. ‘These grapes are brown,’ I complain to the young vegetable-dealer in Santa Maria Formosa. ‘What is wrong with that ? I am brown,’ he replies. ‘I am the housemaid of the painter Vedova,’ says a maid, answering the telephone. ‘I am a Jew,’ begins a cross-eyed stranger who is next in line in a bookshop. ‘Would you care to see the synagogue?’
Almost any Venetian, even a child, will abandon whatever he is doing in order to show you something. They do not merely give directions; they lead, or in some cases follow, to make sure you are still on the right way. Their great fear is that you will miss an artistic or ‘typical’ sight. A sacristan, who has already been tipped, will not let you leave until you have seen the last Palma Giovane. The ‘pope’ of the Chiesa dei Greci calls up to his housekeeper to throw his black hat out the window and settles it firmly on his broad brow so that he can lead us personally to the Archaeological Museum in the Piazza San Marco; he is afraid that, if he does not see to it, we shall miss the Greek statuary there.
This is Venetian courtesy. Foreigners who have lived here a long time dismiss it with observation : ‘They have nothing else to do.’ But idleness here is alert, on the qui vive for the opportunity of sightseeing; nothing delights a born Venetian so much as a free gondola ride. When the funeral gondola, a great black-and-gold ornate hearse, draws up beside a fondamenta, it is an occasion for aesthetic pleasure. My neighbourhood was especially favoured this way, because across the campo was the Old Men’s Home. Everyone has noticed the Venetian taste in shop displays, which extends down to the poorest bargeman, who cuts his watermelons in half and shows them, pale pink, with green rims against the green side-canal, in which a pink palace with oleanders is reflected. Che bello, che magnifici, che luce, che colore! - they are all professori delle Belle Arti. And throughout the Veneto, in the old Venetian possessions, this internal tourism, this expertise, is rife. In Bassano, at the Civic Museum, I took the Mayor for the local art-critic until he interupted his discourse on the jewel-tones (‘like Murano glass’) in the Bassani pastorals to look at his watch and cry out: ‘My citizens are calling me.’ Near by, in a Paladian villa, a Venetian lasy suspired, ‘Ah, bellissima,’ on being shown a hearthstool in the shape of a life-size stuffed leather pig. Harry’s bar has a drink called a Tiziano, made of grapefruit juice and champagne and coloured pink with grenadine or bitters. ‘You ought to have a Tintoretto,’ someone remonstrated, and the proprietor regretted that he had not yet invented that drink, but he had a Bellini and a Giorgione.
When the Venetians stroll out in the evening, they do not avoid the Piazza San Marco, where the tourists are, as Romans do with Doney’s on the Via Veneto. The Venetians go to look at the tourists, and the tourists look back at them. It is all for the ear and eye, this city, but primarily for the eye. Built on water, it is an endless succession of reflections and echoes, a mirroring. Contrary to popular belief, there are no back canals where tourist will not meet himself, with a camera, in the person of the another tourist crossing the little bridge. And no word can be spoken in this city that is not an echo of something said before. ‘Mais c’est aussi cher que Paris!’ exclaims a Frenchman in a restaurant, unaware that he repeats Montaigne. The complaint against foreigners, voiced by a foreigner, chimes querulously through the ages, in unison with the medieval monk who found St. Mark’s Square filled with ‘Turks, Libyans, Parthians, and other monsters of the sea’. Today it is the Germans we complain of, and no doubt they complain of the Americans, in the same words. ~ Mary McCarthy,
1421:Where are we going?” I asked as he helped me down the stairs.
“Stable. One chance of getting out is there--if we’re fast.”
Neither of us wasted any more breath. He had to look around constantly while bearing my weight. I concentrated on walking.
At the stable, servants were running back and forth on errands, but we made our way slowly along the wall of a long, low building toward a row of elegant town carriages.
I murmured, “Don’t tell me…I’m to steal one of these?”
Azmus gave a breathless laugh. “You’ll steal a ride--if we can get you in. Your best chance is the one that belongs to the Princess of Renselaeus--if we can, by some miracle, get near it. The guards will never stop it, even if the hue and cry is raised. And she doesn’t live within Athanarel, but at the family palace in the city.”
“Renselaeus…” I repeated, then grinned. The Princess was the mother of the Marquis. The Prince, her husband, who was rumored to have been badly wounded in the Pirate Wars, never left their land. I loved the idea of making my escape under the nose of Shevraeth’s mother. Next thing to snapping my fingers under his nose.
Suddenly there was an increase in noise from the direction of the palace. A young girl came running toward us, torch hissing and streaming in the rain. “Savona!” she yelled. “Savona!”
A carriage near the front of the line was maneuvered out, rolling out of the courtyard toward the distant great hall.
Keeping close to the walls, we moved along the line until we were near a handsome equipage that looked comfortable and well sprung, even in the dark and rain. All around it stood a cluster of servants dressed in sky blue, black, and white.
Two more names were called out by runners, and then came, “Renselaeus!”
But before the carriage could roll, the runner dashed up and said, “Wait! Wait! Get canopies! She won’t come out without canopies--says her gown will be ruined.”
One of the servants groaned; they all, except the driver, dashed inside the stable.
Next to me, Azmus drew in his breath in a sharp hiss. “Come,” he said. “This is it.”
And we crossed the few steps to the carriage. A quick look. Everyone else was seeing to their own horses, or wiping rain from windows, or trying to stay out of the worst of the wet. At the back of the coach was a long trunk; Azmus lifted the lid and helped me climb up and inside. “I do not know if I can get to the Renselaeus palace to aid you,” he warned as he lowered the lid.
“I’ll make it,” I promised. “Thanks. You’ll be remembered for this.”
“Down with Merindar,” he murmured. “Farewell, my lady.”
And the lid closed.
Lying flat was a relief, though the thick-woven hemp flooring scraped at my cheek. Around me muffled voices arrived. The carriage rocked as the foot servants grabbed hold. Then we moved, slowly, smoothly. Then stopped.
Faintly, beckoning and lovely, I heard two melodic lines traded back and forth between sweet wind instruments, and the thrumming of metallic harp strings.
A high, imperious voice drowned the music: “Come, come! Closer together! Step as one, now. I mustn’t ruin this gown…The King himself spoke in praise of it…I can only wear it again if it is not ruined…Step lively there, and have a care for puddles. There!”
I could envision a crowd of foot servants holding rain canopies over her head, like a moving tent, as the old lady bustled across the mud. She arrived safely in the carriage, and when she was closed in, once again we started to roll.
“Ware, gate!” the driver called presently. “Ware for Renselaeus!” The carriage scarcely slowed. I heard the creak of the great iron gates--the ones that were supposed to be sporting my head within a day. They swung shut with a graunching of protesting metal, and the carriage rolled out of Athanarel and into the city. ~ Sherwood Smith,
1422:Lieutenant Smith was asked by Mister Zumwald to get him a drink,” Wilkes said. “She responded with physical violence. I counseled her on conduct unbecoming of an officer and, when she reacted with foul language, on disrespect to a superior officer, sir, and I’ll stand by that position. Sir.”

“I agree that her actions were unbecoming, Captain,” Steve said, mildly. “She really should have resolved it with less force. Which I told her as well as a strong lecture on respect to a superior officer. On the other hand, Captain, Mister Zumwald physically accosted her, grabbing her arm and, when she protested, called her a bitch. Were you aware of that, Captain?”

“She did say something about it, sir,” Wilkes said. “However… ”

“I also understand that you spent some time with Mister Zumwald afterwards,” Steve said. “Rather late. Did you at any time express to Mister Zumwald that accosting any woman, much less an officer of… what was it? ‘The United States Naval services’ was unacceptable behavior, Captain?”

“Sir,” Wilkes said. “Mister Zumwald is a major Hollywood executive… ”

“Was,” Steve said.

“Excuse me, sir?” Wilkes said.

“Was a major Hollywood executive,” Steve said. “Right now, Ernest Zumwald, Captain, is a fucking refugee off a fucking lifeboat. Period fucking dot. He’s given a few days grace, like most refugees, to get his headspace and timing back, then he can decide if he wants to help out or go in with the sick, lame and lazy. And in this case he’s a fucking refugee who thinks it’s acceptable to accost some unknown chick and tell him to get him a fucking drink. Grab her by the arm and, when she tells him to let go, become verbally abusive.

“What makes the situation worse, Captain, is that the person he accosted was not just any passing young hotty but a Marine officer. He did not know that at the time; the Marine officer was dressed much like other women in the compartment. However, he does not have the right to grab any woman in my care by the fucking arm and order them to get him a fucking drink, Captain! Then, to make matters worse, following the incident, Captain, you spent the entire fucking evening getting drunk with a fucktard who had physically and verbally assaulted a female Marine officer! You dumbshit.”

“Sir, I… ” Wilkes said, paling.

“And not just any Marine officer, oh, no,” Steve said. “Forget that it was the daughter of the Acting LANTFLEET. Forget that it was the daughter of your fucking rating officer, you retard. I’m professional enough to overlook that. I really am. There’s personal and professional, and I do actually know the line. Except that it was, professionally, a disgraceful action on your part, Captain. But not just any Marine officer, Captain. No, this was a Marine officer that, unlike you, is fucking worshipped by your Marines, Captain. This is a Marine officer that the acting Commandant thinks only uses boats so her boots don’t get wet walking from ship to ship. This is a Marine officer who is the only fucking light in the darkness to the entire Squadron, you dumbfuck!

“I’d already gotten the scuttlebutt that you were a palace prince pogue who was a cowardly disgrace to the Marine uniform, Captain. I was willing to let that slide because maybe you could run the fucking clearance from the fucking door. But you just pissed off every fucking Marine we’ve got, you idiot. You incredible dumbfuck, moron!

“In case you hadn’t noticed, you are getting cold-shouldered by everyone you work with while you were brown-nosing some fucking useless POS who used to ‘be somebody.’ ‘Your’ Marines are spitting on your shadow and that includes your fucking Gunnery Sergeant! Captain, am I getting through to you? Are you even vaguely recognizing how badly you fucked up? Professionally, politically, personally? ~ John Ringo,
1423:I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes
of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way
to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones.
This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will
go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I
see you as a young girl in a good world still,
writing three generations before mine. I try
to reach into your page and breathe it back…
but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
This is the sack of time your death vacates.
How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates
in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past
me with your Count, while a military band
plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last,
a pleated old lady with a crooked hand.
Once you read Lohengrin and every goose
hung high while you practiced castle life
in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce
history to a guess. The count had a wife.
You were the old maid aunt who lived with us.
Tonight I read how the winter howled around
the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious
language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound
of the music of the rats tapping on the stone
floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone.
This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne,
Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn
your first climb up Mount San Salvatore;
this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes,
the yankee girl, the iron interior
of her sweet body. You let the Count choose
your next climb. You went together, armed
with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches
and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed
by the thick woods of briars and bushes,
nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo
up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated
with his coat off as you waded through top snow.
He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled
down on the train to catch a steam boat for home;
or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome.
This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue.
I read how you walked on the Palatine among
the ruins of the palace of the Caesars;
alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July.
When you were mine they wrapped you out of here
with your best hat over your face. I cried
because I was seventeen. I am older now.
I read how your student ticket admitted you
into the private chapel of the Vatican and how
you cheered with the others, as we used to do
on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November
you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll,
float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,
to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional
breeze. You worked your New England conscience out
beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout.
Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come
here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose
world go drunk each night, to see the handsome
children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close
one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you,
you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,
rocking from its sour sound, out onto
the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall
and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by
to mumble your guilty love while your ears die. ~ Anne Sexton,
1424:Causerie (Conversation)
Vous êtes un beau ciel d'automne, clair et rose!
Mais la tristesse en moi monte comme la mer,
Et laisse, en refluant, sur ma lèvre morose
Le souvenir cuisant de son limon amer.
— Ta main se glisse en vain sur mon sein qui se pâme;
Ce qu'elle cherche, amie, est un lieu saccagé
Par la griffe et la dent féroce de la femme.
Ne cherchez plus mon coeur; les bêtes l'ont mangé.
Mon coeur est un palais flétri par la cohue;
On s'y soûle, on s'y tue, on s'y prend aux cheveux!
— Un parfum nage autour de votre gorge nue!...
Ô Beauté, dur fléau des âmes, tu le veux!
Avec tes yeux de feu, brillants comme des fêtes,
Calcine ces lambeaux qu'ont épargnés les bêtes!
Conversation
You are a lovely autumn sky, clear and rosy!
But sadness rises in me like the sea,
And as it ebbs, leaves on my sullen lips
The burning memory of its bitter slime.
— In vain does your band slip over my swooning breast;
What it seeks, darling, is a place plundered
By the claws and the ferocious teeth of woman.
Seek my heart no longer; the beasts have eaten it.
My heart is a palace polluted by the mob;
They get drunk there, kill, tear each other's hair!
— A perfume floats about your naked breast!...
O Beauty, ruthless scourge of souls, you desire it!
With the fire of your eyes, brilliant as festivals,
Bum these tatters which the beasts spared!
132
— Translated by William Aggeler
Conversation
You're like an autumn sky, rose, clear, and placid.
But sorrow whelms me, like the tide's assault,
And ebbing, leaves upon my lips the acid
And muddy-bitter memory of its salt.
Your band may stroke my breast, but not console.
What it seeks there is but a hole, deep caverned
By women's claws and fangs, and ransacked whole.
Seek not my heart, on which the beasts have ravened.
My heart's a palace plundered by the rabble:
They tope, they kill, in blood and guts they scrabble:
— A perfume swims around your naked breast!
O Beauty, flail of spirits, you know best!
With your eyes' fire, lit up as for a spree,
Char the poor rags those beasts have left of me!
— Translated by Roy Campbell
Episode
You are a lovely, rosy, lucid autumn sky!
But sadness mounts upon me like a flooding sea,
And ebbs, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose and dry,
Smarting with salty ooze, bitter with memory.
— Useless to slide your hand like that along my breast;
That which it seeks, my dear, is plundered; it is slit
By the soft paw of woman, that clawed while it caressed.
Useless to hunt my heart; the beasts have eaten it.
My heart is like a palace where the mob has spat;
There they carouse, they seize each other's hair, they kill.
— Your breast is naked... what exotic scent is that?...
O Beauty, iron flail of souls, it is your will!
133
So be it! Eyes of fire, bright in the darkness there,
Bum up these strips of flesh the beasts saw fit to spare.
— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Conversation
You are the loveliness, the clearness, the red of autumn skies!
But sadness climbs like a sea in me,
Leaving, in reflux, upon my bitter lip
The sharp memory of its biting slime.
— In vain your hand slips on my fainting chest;
What it seeks, my darling, is but a place pillaged
By the fang and the fierce tooth of woman.
Do not search for my heart anymore; the wild beasts have eaten it.
My heart is a palace soiled by the mob;
There they swill, and they brawl, and they kill!
— A fragrance swims around your naked breasts.
O Beauty, cruel scourge of souls, you long for it!
With your eyes that flame, brilliant as festivals,
Bum these tatters that the beasts have spared me!
—Translated by Geoffrey Wagner
~ Charles Baudelaire,
1425:An Experiment In Translation
Blest husbandmen! if they but knew their bliss!
For whom, from war remote, fair-minded Earth
Teems, to light toil, with ready sustenance.
What though from splendid palace streams at dawn
No servile train, gaping at inlaid gates,
Corinthian bronzes, garments tricked with gold;
What though for them no snow-white wool be stained
By Eastern dyes, nor oil be smeared with nard,
Secure tranquillity is theirs, a life
Of rural wealth, from galling failure free,
Of ample leisure amid broad domains,
Cool grots, and shimmering pools, and shady groves,
Lowing of kine, and, after woodland chase,
Delight of slumber under noonday boughs:
Hard-working hinds to homely fare inured,
Fear of the Gods, and reverence for age.
Justice, deserting Earth, forsook them last.
For me, enamoured of the darling Muse,
Whose badge I bear, may she to me reveal
The secret of the stars, the sun's eclipse,
Moon's endless labour, earthquake, storm, and calm,
Why winter suns subside into the sea
So soon, and summer twilights stay so long.
But if not mine the native fire and force
To find my way to Nature's very heart,
Leave me green vales and irrigating rills,
And soothe my lack of fame with woods and streams.
Where are the braes and burns of Thessaly,
And Spartan maidens wantoning in the woods!
O who will hence now wizard me away
To Haemus' dewy dingles, and with dense
Umbrageous branches curtain my retreat!
Thrice blest indeed is he that apprehends
The root and real significance of things,
Who tramples under foot both fear and fate,
Nor dreads the roar of Acheron's yawning surge.
Nor happy less, who knows the rustic gods,
Pan, old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs.
143
To menace of the mob or regal frown,
To Dacian hosts and fratricidal strife,
Future of Rome, and perishable realms,
Insensible alike, his heart is spared
Pain for the poor and envy of the rich.
His wealth the harvest trunk and furrow yield,
Nothing he recks of edicts cast in bronze,
News of the hour, or Senate's wrangling strife.
Some scour the seas in search of war, and storm
The gates of Kings, put cities to the sword,
To drain gemmed goblets, snore in Tyrian sheets;
Some gloat upon their golden hoards, while some
Are dazed by sounding rhetoric or befooled
By cheers repeated from patrician lips
And plebs alike; exult in brother's blood;
Or in sheer lust of exile quit their home
To seek a roof beneath some other sky.
With his curved share the wise swain stirs the soil,
Source of his constant care, and sustenance
Of country, kin, sleek kine, and generous steers.
Respite is none; for still the season teems
With fruits, or lambing flocks; or mellow sheaves
Crest the long furrows, and restock the barns.
Then Winter comes; the olives must be pressed,
The hogs grunt homeward gorged with mast; the grove
Yields arbutus, the Autumn peach and pear,
And the grapes ripen on the warm dry soil.
Meanwhile his children clamber to be kissed,
His honour lives unstained, the foaming pail
Brims with abounding milk, and on the sward
Young kids do mimic battle with their horns.
'Tis he that leads the Feast; and when his folk
Have lit the altar-fire and wreathed the cup,
Thee, Bacchus, with libation he invokes, and then
Tests at the target his head-shepherds' skill,
Or bids them strip and wrestle for the prize.
Such was the life the Sabines led of old,
Such Remus and his twin; and thus it was
Etruria throve; thus seven-hilled Rome became
One with itself, the glory of the world.
Such, too, ere yet unnatural Minos reigned,
And impious mortals banqueted on flesh,
144
The simple manners of the Golden Age.
~ Alfred Austin,
1426:Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years.
A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers.
Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this.
With her caught touching his things.
Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy.
She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?”
He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.”
“No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.”
The silence after that was soft.
Her fingers curled around the violin. She wanted to ask Arin a question yet couldn’t bear to do it, couldn’t say that she didn’t understand what had happened to him the night of the invasion. It didn’t make sense. The death of his family was what her father would call a “waste of resources.” The Valorian force had had no pity for the Herrani military, but it had tried to minimize civilian casualties. You can’t make a dead body work.
“What is it, Kestrel?”
She shook her head. She set the violin back on the wall.
“Ask me.”
She remembered standing outside the governor’s palace and refusing to hear his story, and was ashamed once more.
“You can ask me anything,” he said.
Each question seemed the wrong one. Finally, she said, “How did you survive the invasion?”
He didn’t speak at first. Then he said, “My parents and sister fought. I didn’t.”
Words were useless, pitifully useless--criminal, even, in how they could not account for Arin’s grief, and could not excuse how her people had lived on the ruin of his. Yet again Kestrel said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
It felt as if it was.
Arin led the way out of his old suite. When they came to the last room, the greeting room, he paused before the outermost door. It was the slightest of hesitations, no longer than if the second hand of a clock stayed a beat longer on its mark than it should. But in that fraction of time, Kestrel understood that the last door was not paler than the others because it had been made from a different wood.
It was newer.
Kestrel took Arin’s battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith’s coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained.
She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
1427:Some Foreign Letters
I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes
of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way
to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones.
This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will
go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I
see you as a young girl in a good world still,
writing three generations before mine. I try
to reach into your page and breathe it back…
but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
This is the sack of time your death vacates.
How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates
in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past
me with your Count, while a military band
plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last,
a pleated old lady with a crooked hand.
Once you read Lohengrin and every goose
hung high while you practiced castle life
in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce
history to a guess. The count had a wife.
You were the old maid aunt who lived with us.
Tonight I read how the winter howled around
the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious
language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound
of the music of the rats tapping on the stone
floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone.
This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne,
Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn
your first climb up Mount San Salvatore;
this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes,
the yankee girl, the iron interior
of her sweet body. You let the Count choose
your next climb. You went together, armed
177
with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches
and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed
by the thick woods of briars and bushes,
nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo
up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated
with his coat off as you waded through top snow.
He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled
down on the train to catch a steam boat for home;
or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome.
This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue.
I read how you walked on the Palatine among
the ruins of the palace of the Caesars;
alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July.
When you were mine they wrapped you out of here
with your best hat over your face. I cried
because I was seventeen. I am older now.
I read how your student ticket admitted you
into the private chapel of the Vatican and how
you cheered with the others, as we used to do
on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November
you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll,
float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,
to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional
breeze. You worked your New England conscience out
beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout.
Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come
here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose
world go drunk each night, to see the handsome
children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close
one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you,
you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,
rocking from its sour sound, out onto
the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall
and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by
to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.
178
~ Anne Sexton,
1428:The Elders spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Gilgamesh, do not put your trust in (just) your vast strength,
but keep a sharp eye out, make each blow strike in mark!
'The one who goes on ahead saves the comrade."
'The one who knows the route protects his friend.'
Let Enkidu go ahead of you;
he knows the road to the Cedar Forest,
he has seen fighting, has experienced battle.
Enkidu will protect the friend, will keep the comrade safe.
Let his body urge him back to the wives ())."
"in our Assembly we have entrusted the King to you (Enkidu),
and on your return you must entrust the King back to us!"
Gilgamesh spoke to Enkidu, raying:
"Come on, my friend, let us go to the Egalmah Temple,
to Ninsun, the Great Queen;
Ninsun is wise, all-knowing.
She will put the advisable path at our feet."
Taking each other by the hand,
Gilgamesh and Enkidu walked to the Egalmah ("Great Palace"),
to Ninsun, the Great Queen.
Gilgamesh arose and went to her.
"Ninsun, (even though) I am extraordinarily strong (!)
I must now travel a long way to where Humbaba is,
I must face fighting such as I have not known,
and I must travel on a road that I do not know!
Until the time that I go and return,
until I reach the Cedar Forest,
until I kill Humbaba the Terrible,
and eradicate from the land something baneful that Shamash hates,
intercede with Shamash on my behalf' (!)
If I kill Humbaba and cut his Cedar
let there be rejoicing all over the land ,
and I will erect a monument of the victory (?) before you!"
The words of Gilgamesh, her son,
grieving, Queen Ninsun heard over and over.
Ninsun went into her living quarters.
She washed herself with the purity plant,
she donned a robe worthy of her body,
she donned jewels worthy of her chest,
she donned her sash, and put on her crown.
She sprinkled water from a bowl onto the ground.
She and went up to the roof.
She went up to the roof and set incense in front of Shamash,
.I she offered fragrant cuttings, and raised her arms to Shamash.
"Why have you imposednay, inflicted!a restless heart on
my son, Gilgamesh!
Now you have touched him so that he wants to travel
a long way to where Humbaba is!
He will face fighting such as he has not known,
and will travel on a road that he does not know!
Until he goes away and returns,
until he reaches the Cedar Forest,
until he kills Humbaba the Terrible,
and eradicates from the land something baneful that you hate,
on the day that you see him on the road(?)
may Aja, the Bride, without fear remind you,
and command also the Watchmen of the Night,
the stars, and at night your father, Sin."

She banked up the incense and uttered the ritual words.'
She called to Enkidu and would give him instructions:
"Enkidu the Mighty, you are not of my womb,
but now I speak to you along with the sacred votaries of Gilgamesh,
the high priestesses, the holy women, the temple servers."
She laid a pendant(?) on Enkidu's neck,
the high-priestesses took
and the "daughters-of-the-gods"
"I have taken Enkidu
Enkidu to Gilgamesh I have taken."
"Until he goes and returns,
until he reaches the Cedar Forest,
be it a month
be it a year.. ."
[About 11 lines are missing here, and the placement of the following fragment is uncertain.]
the gate of cedar
Enkidu in the Temple of Shamash,
(and) Gilgamesh in the Egalmah.
He made an offering of cuttings
the sons of the king(!)
[Perhaps some 60 lines are missing here.]
"Enkidu will protect the friend, will keep the comrade safe,
Let his body urge him back to the wives (?).
In our Assembly we have entrusted the King to you,
and on your return you must entrust the King back to us!"
Enkidu spoke to Gilgamesh saying:
"My Friend, turn back!
The road"
[The last lines are missing.]


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet III
,
1429:Genesis Bk Vi
(ll. 246-260) The Holy Lord, All-wielding God, with mighty hand
had wrought ten angel-orders in whom He trusted well, that they
would do Him service, and work His will. Therefore God gave them
reason, with His own hands shaped them, and established them in
bliss. But one He made so great and strong of heart, He let him
wield such power in heaven next unto God, so radiant-hued He
wrought him, so fair his form in heaven which God had given, that
he was like unto the shining stars. He should have sung his
Maker's praise, and prized his bliss in heaven. He should have
thanked his Lord for the great boon He showered on him in the
heavenly light, and let him long enjoy. But he turned him to a
worse thing, and strove to stir up strife against the Highest
Lord of heaven, who sitteth on the throne of glory.
(ll. 261-276) Dear was he to our Lord. Nor could it long be hid
from God that pride was growing in His angel's heart. He set
himself against his Leader, scoffed at God with boasting, and
would not serve Him. He said his form was beautiful and bright,
gleaming and fair of hue. Nor could he find it in his heart to
serve the Lord God, or be subject to Him. It seemed to him that
he had greater strength and larger following than Holy God might
have. Many words the angel spake in his presumption. By his own
power alone he thought to build a stronger throne and mightier in
heaven. He said his heart was urging him to toil, to build a
stately palace in the north and west. He said he doubted in his
heart if he would still be subject unto God:
(ll. 277-291) "Why should I slave?" quoth he. "I need not serve a
master. My hands are strong to work full many a wonder. Power
enough have I to rear a goodlier throne, a higher in the heavens.
Why should I fawn for His favour, or yield Him such submission?
I may be God as well as He! Brave comrades stand about me;
stout-hearted heroes who will not fail me in the fray. These
valiant souls have chosen me their lord. With such peers one may
ponder counsel, and gain a following. Devoted are these friends
and faithful-hearted; and I may be their lord and rule this
realm. It seemeth no wise right to me that I should cringe a
whit to God for any good. I will not serve Him longer."
19
(ll. 292-298) Now when God had heard all this, how His angel was
beginning to make presumptuous head against his Leader, speaking
rash words of insolence against his Lord, needs must he make
atonement for that deed, endure the woe of strife, and bear his
punishment, most grievous of all deaths. And so doth every man
who wickedly thinketh to strive with God, the Lord of might.
(ll. 299-319) Then Almighty God, High Lord of heaven, was filled
with wrath, and hurled him from his lofty throne. He had gained
his Master's hate, and lost His favour. God's heart was hardened
against him. Wherefore he needs must sink into the pit of
torment because he strove against the Lord of heaven. He
banished him from grace and cast him into hell, into the deep
abyss where he became a devil. The Fiend and all his followers
fell from heaven; three nights and days the angels fell from
heaven into hell. God changed them all to devils. Because they
heeded not His deed and word, therefore Almighty God hurled them
into darkness, deep under earth, crushed them and set them in the
mirk of hell. There through the never-ending watches of the
night the fiends endure an unremitting fire. Then at the dawn
cometh an east wind, and bitter frost, ever a blast of fire or
storm of frost. And each must have his share of suffering
wrought for his punishment. Their world was changed when God
filled full the pit of hell with His foes!
(ll. 320-322) But the angels who kept their faith with God dwelt
in the heights of heaven.
~ Caedmon,
1430:The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion
of a single being even to God, that is love.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!
What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself
alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being
becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be
jealous of this had not God the Father of all evidently made
creation for the soul, and the soul for love.
The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with
a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the
palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything hides God.
Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to
render that being transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when,
whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its
knees.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1577
Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical
devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They
are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to
each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means
to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds,
the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light
of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation.
And why not? All the works of God are made to serve
love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its
messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.
The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to
minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill
eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature.
Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible,
imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us,
which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine,
and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even
to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in
the very depths of heaven.
Oh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds
which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange
with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other!
You will come to me, will you not, bliss! strolls by twos
in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes
dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves
from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse
the destinies of men.
1578 Les Miserables
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love,
except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an
eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase
in intensity even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on
the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God
is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.
You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous,
and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter
radiance and a greater mystery, woman.
All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings.
We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love
is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.
When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred
and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so
far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more
than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no
longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love,
soar.
On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits
light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains
for you to do: to think of her so intently that she is
constrained to think of you.
What love commences can be finished by God alone. ~ Victor Hugo,
1431:Elegy To The Memory Of An Unfortunate Lady
What beck'ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!--but why that bleeding bosom gor'd,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
Why bade ye else, ye pow'rs! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage:
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres;
Like eastern kings a lazy state they keep,
And close confin'd to their own palace, sleep.
From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die)
Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow,
And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below;
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.
But thou, false guardian of a charge too good,
Thou, mean deserter of thy brother's blood!
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,
These cheeks now fading at the blast of death:
Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before,
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball,
Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall;
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On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say,
(While the long fun'rals blacken all the way)
"Lo these were they, whose souls the furies steel'd,
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe."
What can atone (oh ever-injur'd shade!)
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier.
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances, and the public show?
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.
So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee,
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung,
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Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.
Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays;
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart,
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The Muse forgot, and thou belov'd no more!
~ Alexander Pope,
1432:The Frolicksome Duke, Or The Tinker's Good Fortune
'To the tune of
Fond Boy
Now as fame does report, a young duke keeps a court,
One that pleases his fancy with frolicksome sport:
But amongst all the rest, here is one I protest,
Which will make you to smile when you hear the true jest:
A poor tinker he found, lying drunk on the ground,
As secure in a sleep as if laid in a swound.
The duke said to his men, 'William, Richard, Ben,
Take him home to my palace, we'll sport with him then.'
O'er a horse he was laid, and with care soon convey'd
To the palace, altho' he was poorly arrai'd:
Then they stript off his cloaths, both his shirt, shoes, and hose,
And they put him to bed for to take his repose.
Having pull'd off his shirt, which was all over durt,
They did give him clean holland, this was no great hurt:
On a bed of soft down, like a lord of renown,
They did lay him to sleep the drink out of his crown.
In the morning, when day, then admiring he lay,
For to see the rich chamber, both gaudy and gay.
Now he lay something late, in his rich bed of state,
Till at last knights and squires they on him did wait;
And the chamberlain bare, then did likewise declare,
He desired to know what apparel he'd ware:
The poor tinker amaz'd, on the gentleman gaz'd,
And admired how he to this honour was rais'd.
Th' he seem'd something mute, yet he chose a rich suit,
Which he straitways put on without longer dispute,
With a star on his side, which the tinker offt ey'd,
And it seem'd for to swell him 'no' little with pride;
For he said to himself, 'Where is Joan my sweet wife?
Sure she never did see me so fine in her life.'
813
From a convenient place, the right duke, his good grace,
Did observe his behaviour in every case.
To a garden of state, on the tinker they wait,
Trumpets sounding before him: thought he, this is great.
Where an hour or two, pleasant walks he did view,
With commanders and squires in scarlet and blew.
A fine dinner was drest, both for him and his guests;
He was plac'd at the table above all the rest,
In a rich chair 'or bed,' lin'd with fine crimson red,
With a rich golden canopy over hi shead:
As he sat at his meat, the musick play'd sweet,
With the choicest of singing his joys to compleat.
While the tinker did dine, he had plenty of wine,
Rich canary, with sherry and tent superfine.
Like a right honest soul, faith, he took off his bowl,
Till at last he began for to tumble and roul
From his chair to the floor, where he sleeping did snore,
Being seven times drunker than ever before.
Then the duke did ordain, they should strip him amain,
And restore him his old leather garments again:
'Twas a point next the worst, yet perform it they must,
And they carry'd him strait, where they found him at first,
Then he slept all the night, as indeed well he might;
But when he did waken, his joys took their flight.
For his glory 'to him' so pleasant did seem,
That he thought it to be but a meer golden dream;
Till at length he was brought to the duke, where he sought
For a pardon, as fearing he had set him at nought.
But his highness he said, 'Thou'rt a jolly bold blade:
Such a frolick before I think never never was plaid.'
Then his highness bespoke him a new suit and cloak,
Which he gave for the sake of this frolicksome joak,
Nay, and five hundred pound, with ten acres of ground:
'Thou shalt never,' said he, 'range the counteries round,
Crying old brass to mend, for I'll be thy good friend,
Nay, and Joan thy sweet wife shall my duchess attend.'
814
Then the tinker reply'd, 'What! must Joan my sweet bride
Be a lady in chariots of pleasure to ride?
Must we have gold and land ev'ry day at command?
Then I shall be a squire, I well understand.
Well I thank your good grace, and your love I embrace;
I was never before in so happy a case.'
~ Anonymous Olde English,
1433:The King And The Shepherd
Through ev'ry Age some Tyrant Passion reigns:
Now Love prevails, and now Ambition gains
Reason's lost Throne, and sov'reign Rule maintains.
Tho' beyond Love's, Ambition's Empire goes;
For who feels Love, Ambition also knows,
And proudly still aspires to be possest
Of Her, he thinks superior to the rest.
As cou'd be prov'd, but that our plainer Task
Do's no such Toil, or Definitions ask;
But to be so rehears'd, as first 'twas told,
When such old Stories pleas'd in Days of old.
A King, observing how a Shepherd's Skill
Improv'd his Flocks, and did the Pastures fill,
That equal Care th' assaulted did defend,
And the secur'd and grazing Part attend,
Approves the Conduct, and from Sheep and Curs
Transfers the Sway, and changed his Wool to Furrs.
Lord-Keeper now, as rightly he divides
His just Decrees, and speedily decides;
When his sole Neighbor, whilst he watch'd the Fold,
A Hermit poor, in Contemplation old,
Hastes to his Ear, with safe, but lost Advice,
Tells him such Heights are levell'd in a trice,
Preferments treach'rous, and her Paths of Ice:
And that already sure 't had turn'd his Brain,
Who thought a Prince's Favour to retain.
Nor seem'd unlike, in this mistaken Rank,
The sightless Wretch, who froze upon a Bank
A Serpent found, which for a Staff he took,
And us'd as such (his own but lately broke)
Thanking the Fates, who thus his Loss supply'd,
Nor marking one, that with amazement cry'd,
Throw quickly from thy Hand that sleeping Ill;
A Serpent 'tis, that when awak'd will kill.
A Serpent this! th' uncaution'd Fool replies:
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A Staff it feels, nor shall my want of Eyes
Make me believe, I have no Senses left,
And thro' thy Malice be of this bereft;
Which Fortune to my Hand has kindly sent
To guide my Steps, and stumbling to prevent.
No Staff, the Man proceeds; but to thy harm
A Snake 'twill prove: The Viper, now grown warm
Confirm'd it soon, and fasten'd on his Arm.
Thus wilt thou find, Shepherd believe it true,
Some Ill, that shall this seeming Good ensue;
Thousand Distastes, t' allay thy envy'd Gains,
Unthought of, on the parcimonious Plains.
So prov'd the Event, and Whisp'rers now defame
The candid Judge, and his Proceedings blame.
By Wrongs, they say, a Palace he erects,
The Good oppresses, and the Bad protects.
To view this Seat the King himself prepares,
Where no Magnificence or Pomp appears,
But Moderation, free from each Extream,
Whilst Moderation is the Builder's Theme.
Asham'd yet still the Sycophants persist,
That Wealth he had conceal'd within a Chest,
Which but attended some convenient Day,
To face the Sun, and brighter Beams display.
The Chest unbarr'd, no radiant Gems they find,
No secret Sums to foreign Banks design'd,
But humble Marks of an obscure Recess,
Emblems of Care, and Instruments of Peace;
The Hook, the Scrip, and for unblam'd Delight
The merry Bagpipe, which, ere fall of Night,
Cou'd sympathizing Birds to tuneful Notes invite.
Welcome ye Monuments of former Joys!
Welcome! to bless again your Master's Eyes,
And draw from Courts, th' instructed Shepherd cries.
No more dear Relicks! we no more will part,
You shall my Hands employ, who now revive my Heart.
No Emulations, nor corrupted Times
Shall falsely blacken, or seduce to Crimes
Him, whom your honest Industry can please,
Who on the barren Down can sing from inward Ease.
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How's this! the Monarch something mov'd rejoins.
With such low Thoughts, and Freedom from Designs,
What made thee leave a Life so fondly priz'd,
To be in Crouds, or envy'd, or despis'd?
Forgive me, Sir, and Humane Frailty see,
The Swain replies, in my past State and Me;
All peaceful that, to which I vow return.
But who alas! (tho' mine at length I mourn)
Was e'er without the Curse of some Ambition born.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,
1434:Cinderella
You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
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She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would dropp it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
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covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
~ Anne Sexton,
1435:It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.

[Preface to 'A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America', 1787] ~ John Adams,
1436:My Cousin From Pall Mall
There’s nothing so exasperates a true Australian youth,
Whatever be his rank in life, be he cultured or uncouth,
As the manner of a London swell. Now it chanced, the other day,
That one came out, consigned to me—a cousin, by the way.
As he landed from the steamer at the somewhat dirty pier,
He took my hand; and lispingly remarked, ‘How very queer!
I’m glad, of course, to see you—but you must admit this place,
With all its mixed surroundings, is a national disgrace.’
I defended not that dirty pier, not a word escaped my lips;
I pointed not—though well I might—to the huge three-masted ships;
For, although with patriotic pride my soul was all aglow,
I remembered Trollope’s parting words, ‘Victorians do not blow.’
On the morrow through the city we sauntered, arm in arm;
I strove to do the cicerone—my style was grand and calm.
I showed him all the lions—but I noted with despair
His smile, his drawl, his eye-glass, and his supercilious air.
As we strolled along that crowded street, where Fashion holds proud sway,
He deigned to glance at every thing, but not one word did say;
I really thought he was impressed by its well-deserved renown
Till he drawled, ‘Not bad—not bad at all—for a provincial town.’
Just as he spoke there chanced to pass a most bewitching girl,
And I said, ‘Dear cousin, is she not fit bride for any earl?’
He glanced, with upraised eyebrows and a patronizing smile,
Then lisped, ‘She’s pretty, not a doubt, but what a want of style!’
We paused a moment just before a spacious House of Prayer;
Said he, ‘Dear me! Good gracious! What’s this ugly brick affair—
A second-rate gin-palace?’ ‘Cease, cease,’ I said; ‘you must—
O spare me,’— here my sobs burst forth, I was humbled to the dust.
But, unmindful of my agonies, in the slowest of slow drawls,
He lisped away for hours of the Abbey and St. Paul’s,
Till those grand historic names had for me a hateful sound,
And I wished the noble piles themselves were levelled to the ground,
13
My young bright life seemed blasted, my hopes were dead and gone,
No blighted lover ever felt so gloomy and forlorn;
I’d reached the suicidal stage—and the reason of it all,
This supercilious London swell, his eye-glass and his drawl.
But, though hidden, still there’s present, in out darkest hour of woe,
A sense of respite and relief, although we may not know
The way that gracious Providence will choose to right the wrong,
So I forthwith ceased my bitter tears—I suffered and was strong.
Then we strolled into the Club, where he again commenced to speak,
But I interrupted saying, ‘Let us leave town for a week.
I see that Melbourne bores you—nay, nay, I know it’s true;
Let us wander ’midst the gum-trees, and observe the kangaroo.’
My words were soft and gentle, and none could have discerned
How, beneath my calm demeanour, volcanic fury burned.
And my cousin straight consented, as his wine he slowly sipped,
To see the gay Marsupial and the gloomy Eucalypt.
Ah! who has ever journeyed on a glorious summer night
Through the weird Australian bush-land without feeling of delight?
The dense untrodden forest, in the moonlight coldly pale,
Brings before our wondering eyes again the scenes of fairy tale.
No sound is heard, save where one treads upon the lonely track;
We lose our dull grey manhood, and to early youth go back—
To scenes and days long passed away, and seem again to greet
Our youthful dreams, so rudely crushed like the grass beneath our feet.
’Twas such a night we wandered forth; we never spoke a word
(I was too full of thought for speech—to him no thought occurred)
When, gazing from the silent earth to the star-lit silent sky,
My cousin in amazement dropped his eye-glass from his eye.
At last, I thought his soul was moved by the grandeur of the scene
(As the most prosaic Colonist’s I’m certain would have been),
Till he replaced his eye-glass, and remarked—‘This may be well,
But one who’s civilized prefers the pavement of Pall Mall.’
I swerved not from that moment from my purpose foul and grim;
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I never deigned to speak one word, nor even glanced at him;
But suddenly I seized his throat,…he gave one dreadful groan,
And I, who had gone forth with him, that night returned alone.
~ Arthur Patchett Martin,
1437:The Three Pilgrims
In days, when the fruit of men's labour was sparing,
And hearts were weary and nigh to break,
A sweet grave man with a beautiful bearing
Came to us once in the fields and spake.
He told us of Roma, the marvellous city,
And of One that came from the living God,
The Virgin's Son, who in heavenly pity,
Bore for his people the rood and rod,
And how at Roma the gods were broken,
The new was strong, and the old nigh dead,
And love was more than a bare word spoken,
For the sick were healed and the poor were fed;
And we sat mute at his feet, and hearkened:
The grave men came in an hour and went,
But a new light shone on a land long darkened;
The toil was weary, the fruit was spent:
So we came south, till we saw the city,
Speeding three of us, hand in hand,
Seeking peace and the bread of pity,
Journeying out of the Umbrian land;
Till we saw from the hills in a dazzled coma
Over the vines that the wind made shiver,
Tower on tower, the great city Roma,
Palace and temple, and winding river:
And we stood long in a dream and waited,
Watching and praying and purified,
And came at last to the walls belated,
Entering in at the eventide:
And many met us with song and dancing,
Mantled in skins and crowned with flowers,
Waving goblets and torches glancing,
Faces drunken, and grinned in ours:
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And one, that ran in the midst, came near us'Crown yourselves for the feast,' he said,
But we cried out, that the God might hear us,
'Where is Jesus, the living bread?'
And they took us each by the hand with laughter;
Their eyes were haggard and red with wine:
They haled us on, and we followed after,
'We will show you the new God's shrine.'
Ah, woe to out tongues, that, forever unsleeping,
Harp and uncover the old hot care,
The soothing ash from the embers sweeping,
Wherever the soles of our sad feet fare.
Ah, we were simple of mind, now knowing,
How dreadful the heart of a man might be;
But the knowledge of evil is mighty of growing;
Only the deaf and the blind are free.
We came to a garden of beauty and pleasureIt was not the way that our own feet chooseWhere a revel was whirling in many a measure,
And the myriad roar of a great crowd rose;
And the midmost round of the garden was reddened
With pillars of fire in a great high ringOne look-and our souls forever were deadened,
Though our feet yet move, and our dreams yet sting;
For we saw that each was a live man flaming,
Limbs that a human mother bore,
And a thing of horror was done, past naming,
And the crowd spun round, and we saw no more.
And he that ran in the midst, descrying,
Lifted his hand with a foul red sneer,
And smote us each and the other, crying,
'Thus we worship the new God here.
'The Caesar comes, and the peoples paeans
231
Hail his name for the new made light,
Pitch and the flesh of the Galileans,
Torches fit for a Roman night;'
And we fell down to the earth, and sickened,
Moaning, three of us, head by head,
'Where is He, whom the good God quickened?
Where is Jesus, the living bread?'
Yet ever we heard, in the foul mirth turning,
Man and woman and child go by,
And ever the yells of the charred men burning,
Piercing heavenward, cry on cry:
And we lay there, till the frightful revel,
Died in the dawn with a few short moans,
Of some that knelt in the wan and level
Shadows, that fell from the blackened bones.
Numb with horror and sick with pity,
The heart of each as an iron weight,
We crept in the dawn from the awful city,
Journeying out of the seaward gate.
The great sun came from the sea before us;
A soft wind blew from the scented south;
But our eyes knew not of the steps that bore us
Down to the ships at the Timber's mouth;
And we prayed then, as we turned our faces
Over the sea to the living God,
That our ways might be in the fierce bare places,
Where never the foot of a live man trod:
And we set sail in the noon, not caring
Whether the prow of the dark ship came,
No more over the old ways faring;
For the sea was cold, but the land was flame:
And the keen ship sped, and a deadly coma
Blotted away from our eyes forever,
Tower on tower, the great city Roma,
232
Palace and temple and yellow river.
~ Archibald Lampman,
1438:Run To Death
A True Incident of Pre-Revolutionary French History.
Now the lovely autumn morning breathes its freshness in earth's face,
In the crowned castle courtyard the blithe horn proclaims the chase;
And the ladies on the terrace smile adieux with rosy lips
To the huntsmen disappearing down the cedar-shaded groves,
Wafting delicate aromas from their scented finger tips,
And the gallants wave in answer, with their gold-embroidered gloves.
On they rode, past bush and bramble, on they rode, past elm and oak;
And the hounds, with anxious nostril, sniffed the heather-scented air,
Till at last, within his stirrups, up Lord Gaston rose, and spoke-He, the boldest and the bravest of the wealthy nobles there :
'Friends,' quoth he, 'the time hangs heavy, for it is not as we thought,
And these woods, tho' fair and shady, will afford, I fear, no sport.
Shall we hence, then, worthy kinsmen, and desert the hunter's track
For the chateau, where the wine cup and the dice cup tempt us back?'
'Ay,' the nobles shout in chorus ; 'Ay,' the powder'd lacquey cries;
Then they stop with eager movement, reining in quite suddenly;
Peering down with half contemptuous, half with wonder-opened eyes
At a 'something' which is crawling, with slow step, from tree to tree.
Is't some shadow phantom ghastly ? No, a woman and a child,
Swarthy woman, with the 'gipsy' written clear upon her face;
Gazing round her with her wide eyes dark, and shadow-fringed, and wild,
With the cowed suspicious glances of a persecuted race.
Then they all, with unasked question, in each other's faces peer,
For a common thought has struck them, one their lips dare scarcely say,-Till Lord Gaston cries, impatient, 'Why regret the stately deer
When such sport as yonder offers? quick ! unleash the dogs--away!'
Then they breath'd a shout of cheering, grey-haired man and stripling boy,
And the gipsy, roused to terror, stayed her step, and turned her head-Saw the faces of those huntsmen, lit with keenest cruel joy-Sent a cry of grief to Heaven, closer clasped her child, and fled!
*******
O ye nobles of the palace! O ye gallant-hearted lords!
Who would stoop for Leila's kerchief, or for Clementina's gloves,
Who would rise up all indignant, with your shining sheathless swords,
At the breathing of dishonour to your languid lady loves!
65
O, I tell you, daring nobles, with your beauty-loving stare,
Who ne'er long the coy coquetting of the courtly dames withstood,
Tho' a woman be the lowest, and the basest, and least fair,
In your manliness forget not to respect her womanhood,
And thou, gipsy, that hast often the pursuer fled before,
That hast felt ere this the shadow of dark death upon thy brow,
That hast hid among the mountains, that hast roamed the forest o'er,
Bred to hiding, watching, fleeing, may thy speed avail thee now!
*******
Still she flees, and ever fiercer tear the hungry hounds behind,
Still she flees, and ever faster follow there the huntsmen on,
Still she flees, her black hair streaming in a fury to the wind,
Still she flees, tho' all the glimmer of a happy hope is gone.
'Eh? what? baffled by a woman! Ah, sapristi! she can run!
Should she 'scape us, it would crown us with dishonour and disgrace;
It is time' (Lord Gaston shouted) 'such a paltry chase were done!'
And the fleeter grew her footsteps, so the hotter grew the chase-Ha! at last! the dogs are on her! will she struggle ere she dies?
See! she holds her child above her, all forgetful of her pain,
While a hundred thousand curses shoot out darkly from her eyes,
And a hundred thousand glances of the bitterest disdain.
Ha! the dogs are pressing closer! they have flung her to the ground;
Yet her proud lips never open with the dying sinner's cry-Till at last, unto the Heavens, just two fearful shrieks resound,
When the soul is all forgotten in the body's agony!
Let them rest there, child and mother, in the shadow of the oak,
On the tender mother-bosom of that earth from which they came.
As they slow rode back those huntsmen neither laughed, nor sang, nor spoke,
Hap, there lurked unowned within them throbbings of a secret shame.
But before the flow'ry terrace, where the ladies smiling sat,
With their graceful nothings trifling all the weary time away,
Low Lord Gaston bowed, and raising high his richly 'broider'd hat,
'Fairest ladies, give us welcome! 'Twas a famous hunt to-day.'
~ Amy Levy,
1439:Quia Amore Langueo
IN a valley of this restles mind
I sought in mountain and in mead,
Trusting a true love for to find.
Upon an hill then took I heed;
A voice I heard (and near I yede)
In great dolour complaining tho:
See, dear soul, how my sides bleed
Quia amore langueo.
Upon this hill I found a tree,
Under a tree a man sitting;
From head to foot wounded was he;
His hearte blood I saw bleeding:
A seemly man to be a king,
A gracious face to look unto.
I asked why he had paining;
[He said,] Quia amore langueo.
I am true love that false was never;
My sister, man's soul, I loved her thus.
Because we would in no wise dissever
I left my kingdom glorious.
I purveyed her a palace full precious;
She fled, I followed, I loved her so
That I suffered this pain piteous
Quia amore langueo.
My fair love and my spouse bright!
I saved her from beating, and she hath me bet;
I clothed her in grace and heavenly light;
This bloody shirt she hath on me set;
For longing of love yet would I not let;
Sweete strokes are these: lo!
I have loved her ever as I her het
Quia amore langueo.
I crowned her with bliss and she me with thorn;
I led her to chamber and she me to die;
I brought her to worship and she me to scorn;
180
I did her reverence and she me villany.
To love that loveth is no maistry;
Her hate made never my love her foe:
Ask me then no question why-Quia amore langueo.
Look unto mine handes, man!
These gloves were given me when I her sought;
They be not white, but red and wan;
Embroidered with blood my spouse them brought.
They will not off; I loose hem nought;
I woo her with hem wherever she go.
These hands for her so friendly fought
Quia amore langueo.
Marvel not, man, though I sit still.
See, love hath shod me wonder strait:
Buckled my feet, as was her will,
With sharpe nails (well thou may'st wait!)
In my love was never desait;
All my membres I have opened her to;
My body I made her herte's bait
Quia amore langueo.
In my side I have made her nest;
Look in, how weet a wound is here!
This is her chamber, here shall she rest,
That she and I may sleep in fere.
Here may she wash, if any filth were;
Here is seat for all her woe;
Come when she will, she shall have cheer
Quia amore langueo.
I will abide till she be ready,
I will her sue if she say nay;
If she be retchless I will be greedy,
If she be dangerous I will her pray;
If she weep, then bide I ne may:
Mine arms ben spread to clip her me to.
Cry once, I come: now, soul, assay
Quia amore langueo.
181
Fair love, let us go play:
Apples ben ripe in my gardayne.
I shall thee clothe in a new array,
Thy meat shall be milk, honey and wine.
Fair love, let us go dine:
Thy sustenance is in my crippe, lo!
Tarry thou not, my fair spouse mine,
Quia amore langueo.
If thou be foul, I shall thee make clean;
If thou be sick, I shall thee heal;
If thou mourn ought, I shall thee mene;
Why wilt thou not, fair love, with me deal?
Foundest thou ever love so leal?
What wilt thou, soul, that I shall do?
I may not unkindly thee appeal
Quia amore langueo.
What shall I do now with my spouse
But abide her of my gentleness,
Till that she look out of her house
Of fleshly affection? love mine she is;
Her bed is made, her bolster is bliss,
Her chamber is chosen; is there none mo.
Look out on me at the window of kindeness
Quia amore langueo.
My love is in her chamber: hold your peace!
Make ye no noise, but let her sleep.
My babe I would not were in disease,
I may not hear my dear child weep.
With my pap I shall her keep;
Ne marvel ye not though I tend her to:
This wound in my side had ne'er be so deep
But Quia amore langueo.
Long thou for love never so high,
My love is more than thine may be.
Thou weepest, thou gladdest, I sit thee by:
Yet wouldst thou once, love, look unto me!
Should I always feede thee
With children meat? Nay, love, not so!
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I will prove thy love with adversite
Quia amore langueo.
Wax not weary, mine own wife!
What mede is aye to live in comfort?
In tribulation I reign more rife
Ofter times than in disport.
In weal and in woe I am aye to support:
Mine own wife, go not me fro!
Thy mede is marked, when thou art mort:
Quia amore langueo.
~ Anonymous,
1440:Quia Amore Langeuo
In a valley of this restles mind
I sought in mountain and in mead,
Trusting a true love for to find.
Upon an hill then took I heed;
A voice I heard (and near I yede)
In great dolour complaining tho:
See, dear soul, how my sides bleed
Quia amore langueo.
Upon this hill I found a tree,
Under a tree a man sitting;
From head to foot wounded was he;
His hearte blood I saw bleeding:
A seemly man to be a king,
A gracious face to look unto.
I asked why he had paining:
Quia amore langueo.
I am true love that false was never;
My sister, man's soul, I loved her thus.
Because we would in no wise dissever
I left my kingdom glorious.
I purveyed her a palace full precious;
She fled, I followed, I loved her so
That I suffered this pain piteous
Quia amore langueo.
My fair love and my spouse bright!
I saved her from beating, and she hath me bet;
I clothed her in grace and heavenly light;
This bloody shirt she hath on me set;
For longing of love yet would I not let;
Sweet strokes are these: lo!
546
I have loved her ever as I her het
Quia amore langueo.
I crowned her with bliss and she me with thorn;
I led her to chamber and she me to die;
I brought her to worship and she me to scorn;
I did her reverence and she me villany.
To love that loveth is no maistry;
Her hate made never my love her foe
Ask me then no question why Quia amore langueo.
Look unto mine handes, man!
These gloves were given me when I her sought;
They be not white, but red and wan;
Embroidered with blood my spouse them brought.
They will not off; I loose hem nought:
I woo her with hem wherever she go.
These hands for her so friendly fought
Quia amore langueo.
Marvel not, man, though I sit still.
See, love hath shod me wonder strait:
Buckled my feet, as was her will,
With sharp nails (well thou may'st wait!)
In my love was never desait;
All my membres I have opened her to;
My body I made her herte's bait
Quia amore langueo.
In my side I have made her nest;
Look in, how wet a wound is here!
This is her chamber, here shall she rest,
That she and I may sleep in fere.
547
Here may she wash, if any filth were;
Here is seat for all her woe;
Come when she will, she shall have cheer
Quia amore langueo.
I will abide till she be ready,
I will her sue if she say nay;
If she be retchless I will be greedy,
If she be dangerous I will her pray;
If she weep, then bide I ne may:
Mine arms ben spread to clip her me to.
Cry once, I come: now, soul, assay!
Quia amore langueo.
Fair love, let us go play:
Apples ben ripe in my gardayne.
I shall thee clothe in a new array,
Thy meat shall be milk, honey and wine.
Fair love, let us go dine:
Thy sustenance is in my crippe, lo!
Tarry thou not, my fair spouse mine,
Quia amore langueo.
If thou be foul, I shall thee make clean;
If thou be sick, I shall thee heal;
If thou mourn ought, I shall thee mene;
Why wilt thou not, fair love, with me deal?
Foundest thou ever love so leal?
What wilt thou, soul, that I shall do?
I may not unkindly thee appeal,
Quia amore langueo.
What shall I do now with my spouse
But abide her of my gentleness,
548
Till that she look out of her house
Of fleshly affection? love mine she is;
Her bed is made, her bolster is bliss,
Her chamber is chosen; is there none mo.
Look out on me at the window of kindeness,
Quia amore langueo.
My love is in her chamber: hold your peace!
Make ye no noise, but let her sleep.
My babe I would not were in disease,
I may not hear my dear child weep.
With my pap I shall her keep;
Ne marvel ye not though I tend her to:
This wound in my side had ne'er been so deep
Quia amore langueo.
Long thou for love never so high,
My love is more than thine may be.
Thou weepest, thou gladdest, I sit thee by:
Yet wouldst thou once, love, look unto me!
Should I always feede thee
With children meat? Nay, love, not so!
I will prove thy love with adversite,
Quia amore langueo.
Wax not weary, mine own wife!
What mede is aye to live in comfort?
In tribulation I reign more rife
Ofter times than in disport.
In weal and in woe I am aye to support:
Mine own wife, go not me fro!
Thy mede is marked, when thou art mort:
Quia amore langueo.
549
~ Anonymous Olde English,
1441:The Givers Of Life
I.
WHO called us forth out of darkness and gave us the gift of life,
Who set our hands to the toiling, our feet in the field of strife?
Darkly they mused, predestined to knowledge of viewless things,
Sowing the seed of wisdom, guarding the living springs.
Little they reckoned privation, hunger or hardship or cold,
If only the life might prosper, and the joy that grows not old.
With sorceries subtler than music, with knowledge older than speech,
Gentle as wind in the wheat-field, strong as the tide on the beach,
Out of their beauty and longing, out of their raptures and tears,
In patience and pride they bore us, to war with the warring years.
2.
Who looked on the world before them, and summoned and chose our sires,
Subduing the wayward impulse to the will of their deep desires?
Sovereigns of ultimate issues under the greater laws,
Theirs was the mystic mission of the eternal cause;
Confident, tender, courageous, leaving the low for the higher,
Lifting the feet of the nations out of the dust and the mire;
Luring civilization on to the fair and new,
Given God's bidding to follow, having God's business to do.
3.
Who strengthened our souls with courage, and taught us the ways of Earth?
Who gave us our patterns of beauty, our standards of flawless worth?
Mothers, unmilitant, lovely, moulding our manhood then,
Walked in their woman's glory, swaying the might of men.
They schooled us to service and honor, modest and clean and fair, —
The code of their worth of living, taught with the sanction of prayer.
They were our sharers of sorrow, they were our makers of joy,
Lighting the lamp of manhood in the heart of the lonely boy.
Haloed with love and with wonder, in sheltered ways they trod,
Seers of sublime divination, keeping the truce of God.
4.
Who called us from youth and dreaming, and set ambition alight,
And made us fit for the contest, —men, by their tender rite?
Sweethearts above our merit, charming our strength and skill
To be the pride of their loving, to be the means of their will.
If we be the builders of beauty, if we be the masters of art,
Theirs were the gleaming ideals, theirs the uplift of the heart.
Truly they measure the lightness of trappings and ease and fame,
165
For the teeming desire of their yearning is ever and ever the same:
To crown their lovers with gladness, to clothe their sons with delight,
And see the men of their making lords in the best man's right.
Lavish of joy and labor, broken only by wrong,
These are the guardians of being, spirited, sentient and strong.
Theirs is the starry vision, theirs the inspiriting hope,
Since Night, the brooding enchantress, promised that day should ope.
5.
Lo, we have built and invented, reasoned, discovered and planned,
To rear us a palace of splendor, and make us a heaven by hand.
We are shaken with dark misgiving, as kingdoms rise and fall;
But the women who went to found them are never counted at all.
Versed in the soul's traditions, skilled in humanity's lore,
They wait for their crown of rapture, and weep for the sins of war.
And behold they turn from our triumphs, as it was in the first of days,
For a little heaven of ardor and a little heartening of praise.
These are the rulers of kingdoms beyond the domains of state,
Martyrs of all men's folly, over-rulers of fate.
These we will love and honor, these we will serve and defend,
Fulfilling the pride of nature, till nature shall have an end.
6.
This is the code unwritten, this is the creed we hold,
Guarding the little and lonely, gladdening the helpless and old,—
Apart from the brunt of the battle our wondrous women shall bide,
For the sake of a tranquil wisdom and the need of a spirit's guide.
Come they into assembly, or keep they another door,
Our makers of life shall lighten the days as the years of yore.
The lure of their laughter shall lead us, the lilt of their words shall sway.
Though life and death should defeat us, their solace shall be our stay.
Veiled in mysterious beauty, vested in magical grace,
They have walked with angels at twilight and looked upon glory's face.
Life we will give for their safety, care for their fruitful ease,
Though we break at the toiling benches or go down in the smoky seas.
This is the gospel appointed to govern a world of men,
Till love has died, and the echoes have whispered the last Amen.
~ Bliss William Carman,
1442:Yvytot
Where wail the waters in their flaw
A spectre wanders to and fro,
And evermore that ghostly shore
Bemoans the heir of Yvytot.
Sometimes, when, like a fleecy pall,
The mists upon the waters fall,
Across the main float shadows twain
That do not heed the spectre's call.
The king his son of Yvytot
Stood once and saw the waters go
Boiling around with hissing sound
The sullen phantom rocks below.
And suddenly he saw a face
Lift from that black and seething place-Lift up and gaze in mute amaze
And tenderly a little space,
A mighty cry of love made he-No answering word to him gave she,
But looked, and then sunk back again
Into the dark and depthless sea.
And ever afterward that face,
That he beheld such little space,
Like wraith would rise within his eyes
And in his heart find biding place.
So oft from castle hall he crept
Where mid the rocks grim shadows slept,
And where the mist reached down and kissed
The waters as they wailed and wept.
The king it was of Yvytot
That vaunted, many years ago,
There was no coast his valiant host
Had not subdued with spear and bow.
449
For once to him the sea-king cried:
"In safety all thy ships shall ride
An thou but swear thy princely heir
Shall take my daughter to his bride.
"And lo, these winds that rove the sea
Unto our pact shall witness be,
And of the oath which binds us both
Shall be the judge 'twixt me and thee!"
Then swore the king of Yvytot
Unto the sea-king years ago,
And with great cheer for many a year
His ships went harrying to and fro.
Unto this mighty king his throne
Was born a prince, and one alone-Fairer than he in form and blee
And knightly grace was never known.
But once he saw a maiden face
Lift from a haunted ocean place-Lift up and gaze in mute amaze
And tenderly a little space.
Wroth was the king of Yvytot,
For that his son would never go
Sailing the sea, but liefer be
Where wailed the waters in their flow,
Where winds in clamorous anger swept,
Where to and fro grim shadows crept,
And where the mist reached down and kissed
The waters as they wailed and wept.
So sped the years, till came a day
The haughty king was old and gray,
And in his hold were spoils untold
That he had wrenched from Norroway.
Then once again the sea-king cried:
450
"Thy ships have harried far and wide;
My part is done--now let thy son
Require my daughter to his bride!"
Loud laughed the king of Yvytot,
And by his soul he bade him no-"I heed no more what oath I swore,
For I was mad to bargain so!"
Then spake the sea-king in his wrath:
"Thy ships lie broken in my path!
Go now and wring thy hands, false king!
Nor ship nor heir thy kingdom hath!
"And thou shalt wander evermore
All up and down this ghostly shore,
And call in vain upon the twain
That keep what oath a dastard swore!"
The king his son of Yvytot
Stood even then where to and fro
The breakers swelled--and there beheld
A maiden face lift from below.
"Be thou or truth or dream," he cried,
"Or spirit of the restless tide,
It booteth not to me, God wot!
But I would have thee to my bride."
Then spake the maiden: "Come with me
Unto a palace in the sea,
For there my sire in kingly ire
Requires thy king his oath of thee!"
Gayly he fared him down the sands
And took the maiden's outstretched hands;
And so went they upon their way
To do the sea-king his commands.
The winds went riding to and fro
And scourged the waves that crouched below,
And bade them sing to a childless king
451
The bridal song of Yvytot.
So fell the curse upon that shore,
And hopeless wailing evermore
Was the righteous dole of the craven soul
That heeded not what oath he swore.
An hundred ships went down that day
All off the coast of Norroway,
And the ruthless sea made mighty glee
Over the spoil that drifting lay.
The winds went calling far and wide
To the dead that tossed in the mocking tide:
"Come forth, ye slaves! from your fleeting graves
And drink a health to your prince his bride!"
Where wail the waters in their flow
A spectre wanders to and fro,
But nevermore that ghostly shore
Shall claim the heir of Yvytot.
Sometimes, when, like a fleecy pall,
The mists upon the waters fall,
Across the main flit shadows twain
That do not heed the spectre's call.
~ Eugene Field,
1443:Breitmann In Forty-Eight
DERE woned once a studente,
All in der Stadt Paris,
Whom jeder der ihn kennte,
Der rowdy Breitmann hiess.
He roosted in de rue La Harpe,
Im Luxembourg Hotel,
'Twas shoost in anno '48,
Dat all dese dings pefel.
Boot he who vouldt go hoontin now
To find dat rue La Harpe,
Moost hafe oongommon shpecdagles,
Und look darnation sharp.
For der Kaisar und his Hausmann
Mit hauses made so vree,
Dere roon shoost now a Bouleverse
Vhere dis shdreet used to pe.
In dis Hotel de Luxembourg,
A vild oldt shdory say,
A shtudent vonce pring home a dame,
Und on de nexter day,
He pooled a ribbon from her neckOff fell de lady's het;
She'd trafelled from de guillotine,
Und valked de city - deadt.
Boot Breitmann nefer cared himself
If dis vas falsch or drue,
I kess he hat mit lifin gals
Pout quite enough to do.
Und Februar vas gomin,
Ganz revolutionnaire,
Und vhere der Teufel had vork on hand,
Der Hans vas alvays dere.
Und darker grew de beople's brows,
No Banquet could dey raise,
So dey shtood und shvore at gorners,
60
Or dey singed de Marseillaise.
Und here und dere a crashin sound
Like forcin shutters ran,
Und boorstin gun-schmidts' vindows in
Hard vorked der Breitemann.
He helped to howl Les Girondins,
To cheer de beople's hearts;
He maket dem bild parricades
Mit garriages und garts.
Vhen a bretty maiden sendinel
Vonce ask de countersign,
He gafe das kind a rousin giss,
Gott hute dir und dein!
Und wilder vent de pattle,
France spread her oriflamme,
Und deeper roared de sturm bell,
De bell of Notre Dame;
Und he who nefer heard it,
O'er shots und cries of fear,
Loud booming like a dragon's roar,
Has someding yet to hear.
Und in de Fauborg Sainte Antoine
Dere comed a fusillade,
Und dyin groans und fallin dead
Vere roundt dat parricade,
But der song of Revolution
From a tousand voices round,
Made a fearful opera gorus
To de deat' gries on de ground.
Und all around dose parricades
Dey raise der teufel dere;
Somedimes dey vork mit pig-axes,
Und somedimes mit gewehr.
Dey maket prifate houses
Gife all deir arms afay,
Und denn oopon de panels
Dey writet Armes donnees.
61
Und ve saw mid roarin vollies,
Shtreaked like banded settin suns,
Two regiments coome ofer,
Und telifer oop deir guns.
Hei! - how de deers vere roonin:
Hei! - how dey gryed hurrahs!
For dey saw de vight vas ofer,
Und dey know dey gained deir cause.
Dus spoke deir hearts outboorstin,
In battle by de blade,
From sun to sun mit roarin gun
Und donnerin parricade.
In vain pefore de depudies
De princes tremblin stood,
Vot comes in France too late a day
Cooms shoost in dime for blood.
Vhen de Tuileries vas daken,
Amid de scotterin shot,
Und vlyin stones, und howlin,
Und curses vild und hot,
'Tvas dere Hans clobbed his musket,
Und dere de man vas first
To roosh into de palace,
Ven de toors vere in-geburst.
Some vellers burn de guart-haus,
Some trink des Konigs wein;
Some fill deir hats mit rasbry sham,
Und prandy beeches fein.
Hans Breitmann in de gitchen
Vas shdare like avery ding,
To see vot lots of victual-de-dees
Id dakes to feed a king.
Und oder volk, like plackguarts,
Vent dook de goaches out;
Und burnin dem, dey rolled dem
Afay mit yell und shout.
Der Breitmann in der barlor,
Help writen rapidly,
62
La liberte pour la Pologne!
Likevise - pour l'Italie!
Den in der Tuileries courtyard
Ten tousand volk come on;
Dey vas gissin und hurrahin
For to dink der king vas gone.
Some vas hollerin und tantzin
Round de blazin oldt caboose;
Vhen Frantschmen kits a goin,
Den dey lets der teufel loose.
Boot von veller set me laughin,
Who roosh madly roun de field;
He hat rop de Cluny Museum,
Und gestohlen speer und schild.
Mit a sblendit royal charger,
Vitch he hat somevhere found,
Like a trunken Don Quixote,
He vent tearin oop und round.
Doun vent de line of Bourbons,
Doun vent de vork of years,
Ash de pillars of deir temple
Ge-crashed like splintered speers;
Und o'er dem rosed a phantom,
Wild, beautiful, und weak,
Vhile millions gry arount herVive! vive la Republique;
Tree days mid shdiflin powder shmoke,
Tree days mid cheers und groans,
Ve fought to guard de parricades,
Or pile dem oop mit shtones.
De hand vitch held de bistol denn,
Or made de crowbar bite,
Das war de same Hans Breitmann's hand
Vitch now dese verses write.
~ Charles Godfrey Leland,
1444:The Division Of Parts
1.
Mother, my Mary Gray,
once resident of Gloucester
and Essex County,
a photostat of your will
arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third
of your daughters counting my bounty
or I am a queen alone
in the parlor still,
eating the bread and honey.
It is Good Friday.
Black birds pick at my window sill.
Your coat in my closet,
your bright stones on my hand,
the gaudy fur animals
I do not know how to use,
settle on me like a debt.
A week ago, while the hard March gales
beat on your house,
we sorted your things: obstacles
of letters, family silver,
eyeglasses and shoes.
Like some unseasoned Christmas, its scales
rigged and reset,
I bundled out gifts I did not choose.
Now the houts of The Cross
rewind. In Boston, the devout
work their cold knees
toward that sweet martyrdom
that Christ planned. My timely loss
is too customary to note; and yet
I planned to suffer
and I cannot. It does not please
my yankee bones to watch
where the dying is done
in its usly hours. Black birds peck
at my window glass
235
and Easter will take its ragged son.
The clutter of worship
that you taught me, Mary Gray,
is old. I imitate
a memory of belief
that I do not own. I trip
on your death and jesus, my stranger
floats up over
my Christian home, wearing his straight
thorn tree. I have cast my lot
and am one third thief
of you. Time, that rearranger
of estates, equips
me with your garments, but not with grief.
2.
This winter when
cancer began its ugliness
I grieved with you each day
for three months
and found you in your private nook
of the medicinal palace
for New England Women
and never once
forgot how long it took.
I read to you
from The New Yorker, ate suppers
you wouldn't eat, fussed
with your flowers,
joked with your nurses, as if I
were the balm among lepers,
as if I could undo
a life in hours
if I never said goodbye.
But you turned old,
all your fifty-eight years sliding
like masks from your skull;
and at the end
I packed your nightgowns in suitcases,
paid the nurses, came riding
home as if I'd been told
I could pretend
236
people live in places.
3.
Since then I have pretended ease,
loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough
to shed my daughterhood
or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis
and poke at this dry page like a rough
goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood
for a mother and lounge in sad stuff
with love to catch and catch as catch can.
And Christ still waits. I have tried
to exorcise the memory of each event
and remain still, a mixed child,
heavy with cloths of you.
Sweet witch, you are my worried guide.
Such dangerous angels walk through Lent.
Their walls creak Anne! Convert! Convert!
My desk moves. Its cavr murmurs Boo
and I am taken and beguiled.
Or wrong. For all the way I've come
I'll have to go again. Instead, I must convert
to love as reasonable
as Latin, as sold as earthenware:
an equilibrium
I never knew. And Lent will keep its hurt
for someone else. Christ knows enough
staunch guys have hitched him in trouble.
thinking his sticks were badges to wear.
4.
Spring rusts on its skinny branch
and last summer's lawn
is soggy and brown.
Yesterday is just a number.
All of its winters avalanche
out of sight. What was, is gone.
Mother, last night I slept
in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.
Divided, you climbed into my head.
There in my jabbering dream
237
I heard my own angry cries
and I cursed you, Dame
keep out of my slumber.
My good Dame, you are dead.
And Mother, three stones
slipped from your glittering eyes.
Now it's Friday's noon
and I would still curse
you with my rhyming words
and bring you flapping back, old love,
old circus knitting, god-in-her-moon,
all fairest in my lang syne verse,
the gauzy bride among the children,
the fancy amid the absurd
and awkward, that horn for hounds
that skipper homeward, that museum
keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze
within the pilgrim woman,
a clown mender, a dove's
cheek among the stones,
my Lady of first words,
this is the division of ways.
And now, while Christ stays
fastened to his Crucifix
so that love may praise
his sacrifice
and not the grotesque metaphor,
you come, a brave ghost, to fix
in my mind without praise
or paradise
to make me your inheritor.
~ Anne Sexton,
1445:The Sultan's Palace
My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face,
As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright;
As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace,
To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.
I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow
Were keys in the blue doors where my desire was set;
Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing brow
The hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet.
Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound,
To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er,
The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth around
With their insatiate need to wonder and adore.
The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands,
The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine,
Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beaded strands
A radiant visage rose, serene, august, divine.
A noise of summer wind astir in starlit trees,
A song where sensual love's delirium rose and fell,
Were rites that moved my soul more than the devotee's
When from the blazing choir rings out the altar bell.
I woke amid the pomp of a proud palace; writ
In tinted arabesque on walls that gems o'erlay,
The names of caliphs were who once held court in it,
Their baths and bowers were mine to dwell in for a day.
Their robes and rings were mine to draw from shimmering trays--Brocades and broidered silks, topaz and tourmaline-Their turban-cloths to wind in proud capricious ways,
And fasten plumes and pearls and pendent sapphires in.
I rose; far music drew my steps in fond pursuit
Down tessellated floors and towering peristyles:
Through groves of colonnades fair lamps were blushing fruit,
On seas of green mosaic soft rugs were flowery isles.
114
And there were verdurous courts that scalloped arches wreathed,
Where fountains plashed in bowls of lapis lazuli.
Through enigmatic doors voluptuous accents breathed,
And having Youth I had their Open Sesame.
I paused where shadowy walls were hung with cloths of gold,
And tinted twilight streamed through storied panes above.
In lamplit alcoves deep as flowers when they unfold
Soft cushions called to rest and fragrant fumes to love.
I hungered; at my hand delicious dainties teemed--Fair pyramids of fruit; pastry in sugared piles.
I thirsted; in cool cups inviting vintage beamed--Sweet syrups from the South; brown muscat from the isles.
I yearned for passionate Love; faint gauzes fell away.
Pillowed in rosy light I found my heart's desire.
Over the silks and down her florid beauty lay,
As over orient clouds the sunset's coral fire.
Joys that had smiled afar, a visionary form,
Behind the ranges hid, remote and rainbow-dyed,
Drew near unto my heart, a wonder soft and warm,
To touch, to stroke, to clasp, to sleep and wake beside.
Joy, that where summer seas and hot horizons shone
Had been the outspread arms I gave my youth to seek,
Drew near; awhile its pulse strove sweetly with my own,
Awhile I felt its breath astir upon my cheek.
I was so happy there; so fleeting was my stay,
What wonder if, assailed with vistas so divine,
I only lived to search and sample them the day
When between dawn and dusk the sultan's courts were mine !
Speak not of other worlds of happiness to be,
As though in any fond imaginary sphere
Lay more to tempt man's soul to immortality
Than ripens for his bliss abundant now and here!
Flowerlike I hope to die as flowerlike was my birth.
115
Rooted in Nature's just benignant law like them,
I want no better joys than those that from green Earth
My spirit's blossom drew through the sweet body's stem.
I see no dread in death, no horror to abhor.
I never thought it else than but to cease to dwell
Spectator, and resolve most naturally once more
Into the dearly loved eternal spectacle.
Unto the fields and flowers this flesh I found so fair
I yield; do you, dear friend, over your rose-crowned wine,
Murmur my name some day as though my lips were there,
And frame your mouth as though its blushing kiss were mine.
Yea, where the banquet-hall is brilliant with young men,
You whose bright youth it might have thrilled my breast to know,
Drink . . . and perhaps my lips, insatiate even then
Of lips to hang upon, may find their loved ones so.
Unto the flush of dawn and evening I commend
This immaterial self and flamelike part of me,--Unto the azure haze that hangs at the world's end,
The sunshine on the hills, the starlight on the sea,--Unto angelic Earth, whereof the lives of those
Who love and dream great dreams and deeply feel may be
The elemental cells and nervules that compose
Its divine consciousness and joy and harmony.
~ Alan Seeger,
1446:Deliciae Sapientiae De Amore
Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
May gaze within,k and sing the pomp I see;
For, crown'd with roses all,
'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival!
But first warn off the beatific spot
Those wretched who have not
Even afar beheld the shining wall,
And those who, once beholding, have forgot,
And those, most vile, who dress
The charnel spectre drear
Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness
In that refulgent fame,
And cry, Lo, here!
And name
The Lady whose smiles inflame
The sphere.
Bring, Love, anear, And bid be not afraid
Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,
And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;
for I will sing of nought
Less sweet to hear
Than seems
A music their half-remember'd dreams.
The magnet calls the steel:
Answers the iron to the magnet's breath;
What do they feel
But death!
The clouds of summer kiss in flame and rain,
And are not found again;
But the heavens themselves eternal are with fire
Of unapproach'd desire,
By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,
In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess'd.
O, spousals high;
O, doctrine blest,
Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;
18
This know ye all
Who can recall
With what a welling of indignant tears
LOve's simpleness first hears
The meaning of his mortal covenant,
And from what pride comes down
To wear the crown
Of which 'twas very heaven to feel the want.
How envies he the ways
Of yonder hopeless star,
And so would laugh and yearn
With trembling lids eterne,
Ineffably content from infinitely far
Only to gaze
On his bright Mistress's responding rays,
That never know eclipse;
And, once in his long year, With praeternuptial ecstasy and fear,
By the delicious law of that ellipse
Wherein all citizens of ether move,
With hastening pace to come
Nearer, though never near,
His Love
And always inaccessible sweet Home;
There on his path doubly to burn,
Kiss'd by her doubled light
That whispers of its source,
The ardent secret ever clothed with Night,
Then go forth in new force
Towards a new return,
Rejoicing as a Bridegroom on his course!
This know ye all;
Therefore gaze bold,
That so in you be joyful hope increas'd,
Thorough the Palace portals, and behold
The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.
O, hear
Them singing clear
'Cor meum et caro mea'round the 'I am',
The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb
Whom they for ever follow there that kept,
Or, losing, never slept
Till they reconquer'd had in mortal fight
19
The standard white.
O, hear
From the harps they bore from Earth, five-strung, what music springs,
While the glad Spirits chide
The wondering strings!
And how the shining sacrificial Choirs,
Offering for aye their dearest hearts' desires,
Which to their hearts come back beatified,
Hymn, the bright aisles along,
The nuptial song,
Song ever new to us and them, that saith,
'Hail Virgin in Virginity a Spouse!'
Heard first below
Within the little house
At Nazareth;
Heard yet in many a cell where brides of Christ
Lie hid, emparadised,
And where, although
By the hour 'tis night,
There's light,
The Day still lingering in the lap of snow.
Gaze and be not afraid
Ye wedded few that honour, in sweet thought
And glittering will,
So freshly from the garden gather still
The lily sacrificed;
For ye,though self-suspected here for nought,
Are highly styled
With the thousands twelve times twelve of undefiled.
Gaze and be not afraid
Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.
The full Moon of deific vision bright
Abashes nor abates
No spark minute of Nature's keen delight,
'Tis there your Hymen waits!
There wher in courts afar, all unconfused, they crowd,
As fumes the starlight soft
In gulfs of cloud,
And each to the other, well-content,
Sighs oft,
''Twas this we meant!'
Gaze without blame
20
Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.
There of pure Virgins none
Is fairer seen,
Save One,
Than Mary Magdalene.
Gaze without doubt or fear
Ye to whom generous Love, by any name, is dear.
Love makes the life to be
A fount perpetual of virginity;
For, lo, the Elect
Of generous Love, how named soe'er, affect
Nothing but God,
Or mediate or direct,
Nothing but God,
The Husband of the Heavens:
And who Him love, in potence great or small
Are, one and all,
Heirs of the Palace glad,
And inly clad
With the bridal robes of ardour virginal.
~ Coventry Patmore,
1447:Song Of America
And now, when poets are singing
Their songs of olden days,
And now, when the land is ringing
With sweet Centennial lays,
My muse goes wandering backward,
To the groundwork of all these,
To the time when our Pilgrim Fathers
Came over the winter seas.
The sons of a mighty kingdom,
Of a cultured folk were they;
Born amidst pomp and splendor,
Bred in it day by day.
Children of bloom and beauty,
Reared under skies serene,
Where the daisy and hawthorne blossomed,
And the ivy was always green.
And yet, for the sake of freedom,
For a free religious faith,
They turned from home and people,
And stood face to face with death.
They turned from a tyrant ruler,
And stood on the new world's shore,
With a waste of waters behind them,
And a waste of land before.
O, men of a great Republic;
Of a land of untold worth;
Of a nation that has no equal
Upon God's round green earth:
I hear you sighing and crying
Of the hard, close times at hand;
What think you of those old heroes,
On the rock 'twixt sea and land?
The bells of a million churches
Go ringing out to-night,
And the glitter of palace windows
Fills all the land with light;
And there is the home and college,
And here is the feast and ball,
And the angels of peace and freedom
515
Are hovering over all.
They had no church, no college,
No banks, no mining stock;
They had but the waste before them,
The sea, and Plymouth Rock.
But there in the night and tempest,
With gloom on every hand,
They laid the first foundation
Of a nation great and grand.
There were no weak repinings,
No shrinking from what might be,
But with their brows to the tempest,
And with their backs to the sea,
They planned out a noble future,
And planted the corner stone
Of the grandest, greatest republic,
The world has ever known.
O women in homes of splendor,
O lily-buds frail and fair,
With fortunes upon your fingers,
And milk-white pearls in your hair:
I hear you longing and sighing
For some new, fresh delight;
But what of those Pilgrim mothers
On that December night?
I hear you talking of hardships,
I hear you moaning of loss;
Each has her fancied sorrow,
Each bears her self-made cross.
But they, they had only their husbands,
The rain, the rock, and the sea,
Yet, they looked up to God and blessed Him,
And were glad because they were free.
O grand old Pilgrim heroes,
O souls that were tried and true,
With all of our proud possessions
We are humbled at thought of you:
Men of such might and muscle,
Women so brave and strong,
Whose faith was fixed as the mountain,
Through a night so dark and long.
We know of your grim, grave errors,
516
As husbands and as wives;
Of the rigid bleak ideas
That starved your daily lives;
Of pent-up, curbed emotions,
Of feelings crushed, suppressed,
That God with the heart created
In every human breast;
We know of that little remnant
Of British tyranny,
When you hunted Quakers and witches,
And swumg them from a tree;
Yet back to a holy motive,
To live in the fear of God,
To a purpose, high, exalted,
To walk where martyrs trod,
We can trace your gravest errors;
Your aim was fixed and sure,
And e'en if your acts were fanatic,
We know your hearts were pure.
You lived so near to heaven,
You over-reached your trust,
And deemed yourselves creators,
Forgetting you were but dust.
But we with our broader visions,
With our wider realm of thought,
I often think would be better
If we lived as our fathers taught.
Their lives seemed bleak and rigid,
Narrow, and void of bloom;
Our minds have too much freedom,
And conscience too much room.
They over-reached in duty,
They starved their hearts for the right;
We live too much in the senses,
We bask too long in the light.
They proved by their clinging to Him
The image of God in man;
And we, by our love of license,
Strengthen a Darwin's plan.
But bigotry reached its limit,
And license must have its sway,
And both shall result in profit
517
To those of a latter day.
With the fetters of slavery broken,
And freedom's flag unfurled,
Our nation strides onward and upward,
And stands the peer of the world.
Spires and domes and steeples,
Glitter from shore to shore;
The waters are white with commerce,
The earth is studded with ore;
Peace is sitting above us,
And Plenty with laden hand,
Wedded to sturdy Labor,
Goes singing through the land.
Then let each child of the nation,
Who glories in being free,
Remember the Pilgrim Fathers
Who stood on the rock by the sea;
For there in the rain and tempest
Of a night long passed away,
They sowed the seeds of a harvest
We gather in sheaves to-day.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
1448:Ode On The Istallation Of The Duke Of Devonshire
Hence a while, severer Muses;
Spare your slaves till drear October.
Hence; for Alma Mater chooses
Not to be for ever sober:
But, like stately matron gray,
Calling child and grandchild round her,
Will for them at least be gay;
Share for once their holiday;
And, knowing she will sleep the sounder,
Cheerier-hearted on the morrow
Rise to grapple care and sorrow,
Grandly leads the dance adown, and joins the children's play.
So go, for in your places
Already, as you see,
(Her tears for some deep sorrow scarcely dried),
Venus holds court among her sinless graces,
With many a nymph from many a park and lea.
She, pensive, waits the merrier faces
Of those your wittier sisters three,
O'er jest and dance and song who still preside,
To cheer her in this merry-mournful tide;
And bids us, as she smiles or sighs,
Tune our fancies by her eyes.
Then let the young be glad,
Fair girl and gallant lad,
And sun themselves to-day
By lawn and garden gay;
'Tis play befits the noon
Of rosy-girdled June:
Who dare frown if heaven shall smile?
Blest, who can forget a while;
The world before them, and above
The light of universal love.
Go, then, let the young be gay;
From their heart as from their dress
Let darkness and let mourning pass away,
While we the staid and worn look on and bless.
62
Health to courage firm and high!
Health to Granta's chivalry!
Wisely finding, day by day,
Play in toil, and toil in play.
Granta greets them, gliding down
On by park and spire and town;
Humming mills and golden meadows,
Barred with elm and poplar shadows;
Giant groves, and learned halls;
Holy fanes and pictured walls.
Yet she bides not here; around
Lies the Muses' sacred ground.
Most she lingers, where below
Gliding wherries come and go;
Stalwart footsteps shake the shores;
Rolls the pulse of stalwart oars;
Rings aloft the exultant cry
For the bloodless victory.
There she greets the sports, which breed
Valiant lads for England's need;
Wisely finding, day by day,
Play in toil, and toil in play.
Health to courage, firm and high!
Health to Granta's chivalry!
Yet stay a while, severer Muses, stay,
For you, too, have your rightful parts to-day.
Known long to you, and known through you to fame,
Are Chatsworth's halls, and Cavendish's name.
You too, then, Alma Mater calls to greet
A worthy patron for your ancient seat;
And bid her sons from him example take,
Of learning purely sought for learning's sake,
Of worth unboastful, power in duty spent;
And see, fulfilled in him, her high intent.
Come, Euterpe, wake thy choir;
Fit thy notes to our desire.
Long may he sit the chiefest here,
Meet us and greet us, year by year;
Long inherit, sire and son,
All that their race has wrought and won,
63
Since that great Cavendish came again,
Round the world and over the main,
Breasting the Thames with his mariners bold,
Past good Queen Bess's palace of old;
With jewel and ingot packed in his hold,
And sails of damask and cloth of gold;
While never a sailor-boy on board
But was decked as brave as a Spanish lord,
With the spoils he had won
In the Isles of the Sun,
And the shores of Fairy-land,
And yet held for the crown of the goodly show,
That queenly smile from the Palace window,
And that wave of a queenly hand.
Yes, let the young be gay,
And sun themselves to-day;And from their hearts, as from their dress,
Let mourning pass away.
But not from us, who watch our years fast fleeing,
And snatching as they flee, fresh fragments of our being.
Can we forget one friend,
Can we forget one face,
Which cheered us toward our end,
Which nerved us for our race?
Oh sad to toil, and yet forego
One presence which has made us know
To Godlike souls how deep our debt!
We would not, if we could, forget.
Severer Muses, linger yet;
Speak out for us one pure and rich regret.
Thou, Clio, who, with awful pen,
Gravest great names upon the hearts of men,
Speak of a fate beyond our ken;
A gem late found and lost too soon; {306}
A sun gone down at highest noon;
A tree from Odin's ancient root,
Which bore for men the ancient fruit,
Counsel, and faith and scorn of wrong,
And cunning lore, and soothing song,
Snapt in mid-growth, and leaving unaware
The flock unsheltered and the pasture bare
64
Nay, let us take what God shall send,
Trusting bounty without end.
God ever lives; and Nature,
Beneath His high dictature,
Hale and teeming, can replace
Strength by strength, and grace by grace,
Hope by hope, and friend by friend:
Trust; and take what God shall send.
So shall Alma Mater see
Daughters fair and wise
Train new lands of liberty
Under stranger skies;
Spreading round the teeming earth
English science, manhood, worth.
1862.
~ Charles Kingsley,
1449:On The Death Of The Honourable Mr. James Thynne
Farewell, lov'd Youth! since 'twas the Will of Heaven
So soon to take, what had so late been giv'n;
And thus our Expectations to destroy,
Raising a Grief, where we had form'd a Joy;
Who once believ'd, it was the Fates Design
In Him to double an Illustrious Line,
And in a second Channel spread that Race
Where ev'ry Virtue shines, with every Grace.
But we mistook, and 'twas not here below
That this engrafted Scion was to grow;
The Seats above requir'd him, that each Sphere
Might soon the Offspring of such Parents share.
Resign him then to the supream Intent,
You, who but Flesh to that blest Spirit lent.
Again disrob'd, let him to Bliss retire,
And only bear from you, amidst that Choir,
What, Precept or Example did inspire,
A Title to Rewards, from that rich store
Of Pious Works, which you have sent before.
Then lay the fading Reliques, which remain,
In the still Vault (excluding farther Pain);
Where Kings and Counsellors their Progress close,
And his renowned Ancestors repose;
Where COVENTRY withdrew All but in Name,
Leaving the World his Benefits and Fame;
Where his Paternal Predecessor lies,
Once large of Thought, and rank'd among the Wise;
Whose Genius in Long-Leat we may behold
(A Pile, as noble as if he'd been told
By WEYMOUTH, it shou'd be in time possest,
And strove to suit the Mansion to the Guest.)
Nor favour'd, nor disgrac'd, there ESSEX sleeps,
Nor SOMERSET his Master's Sorrows weeps,
Who to the shelter of th' unenvy'd Grave
Convey'd the Monarch, whom he cou'd not save;
Though, Roman-like, his own less-valu'd Head
He proffer'd in that injur'd Martyr's stead.
Nor let that matchless Female 'scape my Pen,
Who their Whole Duty taught to weaker Men,
100
And of each Sex the Two best Gifts enjoy'd,
The Skill to write, the Modesty to hide;
Whilst none shou'd that Performance disbelieve,
Who led the Life, might the Directions give.
With such as These, whence He deriv'd his Blood,
Great on Record, or eminently Good,
Let Him be laid, till Death's long Night shall cease,
And breaking Glory interrupt the Peace.
Mean-while, ye living Parents, ease your Grief
By Tears, allow'd as Nature's due Relief.
For when we offer to the Pow'rs above,
Like You, the dearest Objects of our Love;
When, with that patient Saint in Holy Writ,
We've learnt at once to Grieve, and to Submit;
When contrite Sighs, like hallow'd Incense, rise
Bearing our Anguish to th' appeased Skies;
Then may those Show'rs, which take from Sorrow birth,
And still are tending tow'rd this baleful Earth,
O'er all our deep and parching Cares diffuse,
Like Eden's Springs, or Hermon's soft'ning Dews.
But lend your Succours, ye Almighty Pow'rs,
For as the Wound, the Balsam too is Yours.
In vain are Numbers, or persuasive Speech,
What Poets write, or what the Pastors teach,
Till You, who make, again repair the Breach.
For when to Shades of Death our Joys are fled,
When for a Loss, like This, our Tears are shed,
None can revive the Heart, but who can raise the Dead.
But yet, my Muse, if thou hadst softer Verse
Than e'er bewail'd the melancholy Herse;
If thou hadst Pow'r to dissipate the Gloom
Inherent to the Solitary Tomb;
To rescue thence the Memory and Air
Of what we lately saw so Fresh, so Fair;
Then shou'd this Noble Youth thy Art engage
To shew the Beauties of his blooming Age,
The pleasing Light, that from his Eyes was cast,
Like hasty Beams, too Vigorous to last;
Where the warm Soul, as on the Confines, lay
Ready for Flight, and for Eternal Day.
Gently dispos'd his Nature shou'd be shown,
101
And all the Mother's Sweetness made his Own.
The Father's Likeness was but faintly seen,
As ripen'd Fruits are figur'd by the Green.
Nor cou'd we hope, had he fulfill'd his Days,
He shou'd have reach'd WEYMOUTH's unequal'd Praise.
Still One distinguish'd plant each Lineage shews,
And all the rest beneath it's Stature grows.
Of Tully's Race but He possess'd the Tongue,
And none like Julius from the Caesars sprung.
Next, in his harmless Sports he shou'd be drawn
Urging his Courser, o'er the flow'ry Lawn;
Sprightly Himself, as the enliven'd Game,
Bold in the Chace, and full of gen'rous Flame;
Yet in the Palace, Tractable and Mild,
Perfect in all the Duties of a Child;
Which fond Reflection pleases, whilst it pains,
Like penetrating Notes of sad Harmonious Strains.
Selected Friendships timely he began,
And siezed in Youth that best Delight of Man,
Leaving a growing Race to mourn his End,
Their earliest and their Ages promis'd Friend.
But far away alas! that Prospect moves,
Lost in the Clouds, like distant Hills and Groves,
Whilst with encreasing Steps we all pursue
What Time alone can bring to nearer View,
That Future State, which Darkness yet involves,
Known but by Death, which ev'ry Doubt resolves.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,
1450:S. H.

With beams December planets dart
His cold eye truth and conduct scanned,
July was in his sunny heart,
October in his liberal hand.
A. H.

High was her heart, and yet was well inclined,
Her manners made of bounty well refined;
Far capitals, and marble courts, her eye still seemed to see,
Minstrels, and kings, and high-born dames, and of the best that be.
"SUUM CUIQUE."

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.
HUSH!

Every thought is public,
Every nook is wide;
Thy gossips spread each whisper,
And the gods from side to side.
ORATOR.

He who has no hands
Perforce must use his tongue;
Foxes are so cunning
Because they are not strong.
ARTIST.

Quit the hut, frequent the palace,
Reck not what the people say;
For still, where'er the trees grow biggest,
Huntsmen find the easiest way.
POET.

Ever the Poet from the land
Steers his bark, and trims his sail;
Right out to sea his courses stand,
New worlds to find in pinnace frail.
POET.

To clothe the fiery thought
In simple words succeeds,
For still the craft of genius is
To mask a king in weeds.
BOTANIST.

Go thou to thy learned task,
I stay with the flowers of spring:
Do thou of the ages ask
What me the flowers will bring.
GARDENER.

True Bramin, in the morning meadows wet,
Expound the Vedas of the violet,
Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop,
See the plum redden, and the beurre stoop.
FORESTER.

He took the colour of his vest
From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast;
For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,
So walks the woodman, unespied.
NORTHMAN.

The gale that wrecked you on the sand,
It helped my rowers to row;
The storm is my best galley hand,
And drives me where I go.
FROM ALCUIN.

The sea is the road of the bold,
Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,
The pit wherein the streams are rolled,
And fountain of the rains.
EXCELSIOR.

Over his head were the maple buds,
And over the tree was the moon,
And over the moon were the starry studs,
That drop from the angel's shoon.
BORROWING.
FROM THE FRENCH.

Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived!
NATURE.

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold,
And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old:
But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,
Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
FATE.

Her planted eye to-day controls,
Is in the morrow most at home,
And sternly calls to being souls
That curse her when they come.
HOROSCOPE.

Ere he was born, the stars of fate
Plotted to make him rich and great:
When from the womb the babe was loosed,
The gate of gifts behind him closed.
POWER.

Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat,
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.
CLIMACTERIC.

I am not wiser for my age,
Nor skilful by my grief;
Life loiters at the book's first page,--
Ah! could we turn the leaf.
HERI, CRAS, HODIE.

Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen,
To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between:
Future or Past no richer secret folds,
O friendless Present! than thy bosom holds.
MEMORY.

Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall
Shadows of the thoughts of day,
And thy fortunes, as they fall,
The bias of the will betray.
LOVE.

Love on his errand bound to go
Can swim the flood, and wade through snow,
Where way is none, 'twill creep and wind
And eat through Alps its home to find.
SACRIFICE.

Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,--
''Tis man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.'
PERICLES.

Well and wisely said the Greek,
Be thou faithful, but not fond;
To the altar's foot thy fellow seek,
The Furies wait beyond.
CASELLA.

Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore.
SHAKSPEARE.

I see all human wits
Are measured but a few,
Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits,
Lone as the blessed Jew.
HAFIZ.

Her passions the shy violet
From Hafiz never hides;
Love-longings of the raptured bird
The bird to him confides.
NATURE IN LEASTS.

As sings the pine-tree in the wind,
So sings in the wind a sprig of the pine;
Her strength and soul has laughing France
Shed in each drop of wine.
[GREEK TITLE].

'A new commandment,' said the smiling Muse,
'I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach;'--
Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale,
And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore
Hafiz and Shakspeare with their shining choirs.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Quatrains
,
1451:To So-Kin of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor of
    Gen.

Now I remember that you built me a special tavern
By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin.
With yellow gold and white jewels, we paid for songs
    and laughter
And we were drunk for month on month, forget-

    ting the kings and princes.
Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and
    from the west border,
And with them, and with you especially
There was nothing at cross purpose,
And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of

    mountain-crossing,
If only they could be of that fellowship,
And we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and
     without regret.
     And then I was sent off to South Wei,
          smothered in laurel groves,
And you to the north of Raku-hoku,
Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories in
     common.
     And then, when separation had come to its worst,
We met, and travelled into Sen-Go,
Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and
     twisting waters,
Into a valley of the thousand bright flowers,
That was the first valley;
And into ten thousand valleys full of voices and

    pine-winds.
And with silver harness and reins of gold,
Out come the East of Kan foreman and his

    company.
And there came also the True man of Shi-yo to

    meet me,
Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ.
In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us more
    Sennin music,
Many instruments, like the sound of young phoenix
    broods.
The foreman of Kan Chu, drunk, danced
    because his long sleeves wouldn't keep still
With that music playing,
And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my
    head on his lap,
And my spirit so high it was all over the heavens,
And before the end of the day we were scattered
    like stars, or rain.
I had to be off to So, far away over the waters,
You back to your river-bridge.

And your father, who was brave as a leopard,
Was governor in Hei Shu, and put down the bar-

     barian rabble.
And one May he had you send for me,
          despite the long distance.
And what with broken wheels and so on, I won't

     say it wasn't hard going,
Over roads twisted like sheep's guts.
And I was still going, late in the year,
          in the cutting wind from the North,
And thinking how little you cared for the cost,
          and you caring enough to pay it.
And what a reception:
Red jade cups, food well set on a blue jewelled table,
And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning.
And you would walk out with me to the western

     corner of the castle,
To the dynastic temple, with water about it clear
     as blue jade,
With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-

    organs and drums,
With ripples like dragon-scales, going grass green

    on the water,
Pleasure lasting, with courtezans, going and coming
     without hindrance,
With the willow-flakes falling like snow,
And the vermilioned girls getting drunk

     about sunset,
And the water, a hundred feet deep, reflecting green
     eyebrows
--Eyebrows painted green are a fine sight in young
     moonlight,
Gracefully painted--
And the girls singing back at each other,
Dancing in transparent brocade,
And the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it,
Tossing it up under the clouds.
           And all this comes to an end.
           And is not again to be met with.
I went up to the court for examination,
Tried Layu's luck, offered the Choyo song,
And got no promotion,
           and went back to the East Mountains
               white-headed.
And once again, later, we met at the South bridge-

     head.
And then the crowd broke up, you went north to
     San palace,
And if you ask how I regret that parting:
     It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end
         Confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking, and there is no end of

     talking,
There is no end of things in the heart.
I call in the boy,
Have him sit on his knees here
           To seal this,
And send it a thousand miles, thinking.


  This poem is from CATHAY (London: Elkin Mathews, 1915), the volume of Chinese poems
  The book's widely-applauded publication prompted T.S. Eliot to remark that Pound had "reinvented Chinese poetry for our time."
   CATHAY is comprised of 18 translations of various early Chinese poems, eleven poems by T'ang Dynasty poet Li Po ("Rihaku"), and the Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Seafarer," which Pound included for timeline comparison of 8th-Century English poetry with 8th-Century Chinese poetry.
   CATHAY ranks among the most pivotal publications in the entire history of translation and of modern poetry in English.
   ~ Li Bai, Exile's Letter
,
1452:Visy Recycling Memorandum, 2003.
(i)
This unwanted cornucopia - nickel-plated pears, bananas, grapes, apples,
kitsch relic from some neo-classical age, saved from Terminator meltdown
its metallic semiotics stalled on the conveyor belts’ rubber-suited fascism.
Universal bowerbird plucked from sexual obscurity - what a piece of work!
(ii)
All labour history is corrupt. Some American Vietnam War text claimed
that no foreign journalist recorded the fall of Saigon; ditto Neil Davis’
footage of the NVA’s T-72 smashing Palace gates was doco-illusionary.
Neil loved the East, Asian women & died in some shitty Thai coup.
(iii)
Next was coughed up a crouching brass cat. Sexless? Time-neutered.
Sleek in its full metal jacket fur. Did someone switch over to dogs?
48
“Bob” (“Gollum”) a famous cricket cat, farm-surrendered, now lives
in the ginger generations doorstop mewling around my mother’s feet.
(iv)
Why try to marry sex & Nazism? Partisans assassinated blond poster
crew-cut boy Heydrich (the original Tommy Finland?) almost botched
it, grenades destroyed his motorcades’ armoured genitals, Third Reich’s
proto-Eminem. How many times can you say ‘motherfucker’ textually?
(v)
The head of a Roman centurion rolled out next. Plaster, nose-smashed
by visygothic policies; modern archaeology’s Liverpool kiss. Transference
of sexual magnetism – Roman army defeats Macedonians at the “Dog’s
Heads”, Thessaly 197 B.C. & the rise of Russell Crowe’s rough trade.
(vi)
49
Then a statue of Dionysus, one horn snapped off, poetry books under arm
mop head beard sadhu fixed to a hard face, sunburn plaster peeling white skin.
His own dishevelled Dionysian nature got him expelled from his gnomeland,
ostracized forever from some Heidelberg courtyard, the tyranny of fallen chic.
(vii)
Murray quoted, “I came from a hard culture”, looking a bit like the jolly
Buddha sculpture that humped down the waste stream, Eastern & Western
burning want - striped woollen jumpers unpicking themselves: get knotted
his thin red line of religion spake: the closer you are to Caesar the greater the
fear.
(viii)
Tyring to explain my personal ontology, the great man tranced through me,
two brothers jumped ship South Brisbane wharves 1886, Baltic, Isle of Reugen.
Dinnies used to be our name but it changed six generations ago, no one knew
50
why but Fredy Murray had been there; more literary Proteus than genealogist.
(ix)
The casualisation of Australia & 2.5 million workers suspicious rockabilly minds.
Strong magnetic fields pull artists into poverty, a labour hire shuffle & sucking
up to team leaders, Herr gruppenfuhrer gave needle-stuck Stacey her marching
orders,
refused to climb down into a pit waist deep in glass; group signatures against
porn.
(x)
On the phone the Manager said to her, “I can picture what you look like naked.”
This, after she’d signed his declaration; harassment is any unwelcome, uninvited
behaviour,
whether verbal, written or physical, against another person. Harassment offends,
humiliates or
intimidates your workmates & colleagues. All faces are the same man, one big
self.
51
(xi)
Then it was my turn down the pit & I knew why Stacey had rebuked her job
satisfaction – part tunnel rat, part miner we dug out wine bottle shrapnel from
sewerage water, Hien, Alfred, Hussan; Vietnamese, German, Turk & Australian
all in the same trench, huddling from wage concussion; post-war economic
boom.
(xii)
Makes one think of Fredy Murray’s artistic dilemma. How he only worked the land
in his head, his hands ploughing with a pen after he’d famously chucked in his
public
service job with the revolutionary decree – I’m going home forever! Who could
blame him?
Canberra in the 70’s - a political climate polluted by staffers dancing on bits of
paper!
(xiii)
52
In 8 Mile, Eminem or ‘Rabbit’ as he’s monikered faces his own art versus
employment
indecision. Garbled American obscenities mask his attempts to break dance on
stubs
of bus tickets, slammin’ at the Shelter, the Nuremberg Rally in his mind
enhanced by
the Detroit car plant’s ubermensch ethos; all rap lyrics are the same song, one
big opera.
(xiv)
Notice to all staff. The Manager called everyone in for a rasp over the knuckles,
man
of few words off the telephone pissed that someone had left a porno mag on top
of a
needle bin, blocking access to the final come down of addiction; casuals poring
over Jill
Kelly’s physical assets than VISY’s on paper profit; imagination lost in the waste
stream.
(xv)
That’s why I collected trophies; cornucopias, statues, sculptures, columns - my
finger on
53
the end game of guilt, lust, greed, consumerism. Someone else’s abject reality
bound for
China’s paper tigers, apathy’s landfill. Davis, Murray, Heydrich & Eminem so
screwed up
by jobs & sex, history’s artery hardening; outside my factory gate work will set
you free.
~ B. R. Dionysius,
1453:The Torture Of Cuauhtemoc
Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse,
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again,
Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan,
They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard.
Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea,
Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors,
Shiny and sparkling, -- arms and crowns and rings:
Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, -To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down,
Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again,
And watch the glinting metal trickle off,
Even as at night some fisherman, home bound
With speckled cargo in his hollow keel
Caught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines,
Dips in his paddle, lifts it forth again,
And laughs to see the luminous white drops
Fall back in flakes of fire. . . . Gold was the dream
That cheered that desperate enterprise. And now? . . .
Victory waited on the arms of Spain,
Fallen was the lovely city by the lake,
The sunny Venice of the western world;
There many corpses, rotting in the wind,
Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous rags
No jewel caught the sun, no tawny chain
Gleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er.
Pillage that ran red-handed through the streets
Came railing home at evening empty-palmed;
And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone,
Who, ounce by ounce, dear as their own life's blood
Retreating, cast the cumbrous load away:
They, when brown foemen lopped the bridges down,
Who tipped thonged chests into the stream below
And over wealth that might have ransomed kings
117
Passed on to safety; -- cheated, guerdonless -Found (through their fingers the bright booty slipped)
A city naked, of that golden dream
Shorn in one moment like a sunset sky.
Deep in a chamber that no cheerful ray
Purged of damp air, where in unbroken night
Black scorpions nested in the sooty beams,
Helpless and manacled they led him down -Cuauhtemotzin -- and other lords beside -All chieftains of the people, heroes all -And stripped their feathered robes and bound them there
On short stone settles sloping to the head,
But where the feet projected, underneath
Heaped the red coals. Their swarthy fronts illumed,
The bearded Spaniards, helmed and haubergeoned,
Paced up and down beneath the lurid vault.
Some kneeling fanned the glowing braziers; some
Stood at the sufferers' heads and all the while
Hissed in their ears: "The gold . . . the gold . . . the gold.
Where have ye hidden it -- the chested gold?
Speak -- and the torments cease!"
They answered not.
Past those proud lips whose key their sovereign claimed
No accent fell to chide or to betray,
Only it chanced that bound beside the king
Lay one whom Nature, more than other men
Framing for delicate and perfumed ease,
Not yet, along the happy ways of Youth,
Had weaned from gentle usages so far
To teach that fortitude that warriors feel
And glory in the proof. He answered not,
But writhing with intolerable pain,
Convulsed in every limb, and all his face
Wrought to distortion with the agony,
Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal,
The secret half atremble on his lips,
Livid and quivering, that waited yet
For leave -- for leave to utter it -- one sign --
118
One word -- one little word -- to ease his pain.
As one reclining in the banquet hall,
Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers,
Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelry
Surge round him on the tides of wine, but he,
Staunch in the ethic of an antique school -Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind -With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene,
Himself impassive, silent, self-contained:
So sat the Indian prince, with brow unblanched,
Amid the tortured and the torturers.
He who had seen his hopes made desolate,
His realm despoiled, his early crown deprived him,
And watched while Pestilence and Famine piled
His stricken people in their reeking doors,
Whence glassy eyes looked out and lean brown arms
Stretched up to greet him in one last farewell
As back and forth he paced along the streets
With words of hopeless comfort -- what was this
That one should weaken now? He weakened not.
Whate'er was in his heart, he neither dealt
In pity nor in scorn, but, turning round,
Met that racked visage with his own unmoved,
Bent on the sufferer his mild calm eyes,
And while the pangs smote sharper, in a voice,
As who would speak not all in gentleness
Nor all disdain, said: "Yes! And am -I- then
Upon a bed of roses?"
Stung with shame -Shame bitterer than his anguish -- to betray
Such cowardice before the man he loved,
And merit such rebuke, the boy grew calm;
And stilled his struggling limbs and moaning cries,
And shook away his tears, and strove to smile,
And turned his face against the wall -- and died.
~ Alan Seeger,
1454:Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes
For him new suns are in the skies!

Thy soula crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into bloom sad Autumn by thee;
Night and desert, if they spy thee,
To gardens laughwith daylight shine,
Lit by those happy smiles of thine!
Dark with cloud the future far
Goldens itself beneath thy star.
Smilest thou to see the harmony
Of charm the laws of Nature keep?
Alas! to me the harmony
Brings only cause to weep!

Holds not Hades its domain
Underneath this earth of ours?
Under palace, under fame,
Underneath the cloud-capped towers?
Stately cities soar and spread
O'er your mouldering bones, ye dead!
From corruption, from decay,
Springs yon clove-pink's fragrant bloom;
Yon gay waters wind their way
From the hollows of a tomb.

From the planets thou mayest know
All the change that shifts below,
Fledbeneath that zone of rays,
Fled to night a thousand Mays;
Thrones a thousandrisingsinking,
Earth from thousand slaughters drinking
Blood profusely poured as water;
Of the sceptreof the slaughter
Wouldst thou know what trace remaineth?
Seek them where the dark king reigneth!

Scarce thine eye can ope and close
Ere life's dying sunset glows;
Sinking sudden from its pride
Into deaththe Lethe tide.
Ask'st thou whence thy beauties rise?
Boastest thou those radiant eyes?
Or that cheek in roses dyed?
All their beauty (thought of sorrow!)
From the brittle mould they borrow.
Heavy interest in the tomb
For the brief loan of the bloom,
For the beauty of the day,
Death the usurer, thou must pay,
In the long to-morrow!

Maiden!Death's too strong for scorn;
In the cheek the fairest, He
But the fairest throne doth see
Though the roses of the morn
Weave the veil by beauty worn
Aye, beneath that broidered curtain,
Stands the Archer stern and certain!
Maidthy Visionary hear
Trust the wild one as the sear,
When he tells thee that thine eye,
While it beckons to the wooer,
Only lureth yet more nigh
Death, the dark undoer!

Every ray shed from thy beauty
Wastes the life-lamp while it beams,
And the pulse's playful duty,
And the blue veins' merry streams,
Sport and run into the pall
Creatures of the Tyrant, all!
As the wind the rainbow shatters,
Death thy bright smiles rends and scatters,
Smile and rainbow leave no traces;
From the spring-time's laughing graces,
From all life, as from its germ,
Grows the revel of the worm!

Woe, I see the wild wind wreak
Its wrath upon thy rosy bloom,
Winter plough thy rounded cheek,
Cloud and darkness close in gloom;
Blackening over, and forever,
Youth's serene and silver river!
Love alike and beauty o'er,
Lovely and beloved no more!

Maiden, an oak that soars on high,
And scorns the whirlwind's breath
Behold thy Poet's youth defy
The blunted dart of Death!
His gaze as ardent as the light
That shoots athwart the heaven,
His soul yet fiercer than the light
In the eternal heaven,
Of Him, in whom as in an ocean-surge
Creation ebbs and flowsand worlds arise and merge!
Through Nature steers the poet's thought to find
No fear but thisone barrier to the mind?

And dost thou glory so to think?
And heaves thy bosom?Woe!
This cup, which lures him to the brink,
As if divinity to drink
Has poison in its flow!
Wretched, oh, wretched, they who trust
To strike the God-spark from the dust!
The mightiest tone the music knows,
But breaks the harp-string with the sound;
And genius, still the more it glows,
But wastes the lamp whose life bestows
The light it sheds around.
Soon from existence dragged away,
The watchful jailer grasps his prey:
Vowed on the altar of the abused fire,
The spirits I raised against myself conspire!
Letyes, I feel it two short springs away
Pass on their rapid flight;
And life's faint spark shall, fleeting from the clay,
Merge in the Fount of Light!

And weep'st thou, Laura?be thy tears forbid;
Would'st thou my lot, life's dreariest years amid,
Protract and doom?No: sinner, dry thy tears:
Would'st thou, whose eyes beheld the eagle wing
Of my bold youth through air's dominion spring,
Mark my sad age (life's tale of glory done)
Crawl on the sod and tremble in the sun?
Hear the dull frozen heart condemn the flame
That as from heaven to youth's blithe bosom came;
And see the blind eyes loathing turn from all
The lovely sins age curses to recall?
Let me die young!sweet sinner, dry thy tears!
Yes, let the flower be gathered in its bloom!
And thou, young genius, with the brows of gloom,
Quench thou life's torch, while yet the flame is strong!
Even as the curtain falls; while still the scene
Most thrills the hearts which have its audience been;
As fleet the shadows from the stageand long
When all is o'er, lingers the breathless throng!

~ Friedrich Schiller, Melancholy -- To Laura
,
1455:The world's great age begins anew,
   The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
   Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
   From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
   Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
   Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
   And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
   If earth Death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
   Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,
   And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
   The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose
   Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
   Than many unsubdu'd:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.

Oh cease! must hate and death return?
   Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
   Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
Oh might it die or rest at last!
NOTES
Form:
ababcc

Composition Date:
1821

1060.
Written at Pisa in the autumn of 1821 and published in 1822, Hellas
is a "lyrical drama" treating of the contemporary struggle for freedom in
Greece and dedicated to Prince Mavrocordato, whom Shelley met in exile at
Pisa and who had returned to Greece in June 1821 to take part in the revolution
against the Turks. Shelley writes in a Preface: "The Persae of Aeschylus
afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the
glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe
parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have,
therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures ... [suggesting]
the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilization
and social improvement." The action takes place in the palace of the Turkish
king, where he receives reports on the progress of the war from messengers
and prophecies of doom from visionary visitors. The last news, however, is of
a Turkish victory, to the dismay of the Greek slaves who act as chorus throughout
the play. "The final chorus," according to Shelley's note, "is indistinct and
obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies
of wars, and rumours of wars, etc., may safely be made by poet or prophet in
any age, but to anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness
is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It
will remind the reader 'magno nec proximus intervallo' of Isaiah and
Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil which we
endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of
society in which the 'lion shall lie down with the lamb,' and 'omnis feret
omnia tellus.' Let these great names be my authority and excuse."

The world's great age: the "annus magnus" at the end of which, according
to an idea of the ancients, all the heavenly bodies would return to their original
positions, and when, in consequence, the history of the world would begin to
repeat itself.

1068.
Peneus: a river in Thessaly.

1070.
Tempe: the vale through which Peneus flows.

1071.
Cyclads: a group of islands in the Aegean.

1072.
Argo: the vessel which bore Jason on his search for the Golden Fleece.

1072-77.
See Virgil, Eclogue IV:

Another Tiphys shall new seas explore;
Another Argo land the chiefs upon th'Iberian shore;
Another Helen other wars create,
And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate

(Dryden's translation).

1074.
Orpheus. For the stories of Orpheus--his entrancing music, the loss of his
wife Eurydice and his ultimate failure to recover her from the underworld, and
his death at the hands of Maenads (worshippers of Dionysus)--see Ovid's
Metamorphoses.

Calypso: a sorceress on whose island Ulysses remained for seven years on
the way home from Troy to Ithaca.

1080.
Laian rage. Laius was King of Thebes, father of Oedipus, and head of a
house whose horrors were a favourite theme of Greek tragedy.

1082.
Sphinx: a monster who sat on the roadside at Thebes and slew all who could
not solve a riddle it proposed.

1090-93.
Shelley's note reads (in part): "Saturn and Love were among the deities of
a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who
fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia and Egypt; the One who rose, or
Jesus Christ . . .; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous objects of
the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of
America...."


~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Chorus from Hellas
,
1456:Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the worlda world how lovely then!
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
How different, oh, how different, in the day
When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,
O Venus Amathusia!

Then, through a veil of dreams
Woven by song, truth's youthful beauty glowed,
And life's redundant and rejoicing streams
Gave to the soulless, soulwhere'r they flowed
Man gifted nature with divinity
To lift and link her to the breast of love;
All things betrayed to the initiate eye
The track of gods above!

Where lifelessfixed afar,
A flaming ball to our dull sense is given,
Phoebus Apollo, in his golden car,
In silent glory swept the fields of heaven!
On yonder hill the Oread was adored,
In yonder tree the Dryad held her home;
And from her urn the gentle Naiad poured
The wavelet's silver foam.

Yon bay, chaste Daphne wreathed,
Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell,
Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed,
And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel,
The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill
Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne;
And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill
Heard Cytherea mourn!

Heaven's shapes were charmed unto
The mortal race of old Deucalion;
Pyrrha's fair daughter, humanly to woo,
Came down, in shepherd-guise, Latona's son
Between men, heroes, gods, harmonious then
Love wove sweet links and sympathies divine;
Blest Amathusia, heroes, gods, and men,
Equals before thy shrine!

Not to that culture gay,
Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan!
Well might each heart be happy in that day
For gods, the happy ones, were kin to man!
The beautiful alone the holy there!
No pleasure shamed the gods of that young race;
So that the chaste Camoenae favoring were,
And the subduing grace!

A palace every shrine;
Your sports heroic;yours the crown
Of contests hallowed to a power divine,
As rushed the chariots thundering to renown.
Fair round the altar where the incense breathed,
Moved your melodious dance inspired; and fair
Above victorious brows, the garland wreathed
Sweet leaves round odorous hair!

The lively Thyrsus-swinger,
And the wild car the exulting panthers bore,
Announced the presence of the rapture-bringer
Bounded the Satyr and blithe Faun before;
And Maenads, as the frenzy stung the soul,
Hymned in their maddening dance, the glorious wine
As ever beckoned to the lusty bowl
The ruddy host divine!

Before the bed of death
No ghastly spectre stoodbut from the porch
Of life, the lipone kiss inhaled the breath,
And the mute graceful genius lowered a torch.
The judgment-balance of the realms below,
A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held;
The very furies at the Thracian's woe,
Were moved and music-spelled.

In the Elysian grove
The shades renewed the pleasures life held dear:
The faithful spouse rejoined remembered love,
And rushed along the meads the charioteer;
There Linus poured the old accustomed strain;
Admetus there Alcestis still could greet; his
Friend there once more Orestes could regain,
His arrowsPhiloctetes!

More glorious than the meeds
That in their strife with labor nerved the brave,
To the great doer of renowned deeds
The Hebe and the heaven the Thunderer gave.
Before the rescued rescuer [10] of the dead,
Bowed down the silent and immortal host;
And the twain stars [11] their guiding lustre shed,
On the bark tempest-tossed!

Art thou, fair world, no more?
Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face;
Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore,
Can we the footstep of sweet fable trace!
The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;
Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft;
Where once the warm and living shapes were rife,
Shadows alone are left!

Cold, from the north, has gone
Over the flowers the blast that killed their May;
And, to enrich the worship of the one,
A universe of gods must pass away!
Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps,
But thee no more, Selene, there I see!
And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps,
AndEcho answers me!

Deaf to the joys she gives
Blind to the pomp of which she is possessed
Unconscious of the spiritual power that lives
Around, and rules herby our bliss unblessed
Dull to the art that colors or creates,
Like the dead timepiece, godless nature creeps
Her plodding round, and, by the leaden weights,
The slavish motion keeps.

To-morrow to receive
New life, she digs her proper grave to-day;
And icy moons with weary sameness weave
From their own light their fulness and decay.
Home to the poet's land the gods are flown,
Light use in them that later world discerns,
Which, the diviner leading-strings outgrown,
On its own axle turns.

Home! and with them are gone
The hues they gazed on and the tones they heard;
Life's beauty and life's melody:alone
Broods o'er the desolate void, the lifeless word;
Yet rescued from time's deluge, still they throng
Unseen the Pindus they were wont to cherish:
All, that which gains immortal life in song,
To mortal life must perish!

~ Friedrich Schiller, The Gods Of Greece
,
1457:Understand That This Is A Dream
Real as a dream
What shall I do with this great opportunity to fly?
What is the interpretation of this planet, this moon?
if I can dream that I dream / and dream anything dreamable / can I dream
I am awake / and why do that?
When I dream in a dream that I wake / up what
happens when I try to move?
I dream that I move
and the effort moves and moves
till I move / and my arm hurts
Then I wake up / dismayed / I was dreaming / I was waking
when I was dreaming still / just now.
and try to remember next time in dreams
that I am in dreaming.
And dream anything I want when I'm awaken.
When I'm in awakeness what do I desire?
I desire to fulfill my emotional belly.
My whole body my heart in my fingertops thrill with some old fulfillments.
Pages of celestial rhymes burning fire-words
unconsumable but disappear.
Arcane parchments my own and the universe the answer.
Belly to Belly and knee to knee.
The hot spurt of my body to thee and thee
old boy / dreamy Earl / you Prince of Paterson / now king of me / lost
Haledon
first dream that made me take down my pants
urgently to show the cars / auto tracks / rolling down avenue hill.
That far back what do I remember / but the face of the leader of the gang
was blond / that loved me / one day on the steps of his house blocks away
all afternoon I told him about my magic Spell
I can do anything I want / palaces millions / chemistry sets / chicken
coops / white horses
stables and torture basements / I inspect my naked victims
chained upside down / my fingertips thrill approval on their thighs
white hairless cheeks I may kiss all I want
92
at my mercy. on the racks.
I pass with my strong attendants / I am myself naked
bending down with my buttocks out
for their smacks of reproval / o the heat of desire
liek shit in my asshole. The strange gang
across the street / thru the grocerystore / in the wood alley / out in the open
on the corner
Because I lied to the Dentist about that chickencoop roofing / slate stolen off
his garage
by me and the boy I loved who would punish me if he knew
what I loved him.
That now I have had that boy back in another blond form
Peter Orlovsky a Chinese teenager in Bangkok ten years twenty years
Jo Army on the campus / white blond loins / my mouth hath kisses /
full of his cock / my ass burning / full of his cock
all that I do desire. In dream and awake
this handsome body mine / answered
all I desired / intimate loves / open eyed / revealed at last / clothes on the
floor
Underwear the most revealing stripped off below the belly button in bed.
That's that / yes yes / the flat cocks the red pricks the gentle public hair /
alone with me
my magic spell. My power / what I desire alone / what after thirty years /
I got forever / after thirty years / satisfied enough with Peter / with all I
wanted /
with many men I knew one generation / our sperm passing
into our mouths and bellies / beautiful when I love / given.
Now the dream oldens / I olden / my hair a year long / my thirtyeight
birthday approaching.
I dream I
am bald / am disappearing / the campus unrecognizable / Haledon Avenue
93
will be covered with neon / motels / Supermarkets / iron
the porches and woods changed when i go back / to see Earl again
He'll be bald / fleshy father / I could pursie him further in the garage
If there's still a garage on the hill / on the planet / when I get back.
From Asia.
If I could even remember his name or his face / or find him /
When I was ten / perhaps he exists in some form.
With a belly and a belt and an auto
Whatever his last name / I never knew / in the phonebook / the Akashic
records.
I'll write my Inspiration for all Mankind to remember,
My Idea, the secret cave / in the clothes closet / that house probably down /
Nothing to go back to / everything's gone / only my idea
that's disappearing / even in dreams / gray dust piles / instant annihilation
of World War II and all its stainless steel shining-mouthed cannons
much less me and my grammar school kisses / I never kissed in time /
and go on kissing in dream and out on the street / as if it were for ever.
No forever left! Even my oldest forever gone, in Bangkok, in Benares,
swept up with words and bodies / all into the brown Ganges /
passing the burning grounds and / into the police state.
My mind, my mind / you had six feet of Earth to hoe /
Why didn't you remember and plant the seed of Law and gather the sprouts
of What?
the golden blossoms of what idea? If I dream that I dream / what dream
should I dream next? Motorcycle rickshaws / parting lamp shine / little
taxis / horses hoofs
on this Saigon midnight street. Angkor Wat ahead and the ruined city's old
Hindu faces
and there was a dream about Eternity. What should I dream when I wake?
What's left to dream, more Chinese meat? More magic Spells? More youths
to love before I change & disappear?
94
More dream words? For now that I know that I am dreaming /
What next for you Allen? Run down to the Presidents Palace full of Morphine /
The cocks crowing / in the street / Dawn trucks / What is the question?
Do I need sleep, now that there's light in the window?
I'll go to sleep. Signing off until / the next idea / the moving van arrives
empty
at the Doctor's house full of Chinese furniture.
~ Allen Ginsberg,
1458:The Lady Of Shalott (1842)
PART I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers " 'Tis the fairy
626
Lady of Shalott."PART II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of III
627
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
628
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance-With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right-The leaves upon her falling light-Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
629
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
1459:La Muse Vénale (The Venal Muse)
Ô muse de mon coeur, amante des palais,
Auras-tu, quand Janvier lâchera ses Borées,
Durant les noirs ennuis des neigeuses soirées,
Un tison pour chauffer tes deux pieds violets?
Ranimeras-tu donc tes épaules marbrées
Aux nocturnes rayons qui percent les volets?
Sentant ta bourse à sec autant que ton palais
Récolteras-tu l'or des voûtes azurées?
II te faut, pour gagner ton pain de chaque soir,
Comme un enfant de choeur, jouer de l'encensoir,
Chanter des Te Deum auxquels tu ne crois guère,
Ou, saltimbanque à jeun, étaler tes appas
Et ton rire trempé de pleurs qu'on ne voit pas,
Pour faire épanouir la rate du vulgaire.
The Venal Muse
Muse of my heart, you who love palaces,
When January frees his north winds, will you have,
During the black ennui of snowy evenings,
An ember to warm your two feet blue with cold?
Will you bring the warmth back to your mottled shoulders,
With the nocturnal beams that pass through the shutters?
Knowing that your purse is as dry as your palate,
Will you harvest the gold of the blue, vaulted sky?
To earn your daily bread you are obliged
To swing the censer like an altar boy,
And to sing Te Deums in which you don't believe,
Or, hungry mountebank, to put up for sale your charm,
Your laughter wet with tears which people do not see,
To make the vulgar herd shake with laughter.
238
— Translated by William Aggeler
The Venal Muse
Muse of my heart, of palaces the lover,
Where will you, when the blast of winter blows
In the black boredom of snowed lights, discover
A glowing brand to warm your violet toes?
How will you there revive your marbled skin
At the chill rays your shutters then disperse?
The gold of azure heavens will you win
When empty are your palate and your purse?
You'll need each evening, then, to earn your bread,
As choirboys swinging censers that are dead
Who sing Te Deums which they disbelieve:
Or, fasting pierrette, trade your loveliness
And laughter, soaked in tears that none can guess,
The boredom of the vulgar to relieve.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
The Venal Muse
Lover of palaces, Muse of my heart, O sweet,
When hailstones fly from January's frosty sling,
On snowy nights amid black ennui, who shall bring
A cheery log to thaw your violet chill feet?
Shall you warm your wan mottled shoulder with the wing
Of bleak nocturnal beams that soar from the dank street?
Knowing you have no coin in purse nor bread to eat,
Shall you rake gold from blue arched skies for harvesting?
To earn your daily bread as the dense nights grow denser,
Shall you play acolyte and blithely swing your censer,
Chanting faithless Te Deums; or a moment after,
239
A famished mountebank, sell the charmed mysteries
Of laughter bathed in tears that no man ever sees
To rouse the rabble herd to fits of obscene laughter?
— Translated by Jacques LeClercq
The Mercenary Muse
Muse of my heart, so fond of palaces, reply:
When January sends those blizzards wild and white,
Shall you have any fire at all to huddle by,
Chafing your violet feet in the black snowy night?
Think: when the moon shines through the window, shall you try
To thaw your marble shoulders in her square of light?
Think: when your purse is empty and your palate dry,
Can you from the starred heaven snatch all the gold in sight?
No, no; if you would earn your bread, you have no choice
But to become a choir-boy, and chant in a loud voice
Te Deums you have no faith in, and swing your censer high;
Or be a mountebank, employing all your art —
Yes, on an empty stomach and with an anguished heart —
To chase the boredom of the liverish gallery.
— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay
La Muse vénale
o Muse I love, whom palaces delight,
when 'round thy door the blasts of winter cry,
wilt have, while snowy eves in boredom die,
one ember left for feet all freezing white?
wilt warm thy cold blue shoulders in the light
the stars impart through shutters left awry?
— or climb, with hungry mouth and purse, the sky
240
to glean the gold from azure vaults of night?
thou must, to earn thy daily bread, employ
a well-swung censer, like a choir-boy,
and chant Te Deum from a heart unstirred,
or, starving clown, lay bare thy loveliness
and laugh through tears thou darest not confess,
to rouse the bilious humour of the herd.
— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
The Venal Muse
O muse of my heart, lover of palaces,
Will you bring, when January lets loose its sleet
And its black evenings without solace,
An ember to warm my violet feet?
What will revive your bruised shoulders,
The nocturnal rays that pierce the shutters?
When you cannot feel your palace, just your empty billfold,
How will you harvest the gold of azure vaults and gutters?
You should, to earn your bread today
Like a choir boy with a censer to wave,
Sings hymns with feeling but without belief.
Or, a starving rip-off artist, selling your charm
And your laughter shades the tears so no one sees the harm
In bringing to bloom an ordinary rat, a vulgar thief.
Translated by William A. Sigler
The Mercenary Muse
O Muse of my heart, votary of palaces,
Shall you, when January looses its boreal winds,
Have any firebrand to warm your violet feet
In the black boredoms of snowy evenings?
241
Shall you revive your marble shoulders
By the gleams of night that stab the shutters?
And, feeling your purse as empty as your palace,
Will you reap the gold of azure skies?
To win your evening bread you need,
Like a choir-boy, to play with the censer,
To chant the Te Deums you scarcely believe in,
Or, famished vagabond, expose your charms
And your laughter soaked in crying that is not seen,
In order to dispel the spleen of the people.
— Translated by Geoffrey Wagner
~ Charles Baudelaire,
1460:1138
Willow, Willow, Willow
A poore soule sat sighing under a sicamore tree;
O willow, willow, willow!
With his hand on his bosom, his head on his knee:
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland.
He sigh'd in his singing, and after each grone,
Come willow, willow, willow!
Come willow, willow, willow!
'I am dead to all pleasure, my true-love is gone.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be may garland.
'My love she is turned; untrue she doth prove;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
She renders me nothing but hate for my love.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the grene willow, &c.
'O pitty me' (cried he), 'ye lovers each one;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Her heart's hard as marble; she rues not my mone.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.'
The cold streams ran by him, his eyes wept apace;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
The salt tears fell from him, which drowned his face.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
1139
The mute birds sate by him, made tame by his mones;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
The salt tears fell from him, which softened the stones.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland!
'Let nobody blame me, her scornes I do prove;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
She was borne to be faire; I, to die for her love.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'O that beauty should harbour a heart that's so hard!
Sing willow, willow, willow!
Sing willow, willow, willow!
My true love rejecting without all regard.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'Let love no more boast him in palace or bower;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
For women are trothles, and flote in an houre.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'But what helps complaining? In vaine I complaine:
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
I must patiently suffer her scorne and disdaine.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'Come, all you forsaken, and sit down by me,
O willow, willow, willow!
1140
O willow, willow, willow!
He that 'plaines of his false love, mine's falser than she.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'The willow wreath weare I, since my love did fleet;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
A garland for lovers forsaken most meete.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland!'
Part the Second
'Lowe lay'd by my sorrow, begot by disdaine,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Against her too cruell, still, still I complaine.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland!
'O love too injurious, to wound my poore heart,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
To suffer the triumph, and joy in my smart!
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'O willow, willow, willow! the willow garland,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
A sign of her falsenesse before me doth stand.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland.
1141
'As here it doth bid to despair and to dye,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
So hang it, friends, ore me in grave where I lye.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'In grave where I rest mee, hang this to the view,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Of all that doe knowe her, to blaze her untrue.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'With these words engraven, as epitaph meet,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
'Here lyes one, drank poyson for potion most sweet.'
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'Though she thus unkindly hath scorned my love,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
And carelessly smiles at the sorrowes I prove;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'I cannot against her unkindly exclaim,
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Cause once well I loved her, and honoured her name.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland.
'The name of her sounded so sweete in mine eare,
O willow, willow, willow!
1142
O willow, willow, willow!
It rays'd my heart lightly, the name of my deare;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'As then 'twas my comfort, it now is my griefe;
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
It now brings me anguish; then brought me reliefe.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow, &c.
'Farewell, faire false-hearted, plaints end with my breath!
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Thou dost loath me, I love thee, though cause of my death.
O willow, willow, willow!
O willow, willow, willow!
Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland.'
~ Anonymous Olde English,
1461:If this were a world
in which there were no such thing
  as false promises,
how great would be my delight
as I listen to your words!

Like (0) 3
The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet V
They stood at the forest's edge,
gazing at the top of the Cedar Tree,
gazing at the entrance to the forest.
Where Humbaba would walk there was a trail,
the roads led straight on, the path was excellent.
Then they saw the Cedar Mountain, the Dwelling of the Gods, the
throne dais of Imini.
Across the face of the mountain the Cedar brought forth luxurious
foliage,
its shade was good, extremely pleasant.
The thornbushes were matted together, the woods(?) were a thicket
among the Cedars, the boxwood,
the forest was surrounded by a ravine two leagues long,
and again for two-thirds (of that distance),
Suddenly the swords,
and after the sheaths,
the axes were smeared
dagger and sword
alone
Humbaba spoke to Gilgamesh saying:"He does not come (?)

Enlil.. ."
Enkidu spoke to Humbaba, saying:
"Humbaba'One alone..
'Strangers
'A slippery path is not feared by two people who help each other.
'Twice three times
'A three-ply rope cannot be cut.
'The mighty liontwo cubs can roll him over."'

Humbaba spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
..An idiot' and a moron should give advice to each other,
but you, Gilgamesh, why have you come to me!
Give advice, Enkidu, you 'son of a fish,' who does not even
know his own father,
to the large and small turtles which do not suck their mother's milk!
When you were still young I saw you but did not go over to you;
you, in my belly.
,you have brought Gilgamesh into my presence,
you stand.., an enemy, a stranger.
Gilgamesh, throat and neck,
I would feed your flesh to the screeching vulture, the eagle, and
the vulture!"
Gilgamerh spoke to Enkidu, saying: "My Friend, Humbaba's face keeps changing!
Enkddu spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:'
"Why, my friend, are you whining so pitiably, hiding behind your whimpering?
Now there, my friend,
in the cuppersmith's channel,
again to blow (the bellows) for an hour, the glowing (metal)(?)
for an hour.
To send the Flood, to crack the Whip."
Do not snatch your feet away, do not turn your back,
strike even harder!"
may they be expelled. head fell and it/he confronted him
The ground split open with the heels of their feet,
as they whirled around in circles Mt. Hermon and Lebanon split.
The white clouds darkened,
death rained down on them like fog.
Shamash raised up against Humbaba mighty tempests'
Southwind, Northwind, Eastwind, Westwind, Whistling Wind, Piercing Wind, Blizzard, Bad Wind, Wind of Simurru,
Demon Wind, Ice Wind, Storm, Sandstorm
thirteen winds rose up against him and covered Humbaba's face.
He could nor butt through the front, and could not scramble out
the back,
so that Gilgamesh'a weapons were in reach of Humbaba.
Humbaba begged for his life, saying to Gilgamesh:
"You are young yet, Gilgamesh, your mother gave birth to you,
and you are the offspring of Rimnt-Nlnsun (?)
(It was) at the word of Shamash, Lord of the Mountain,
that you were roused (to this expedition).
O scion of the heart of Uruk, King Gilgamesh!
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh, let me go (?), I will dwell with you as your servant (?)
As many trees as you command me I will cut down for you,
I will guard for you myrtle wood,
wood fine enough for your palace!"
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, do not listen to Humbaba,
[io lines are misring Apparently Humbaba sees thar Gilgamrsh is influenced by Enkidu, and moves to dissuade Enkidu.]
"You understand the rules of my forest, the rules,
further, you are aware of all the things so ordered (by Enlil)."
I should have carried you up, and killed you
at the very entrance to the branches of my forest.
I should have fed your flesh to the screeching vulture, the eagle,
and the vulture.
So now, Enkidu, clemency is up to you.
Speak to Gilgamesh to spare my life!"
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
My friend, Humbaba, Guardian of the Cedar Forest,
grind up, kill, pulverize(?), and destroy him!
Humbaba, Guardian of the Forest, grind up, kill, pulverize(?),
and destroy him!
Before the Preeminent God Enlil hears
and thegods be filled with rage against us.
Enlil is in Nippur, Shamash is in Sippar.
Erect an eternal monument proclaiming
how Gilgamesh killed(?) Humbaba."
When Humbaba heard
[Abour l0 linrs are misiing.]
the forest.
and denunciations(?) have been made.
But you are sitting there like a shepherd
and like a 'hireling of his mouth.'
Now, Enkidu, clemency is up to you.
Speak to Gilgamesh that he spare my life!"
Enkidu spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, Humbaba, Guardian of the Forest,
grind up, kill, pulverize(?), and destroy him!
Before the Preeminent God Enlil hears,
and the gods are full of rage at us.
Enlil is in Nippur, Shamash is in Sippar.
Erect an eternal monument proclaiming
how Gilgamesh killed(?) Humbaba."
Humbaba heard
[About 10 lines are missing.]
"May he not live the longer of the two,
may Enkidu not have any 'share'(?) more than his friend
Gilgamesh!"
Enkidu spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, 1 have been talking to you but you have not been
listening to me,"
You have been listening to the curse of Humbaba!"
his friend
by his side
.. they pulled out his insides including his tongue.
he jumped(?).
abundance fell over the mountain,
abundance fell over the mountain.
They cut through the Cedar,
While Gilgamesh cuts down the trees, Enkidu searches through
the urmazallu.
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, we have cut down the towering Cedar whose top
scrapes the sky.
Make from it a door 72 cubits high, 24 cubits wide,
one cubit thick, its fixture, its lower and upper pivots will be out of one piece.
Let them carry it to Nippur, the Euphrates will carry it down, Nippur will rejoice.
"
They tied together a raft
Enkidu steered it
while Gilgamesh held the head of Humbaba.


~ Anonymous, If this were a world
,
1462:Raging storms, evil gods are they
Ruthless demons, who in heaven's vault were created, are they,
Workers of evil are they,
They lift up the head to evil, every day to evil
Destruction to work.
Of these seven the first is the South wind
The second is a dragon, whose mouth is opened
That none can measure.
The third is a grim leopard, which carries off the young
The fourth is a terrible Shibbu
The fifth is a furious Wolf, who knoweth not to flee,
The sixth is a rampant which marches against god and king.
The seventh is a storm, an evil wind, which takes vengeance,
Seven are they, messengers to King Anu are they,
From city to city darkness work they,
A hurricane, which mightily hunts in the heavens, are they
Thick clouds, that bring darkness in heaven, are they,
Gusts of wind rising, which cast gloom over the bright day, are they,
With the Imkhullu [2] the evil wind, forcing their way, are they,
The overflowing of Adad [3] mighty destroyers, are they,
At the right of Adad stalking, are they,
In the height of heaven, like lightning flashing, are they,
To wreak destruction forward go they ,
In the broad heaven, the home of Anu, the King, evilly do they arise, and none to oppose.
When Enlil heard these tidings, a plan in his heart he pondered,
With Ea, exalted Massu of the gods, be took counsel. Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar, whom he had set to order the vault of heaven,
With Anu he divided the lordship of the whole heaven,
To these three gods, his offspring
Day and night, without ceasing, he ordained to stand,
When the seven evil gods stormed the vault of heaven,
Before the gleaming Sin, they set themselves angrily, [4]
The mighty Shamash, Adad the warrior, they brought on their side,
Ishtar, with Anu the King, moved into a shining dwelling, exercising dominion over the heavens,

[Nearly ten lines here are unreadable.]

Day and night he was dark (i.e., Sin), in the dwelling of his dominion he sat not down,
The evil gods, the messengers of Anu, the King, are they,
Raising their evil heads, in the night shaking themselves, are they,
Evil searching out, are they,
From the heaven, like a wind, over the land rush they.
Enlil saw the darkening of the hero Sin in heaven,
The lord spoke to his minister Nusku,
O My minister Nusku, my message unto the ocean bring,
The tidings of my son Sin, who in heaven has been sadly darkened,
Unto Ea, in the ocean, announce it."
Nusku exalted the word of his lord,
To Ea, in the ocean, he went quickly,
To the prince, the exalted Massu the lord Nudimmud.[5]
Nusku, the word of his lord there announced Ea in the ocean heard that word,
He bit his lip and filled his mouth with wailing;
Ea called his son Marduk, and gave him the message:
"Go, my son Marduk,
Son of a prince, the gleaming Sin has been sadly darkened in heaven,
His darkening is seen in the heavens,
The seven evil gods, death-dealing, fearless are they,
The seven evil gods, like a flood, rush on, the land they fall upon, do they,
Against the land, like a storm, they rise, do they,
Before the gleaming Sin, they set themselves angrily;
The mighty Shamash, Adad the warrior, they brought on their side."

NOTES:
[1] This story is the sixteenth tablet of a series called the "Evil Demon Series," of which we have an Assyrian with a parallel Sumerian text. Presumably, therefore, it was a very ancient legend.
[2] The Imkhullu appears also in the Creation Epic.
[3] Adad is god of storm, Anu of heaven, Enlil of storm, Sin of the Moon, Shamash of the Sun, and Ishtar of love and fruitfulness. The meaning of Massu is unknown; but Ea was long the chief ruler.
[4] The evil gods darken the moon by an eclipse, Shamash helping them by withdrawing his light from the moon, and Adad by sending cloudy weather.
[5] A name for Ea.

DESCRIPTIONS OF "THE SEVEN"

I
Destructive storms and evil winds are they,
A storm of evil, presaging the baneful storm,
A storm of evil, forerunner of the baneful storm.
Mighty children, mightv sons are they,
Messengers of Namtar are they,
Throne-bearers of Ereshkigal. [1]
The flood driving through the land are they.
Seven gods of the wide heavens,
Seven gods of the broad earth,
Seven robber-gods are they.
Seven gods of universal sway,
Seven evil gods,
Seven evil demons,
Seven evil and violent demons,
Seven in heaven, seven on earth.

II
Neither male nor female are they.
Destructive whirlwinds they,
Having neither wife nor offspring.
Compassion and mercy they do not know.
Prayer and supplication they do not hear.
Horses reared in the mountains, Hostile to Ea.
Throne-bearers of the gods are they.
Standing on the highway, befouling the street. Evil are they, evil are they,
Seven they are, seven they are, Twice seven they are.

III
The high enclosures, the broad enclosures like a flood they pass through.
From house to house they dash along.
No door can shut them out,
No bolt can turn them back.
Through the door, like a snake, they glide,
Through the hinge, like the wind, they storm.
Tearing the wife from the embrace of the man,
Snatching the child from the knees of a man,
Driving the freedman from his family home.

[1 ]The mistress of the netherworld, while Namtar is the god of pestilence.

CHARM AGAINST THE SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS

Seven are they, seven are they!
In the channel of the deep seven are they!
In the radiance of heaven seven are they!
In the channel of the deep in a palace grew they up.
Male they are not, female they are not.
In the midst of the deep are their paths.
Wife they have not, son they have not.
Order and kindness know they not.
Prayer and supplication hear they not.
The cavern in the mountain they enter.
Unto Hea are they hostile.
The throne-bearers of the gods are they.
Disturbing the lily in the torrents are they set.
Baleful are they, baleful are they.
Seven are they, seven are they, seven twice again are they.
May the spirits of heaven remember, may the spirits of earth remember.
R.C. Thompson, translator [The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, London 1903]

~ Anonymous, The Seven Evil Spirits
,
1463:The Basket
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted,
in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into
the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air
is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand
two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night.
See! She is coming, the young woman with the bright hair.
She swings a basket as she walks, which she places on the sill,
between the geranium stalks. He laughs, and crumples his paper
as he leans forward to look. 'The Basket Filled with Moonlight',
what a title for a book!
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops.
He has forgotten the woman in the room with the geraniums. He is beating
his brain, and in his eardrums hammers his heavy pulse. She sits
on the window-sill, with the basket in her lap. And tap! She cracks a nut.
And tap! Another. Tap! Tap! Tap! The shells ricochet upon the roof,
and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear.
'It is very queer,' thinks Peter, 'the basket was empty, I'm sure.
How could nuts appear from the atmosphere?'
The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof glitters
like ice.
II
Five o'clock. The geraniums are very gay in their crimson array.
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops, and over the roofs goes Peter
241
to pay his morning's work with a holiday.
'Annette, it is I. Have you finished? Can I come?'
Peter jumps through the window.
'Dear, are you alone?'
'Look, Peter, the dome of the tabernacle is done. This gold thread
is so very high, I am glad it is morning, a starry sky would have
seen me bankrupt. Sit down, now tell me, is your story going well?'
The golden dome glittered in the orange of the setting sun. On the walls,
at intervals, hung altar-cloths and chasubles, and copes, and stoles,
and coffin palls. All stiff with rich embroidery, and stitched with
so much artistry, they seemed like spun and woven gems, or flower-buds
new-opened on their stems.
Annette looked at the geraniums, very red against the blue sky.
'No matter how I try, I cannot find any thread of such a red.
My bleeding hearts drip stuff muddy in comparison. Heigh-ho! See my little
pecking dove? I'm in love with my own temple. Only that halo's wrong.
The colour's too strong, or not strong enough. I don't know. My eyes
are tired. Oh, Peter, don't be so rough; it is valuable. I won't do
any more. I promise. You tyrannise, Dear, that's enough. Now sit down
and amuse me while I rest.'
The shadows of the geraniums creep over the floor, and begin to climb
the opposite wall.
Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting,
and undulant in the orange glow. His senses flow towards her,
where she lies supine and dreaming. Seeming drowned in a golden halo.
The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear.
He pushes against her knees, and brushes his lips across her languid hands.
His lips are hot and speechless. He woos her, quivering, and the room
242
is filled with shadows, for the sun has set. But she only understands
the ways of a needle through delicate stuffs, and the shock of one colour
on another. She does not see that this is the same, and querulously murmurs
his name.
'Peter, I don't want it. I am tired.'
And he, the undesired, burns and is consumed.
There is a crescent moon on the rim of the sky.
III
'Go home, now, Peter. To-night is full moon. I must be alone.'
'How soon the moon is full again! Annette, let me stay. Indeed, Dear Love,
I shall not go away. My God, but you keep me starved! You write
`No Entrance Here', over all the doors. Is it not strange, my Dear,
that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere. Would marriage
strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied
the rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the whole of me,
you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat.
Oh, forgive me, Sweet! I suffer in my loving, and you know it. I cannot
feed my life on being a poet. Let me stay.'
'As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me if you do. It will
crush your heart and squeeze the love out.'
He answered gruffly, 'I know what I'm about.'
'Only remember one thing from to-night. My work is taxing and I must
have sight! I MUST!'
The clear moon looks in between the geraniums. On the wall,
the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman
by a silver thread.
They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking, for there
are no lids. Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises are cased
in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon. The basket
243
is heaped with human eyes. She cracks off the whites and throws them away.
They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce
over the edge and disappear. But she is here, quietly sitting
on the window-sill, eating human eyes.
The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof shines
like ice.
IV
How hot the sheets are! His skin is tormented with pricks,
and over him sticks, and never moves, an eye. It lights the sky with blood,
and drips blood. And the drops sizzle on his bare skin, and he smells them
burning in, and branding his body with the name 'Annette'.
The blood-red sky is outside his window now. Is it blood or fire?
Merciful God! Fire! And his heart wrenches and pounds 'Annette!'
The lead of the roof is scorching, he ricochets, gets to the edge,
bounces over and disappears.
The bellying clouds are red as they swing over the housetops.
The air is of silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two black holes swallow
the brilliance of the moon. Deflowered windows, sockets without sight.
A man stands before the house. He sees the silver-blue moonlight,
and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium red.
Annette!
~ Amy Lowell,
1464:Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
   Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
   Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,alien of end and of aim,
   Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
   And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

  Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
  This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,
  Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
  Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
  Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,
  Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
  Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
  When a great illumination surprises a festal night
Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)
  Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,
  Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
  As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
  Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
  For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,
  Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
  Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,
  But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:
What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
  And what is,shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
  All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,
All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,
  Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:
Had I written the same, made versestill, effect proceeds from cause,
  Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,
  Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
  Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
  That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;
  It is everywhere in the worldloud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:
  And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;
  Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,
  That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.
Never to be again! But many more of the kind
  As good, nay, better, perchance: is this your comfort to me?
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind
  To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
  Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
  Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
  The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
  On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
  Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
  When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
  The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
  Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
  For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
  Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
  Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
  The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
  I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
  Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
  Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
  The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.
  

~ Robert Browning, Abt Vogler
,
1465:The Falls Of The Chaudiere, Ottawa
I have laid my cheek to Nature's, placed my puny hand in hers,
Felt a kindred spirit warming all the life-blood of my face,
Moved amid the very foremost of her truest worshippers,
Studying each curve of beauty, marking every minute grace;
Loved not less the mountain cedar than the flowers at its feet,
Looking skyward from the valley, open-lipped as if in prayer,
Felt a pleasure in the brooklet singing of its wild retreat,
But I knelt before the splendour of the thunderous Chaudiere.
All my manhood waked within me, every nerve had tenfold force,
And my soul stood up rejoicing, looking on with cheerful eyes,
Watching the resistless waters speeding on their downward course,
Titan strength and queenly beauty diademed with rainbow dyes.
Eye and ear, with spirit quickened, mingled with the lovely strife,
Saw the living Genius shrined within her sanctuary fair,
Heard her voice of sweetness singing, peered into her hidden life,
And discerned the tuneful secret of the jubilant Chaudiere:
'Within my pearl-roofed shell,
Whose floor is woven with the iris bright,
Genius and Queen of the Chaudiere I dwell,
As in a world of immaterial light.
My throne, an ancient rock,
Marked by the foot of ages long-departed,
My joy, the cataract's stupendous shock,
Whose roll is music to the grateful-hearted.
I've seen the eras glide
With muffled tread to their eternal dreams,
While I have lived in vale and mountain side,
With leaping torrents and sweet purling streams.
The Red-Man's active life;
His love, pride, passions, courage, and great deeds;
His perfect freedom, and his thirst for strife;
His swift revenge, at which the memory bleeds:
The sanguinary years,
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When sullen Terror, like a raging Fate,
Swept down the stately tribes like slaughtered deers,
And war and hatred joined to decimate
The remnants of the race,
And spread decay through centuries of painNo more I mark their sure, avenging pace,
And forests wave where war-whoops shook the plain.
Their deeds I envied not.
The royal tyrant on his purple throne,
I, in secluded grove or shady grot,
Had purer joys than he had ever known,
God made the ancient hills,
The valleys and the solemn wildernesses,
The merry-hearted and melodious rills,
And strung with diamond dews the pine-trees' tresses;
But man's hand built the palace,
And he that reigns therein is simply man;
Man turns God's gifts to poison in the chalice
That brimmed with nectar in the primal plan.
Here I abide aloneThe wild Chaudiere's eternal jubilee
Has such sweet divination in its tone,
And utters nature's truest prophecy
In thunderings of zeal!
I've seen the Atheist in terror start,
Awed to contrition by the strong appeal
That waked conviction in his doubting heart:
'Teachers speak throughout all nature,
From the womb of Silence born,
Heed ye not their words, O Scoffer?
Flinging back thy scorn with scorn!
To the desert spring that leapeth,
Pulsing, from the parched sod,
Points the famished trav'ler, saying'Brothers, here, indeed, is God!'
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From the patriarchal fountains,
Sending forth their tribes of rills,
From the cedar-shadowed lakelets
In the hearts of distant hills,
Whispers softer than the moonbeams
Wisdom's gentle heart have awed,
Till its lips approved the cadence'Surely here, indeed, is God!'
Lo! o'er all, the Torrent Prophet,
An inspired Demosthenes,
To the Doubter's soul appealing,
Louder than the preacher-seas:
Dreamer! wouldst have nature spurn thee
For a dumb, insensate clod?
Dare to doubt! and these shall teach thee
Of a truth there lives a God!'
By day and night, for hours,
I watch the cataract's impulsive leap,
Refreshed and gladdened by the cheering showers
Wrung from the passion of the seething deep.
Pleased when the buried waves
Emerge again, like incorporeal hosts
Rising, white-sheeted, from their gloomy graves,
As if the depths had yielded up their ghosts.
And when the midnight storm
Enfolds the welkin in its robe of clouds,
Through the dim vapours of the cauldron swarm
The sheeted spectres in their whitest shrouds,
By the lightning's flash betrayed.
These gather from the insubstantial vapour
The lunar rainbows, which by them are madeWoven with moonbeams by some starry taper,
To decorate the halls
Of my fair palace, whence I'm pained to see
Thy human brethren watch the waterfalls-
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Not with such rev'rence as I've found in thee:
Too many with an eye
To speculation and the worldling's dreams;
Others, who seek from nature no reply,
Nor read the oral language of the streams.
But of the few who loved
The beautiful with grateful heart and soul,
Who looked on nature fondly, and were moved
By one sweet glance, as by the mighty whole:
Of these, the thoughtful few,
Thou wert the first to seek the inner temple,
And stand before the Priestess. Thou wert true
To nature and thyself. Be thy example
The harbinger of times
When the Chaudiere's imposing majesty
Will awe the spirits of the heartless mimes
To worship God in truth, with nature's constancy.'
Still I heard the mellow sweetness of her voice at intervals,
Mingling with the fall of waters, rising with the snowy spray,
Ringing through the sportive current like the joy of waterfalls,
Sending up their hearty vespers at the calmy close of day.
Loath to leave the scene of beauty, lover-like I stayed, and stayed,
Folding to my eager bosom memories beyond compare;
Deeper, stronger, more enduring than my dreams of wood and glade,
Were the eloquent appeals of the magnificent Chaudiere.
E'en the solid bridge is trembling, whence I look my last farewell,
Dizzy with the roar and trampling of the mighty herd of waves,
Speeding past the rocky Island, steadfast as a sentinel,
Towards the loveliest bay that ever mirrored the Algonquin Braves.
Soul of Beauty! Genius! Spirit! Priestess of the lovely strife!
In my heart thy words are shrined, as in a sanctuary fair;
Echoes of thy voice of sweetness, rousing all my better life,
Ever haunt my wildest visions of the jubilant Chaudiere.
~ Charles Sangster,
1466:A Royal Princess
I, a princess, king-descended, decked with jewels, gilded, drest,
Would rather be a peasant with her baby at her breast,
For all I shine so like the sun, and am purple like the west.
Two and two my guards behind, two and two before,
Two and two on either hand, they guard me evermore;
Me, poor dove, that must not coo—eagle that must not soar.
All my fountains cast up perfumes, all my gardens grow
Scented woods and foreign spices, with all flowers in blow
That are costly, out of season as the seasons go.
All my walls are lost in mirrors, whereupon I trace
Self to right hand, self to left hand, self in every place,
Self-same solitary figure, self-same seeking face.
Then I have an ivory chair high to sit upon,
Almost like my father's chair, which is an ivory throne;
There I sit uplift and upright, there I sit alone.
Alone by day, alone by night, alone days without end;
My father and my mother give me treasures, search and spend—
O my father! O my mother! have you ne'er a friend?
As I am a lofty princess, so my father is
A lofty king, accomplished in all kingly subtilties,
Holding in his strong right hand world-kingdoms' balances.
He has quarrelled with his neighbours, he has scourged his foes;
Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes,
Long-descended valiant lords whom the vulture knows,
On whose track the vulture swoops, when they ride in state
To break the strength of armies and topple down the great:
Each of these my courteous servant, none of these my mate.
My father counting up his strength sets down with equal pen
So many head of cattle, head of horses, head of men;
These for slaughter, these for breeding, with the how and when.
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Some to work on roads, canals; some to man his ships;
Some to smart in mines beneath sharp overseers' whips;
Some to trap fur-beasts in lands where utmost winter nips.
Once it came into my heart, and whelmed me like a flood,
That these too are men and women, human flesh and blood;
Men with hearts and men with souls, though trodden down like mud.
Our feasting was not glad that night, our music was not gay:
On my mother's graceful head I marked a thread of grey,
My father frowning at the fare seemed every dish to weigh.
I sat beside them sole princess in my exalted place,
My ladies and my gentlemen stood by me on the dais:
A mirror showed me I look old and haggard in the face;
It showed me that my ladies all are fair to gaze upon,
Plump, plenteous-haired, to every one love's secret lore is known,
They laugh by day, they sleep by night; ah me, what is a throne?
The singing men and women sang that night as usual,
The dancers danced in pairs and sets, but music had a fall,
A melancholy windy fall as at a funeral.
Amid the toss of torches to my chamber back we swept;
My ladies loosed my golden chain; meantime I could have wept
To think of some in galling chains whether they waked or slept.
I took my bath of scented milk, delicately waited on,
They burned sweet things for my delight, cedar and cinnamon,
They lit my shaded silver lamp, and left me there alone.
A day went by, a week went by. One day I heard it said:
'Men are clamouring, women, children, clamouring to be fed;
Men like famished dogs are howling in the streets for bread.'
So two whispered by my door, not thinking I could hear,
Vulgar naked truth, ungarnished for a royal ear;
Fit for cooping in the background, not to stalk so near.
But I strained my utmost sense to catch this truth, and mark:
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'There are families out grazing like cattle in the park.'
'A pair of peasants must be saved even if we build an ark.'
A merry jest, a merry laugh, each strolled upon his way;
One was my page, a lad I reared and bore with day by day;
One was my youngest maid as sweet and white as cream in May.
Other footsteps followed softly with a weightier tramp;
Voices said: 'Picked soldiers have been summoned from the camp
To quell these base-born ruffians who make free to howl and stamp.'
'Howl and stamp?' one answered: 'They made free to hurl a stone
At the minister's state coach, well aimed and stoutly thrown.'
'There's work then for the soldiers, for this rank crop must be mown.'
'One I saw, a poor old fool with ashes on his head,
Whimpering because a girl had snatched his crust of bread:
Then he dropped; when some one raised him, it turned out he was dead.'
'After us the deluge,' was retorted with a laugh:
'If bread's the staff of life, they must walk without a staff.'
'While I've a loaf they're welcome to my blessing and the chaff.'
These passed. The king: stand up. Said my father with a smile:
'Daughter mine, your mother comes to sit with you awhile,
She's sad to-day, and who but you her sadness can beguile?'
He too left me. Shall I touch my harp now while I wait,—
(I hear them doubling guard below before our palace gate—)
Or shall I work the last gold stitch into my veil of state;
Or shall my woman stand and read some unimpassioned scene,
There's music of a lulling sort in words that pause between;
Or shall she merely fan me while I wait here for the queen?
Again I caught my father's voice in sharp word of command:
'Charge!' a clash of steel: 'Charge again, the rebels stand.
Smite and spare not, hand to hand; smite and spare not, hand to hand.'
There swelled a tumult at the gate, high voices waxing higher;
A flash of red reflected light lit the cathedral spire;
I heard a cry for faggots, then I heard a yell for fire.
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'Sit and roast there with your meat, sit and bake there with your bread,
You who sat to see us starve,' one shrieking woman said:
'Sit on your throne and roast with your crown upon your head.'
Nay, this thing will I do, while my mother tarrieth,
I will take my fine spun gold, but not to sew therewith,
I will take my gold and gems, and rainbow fan and wreath;
With a ransom in my lap, a king's ransom in my hand,
I will go down to this people, will stand face to face, will stand
Where they curse king, queen, and princess of this cursed land.
They shall take all to buy them bread, take all I have to give;
I, if I perish, perish; they to-day shall eat and live;
I, if I perish, perish; that's the goal I half conceive:
Once to speak before the world, rend bare my heart and show
The lesson I have learned which is death, is life, to know.
I, if I perish, perish; in the name of God I go.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,
1467:The Song Of The Little Baltung: A.D. 395
A harper came over the Danube so wide,
And he came into Alaric's hall,
And he sang the song of the little Baltung
To him and his heroes all.
How the old old Balt and the young young Balt
Rode out of Caucaland,
With the royal elephant's trunk on helm
And the royal lance in hand.
Thuringer heroes, counts and knights,
Pricked proud in their meinie;
For they were away to the great Kaiser,
In Byzant beside the sea.
And when they came to the Danube so wide
They shouted from off the shore,
'Come over, come over, ye Roman slaves,
And ferry your masters o'er.'
And when they came to Adrian's burgh,
With its towers so smooth and high,
'Come out, come out, ye Roman knaves,
And see your lords ride by.'
But when they came lo the long long walls
That stretch from sea to sea,
That old old Balt let down his chin,
And a thoughtful man grew he.
'Oh oft have I scoffed at brave Fridigern,
But never will I scoff more,
If these be the walls which kept him out
From the Micklegard there on the shore.'
Then out there came the great Kaiser,
With twice ten thousand men;
But never a Thuring was coward enough
To wish himself home again.
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'Bow down, thou rebel, old Athanarich,
And beg thy life this day;
The Kaiser is lord of all the world,
And who dare say him nay?'
'I never came out of Caucaland
To beg for less nor more;
But to see the pride of the great Kaiser,
In his Micklegard here by the shore.
'I never came out of Caucaland
To bow to mortal wight,
But to shake the hand of the great Kaiser,
And God defend my right.'
He shook his hand, that cunning Kaiser,
And he kissed him courteouslie,
And he has ridden with Athanarich
That wonder-town to see.
He showed him his walls of marble whiteA mile o'erhead they shone;
Quoth the Balt, 'Who would leap into that garden,
King Siegfried's boots must own.'
He showed him his engines of arsmetrick
And his wells of quenchless flame,
And his flying rocks, that guarded his walls
From all that against him came.
He showed him his temples and pillared halls,
And his streets of houses high;
And his watch-towers tall, where his star-gazers
Sit reading the signs of the sky.
He showed him his ships with their hundred oars,
And their sides like a castle wall,
That fetch home the plunder of all the world,
At the Kaiser's beck and call.
He showed him all nations of every tongue
127
That are bred beneath the sun,
How they flowed together in Micklegard street
As the brooks flow all into one.
He showed him the shops of the china ware,
And of silk and sendal also,
And he showed him the baths and the waterpipes
On arches aloft that go.
He showed him ostrich and unicorn,
Ape, lion, and tiger keen;
And elephants wise roared 'Hail Kaiser!'
As though they had Christians been.
He showed him the hoards of the dragons and trolls,
Rare jewels and heaps of gold'Hast thou seen, in all thy hundred years,
Such as these, thou king so old?'
Now that cunning Kaiser was a scholar wise,
And could of gramarye,
And he cast a spell on that old old Balt,
Till lowly and meek spake he.
'Oh oft have I heard of the Micklegard,
What I held for chapmen's lies;
But now do I know of the Micklegard,
By the sight of mine own eyes.
'Woden in Valhalla,
But thou on earth art God;
And he that dare withstand thee, Kaiser,
On his own head lies his blood.'
Then out and spake that little Baltung,
Rode at the king's right knee,
Quoth 'Fridigern slew false Kaiser Valens,
And he died like you or me.'
'And who art thou, thou pretty bold boy,
Rides at the king's right knee?'
'Oh I am the Baltung, boy Alaric,
128
And as good a man as thee.'
'As good as me, thou pretty bold boy,
With down upon thy chin?'
'Oh a spae-wife laid a doom on me,
The best of thy realm to win.'
'If thou be so fierce, thou little wolf cub
Or ever thy teeth be grown;
Then I must guard my two young sons
Lest they should lose their own.'
'Oh, it's I will guard your two lither lads,
In their burgh beside the sea,
And it's I will prove true man to them
If they will prove true to me.
'But it's you must warn your two lither lads,
And warn them bitterly,
That if I shall find them two false Kaisers,
High hanged they both shall be.'
Now they are gone into the Kaiser's palace
To eat the peacock fine,
And they are gone into the Kaiser's palace
To drink the good Greek wine.
The Kaiser alone, and the old old Balt,
They sat at the cedar board;
And round them served on the bended knee
Full many a Roman lord.
'What ails thee, what ails thee, friend Athanarich?
What makes thee look so pale?'
'I fear I am poisoned, thou cunning Kaiser,
For I feel my heart-strings fail.
'Oh would I had kept that great great oath
I swore by the horse's head,
I would never set foot on Roman ground
Till the day that I lay dead.
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'Oh would I were home in Caucaland,
To hear my harpers play,
And to drink my last of the nut-brown ale,
While I gave the gold rings away.
'Oh would I were home in Caucaland,
To hear the Gothmen's horn,
And watch the waggons, and brown brood mares
And the tents where I was born.
'But now I must die between four stone walls
In Byzant beside the sea:
And as thou shalt deal with my little Baltung,
So God shall deal with thee.'
The Kaiser he purged himself with oaths,
And he buried him royally,
And he set on his barrow an idol of gold,
Where all Romans must bow the knee.
And
And
And
And
now the Goths are the Kaiser's men,
guard him with lance and sword,
the little Baltung is his sworn son-at-arms,
eats at the Kaiser's board,
And the Kaiser's two sons are two false white lads
That a clerk may beat with cane.
The clerk that should beat that little Baltung
Would never sing mass again.
Oh the gates of Rome they are steel without,
And beaten gold within:
But they shall fly wide to the little Baltung
With the down upon his chin.
Oh the fairest flower in the Kaiser's garden
Is Rome and Italian land:
But it all shall fall to the little Baltung
When he shall take lance in hand.
And when he is parting the plunder of Rome,
He shall pay for this song of mine,
130
Neither maiden nor land, neither jewel nor gold,
But one cup of Italian wine.
Eversley, 1864.
~ Charles Kingsley,
1468:Demeter And Persephone
Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When here thy hands let fall the gather'd flower,
Might break thro' clouded memories once again
On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale
Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of song
And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon,
When first she peers along the tremulous deep,
Fled wavering o'er thy face, and chased away
That shadow of a likeness to the king
Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone!
Queen of the dead no more -- my child! Thine eyes
Again were human-godlike, and the Sun
Burst from a swimming fleece of winter gray,
And robed thee in his day from head to feet -"Mother!" and I was folded in thine arms.
Child, those imperial, disimpassion'd eyes
Awed even me at first, thy mother -- eyes
That oft had seen the serpent-wanded power
Draw downward into Hades with his drift
Of fickering spectres, lighted from below
By the red race of fiery Phlegethon;
But when before have Gods or men beheld
The Life that had descended re-arise,
And lighted from above him by the Sun?
So mighty was the mother's childless cry,
A cry that ran thro' Hades, Earth, and Heaven!
So in this pleasant vale we stand again,
The field of Enna, now once more ablaze
With flowers that brighten as thy footstep falls,
All flowers -- but for one black blur of earth
69
Left by that closing chasm, thro' which the car
Of dark Aidoneus rising rapt thee hence.
And here, my child, tho' folded in thine arms,
I feel the deathless heart of motherhood
Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe
Should yawn once more into the gulf, and thence
The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell,
Ascending, pierce the glad and songful air,
And all at once their arch'd necks, midnight-maned,
Jet upward thro' the mid-day blossom. No!
For, see, thy foot has touch'd it; all the space
Of blank earth-baldness clothes itself afresh,
And breaks into the crocus-purple hour
That saw thee vanish.
Child, when thou wert gone,
I envied human wives, and nested birds,
Yea, the cubb'd lioness; went in search of thee
Thro' many a palace, many a cot, and gave
Thy breast to ailing infants in the night,
And set the mother waking in amaze
To find her sick one whole; and forth again
Among the wail of midnight winds, and cried,
"Where is my loved one? Wherefore do ye wail?"
And out from all the night an answer shrill'd,
"We know not, and we know not why we wail."
I climb'd on all the cliffs of all the seas,
And ask'd the waves that moan about the world
"Where? do ye make your moaning for my child?"
And round from all the world the voices came
"We know not, and we know not why we moan."
"Where?" and I stared from every eagle-peak,
I thridded the black heart of all the woods,
I peer'd thro' tomb and cave, and in the storms
Of Autumn swept across the city, and heard
The murmur of their temples chanting me,
Me, me, the desolate Mother! "Where"? -- and turn'd,
And fled by many a waste, forlorn of man,
And grieved for man thro' all my grief for thee, -The jungle rooted in his shatter'd hearth,
The serpent coil'd about his broken shaft,
The scorpion crawling over naked skulls; --
70
I saw the tiger in the ruin'd fane
Spring from his fallen God, but trace of thee
I saw not; and far on, and, following out
A league of labyrinthine darkness, came
On three gray heads beneath a gleaming rift.
"Where"? and I heard one voice from all the three
"We know not, for we spin the lives of men,
And not of Gods, and know not why we spin!
There is a Fate beyond us." Nothing knew.
Last as the likeness of a dying man,
Without his knowledge, from him flits to warn
A far-off friendship that he comes no more,
So he, the God of dreams, who heard my cry,
Drew from thyself the likeness of thyself
Without thy knowledge, and thy shadow past
Before me, crying "The Bright one in the highest
Is brother of the Dark one in the lowest,
And Bright and Dark have sworn that I, the child
Of thee, the great Earth-Mother, thee, the Power
That lifts her buried life from loom to bloom,
Should be for ever and for evermore
The Bride of Darkness."
So the Shadow wail'd.
Then I, Earth-Goddess, cursed the Gods of Heaven.
I would not mingle with their feasts; to me
Their nectar smack'd of hemlock on the lips,
Their rich ambrosia tasted aconite.
The man, that only lives and loves an hour,
Seem'd nobler than their hard Eternities.
My quick tears kill'd the flower, my ravings hush'd
The bird, and lost in utter grief I fail'd
To send my life thro' olive-yard and vine
And golden grain, my gift to helpless man.
Rain-rotten died the wheat, the barley-spears
Vere hollow-husk'd, the leaf fell, and the sun,
Pale at my grief, drew down before his time
Sickening, and tna kept her winter snow.
Then He, the brother of this Darkness, He
Who still is highest, glancing from his height
On earth a fruitless fallow, when he miss'd
71
The wonted steam of sacrifice, the praise
And prayer of men, decreed that thou should'st dwell
For nine white moons of each whole year with me,
Three dark ones in the shadow with thy King.
Once more the reaper in the gleam of dawn
Will see me by the landmark far away,
Blessing his field, or seated in the dusk
Of even, by the lonely threshing-floor,
Rejoicing in the harvest and the grange.
Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill-content
With them, who still are highest. Those gray heads,
What meant they by their "Fate beyond the Fates"
But younger kindlier Gods to bear us down,
As we bore down the Gods before us? Gods,
To quench, not hurl the thunderbolt, to stay,
Not spread the plague, the famine; Gods indeed,
To send the noon into the night and break
The sunless halls of Hades into Heaven?
Till thy dark lord accept and love the Sun,
And all the Shadow die into the Light,
When thou shalt dwell the whole bright year with me,
And souls of men, who grew beyond their race,
And made themselves as Gods against the fear
Of Death and Hell; and thou that hast from men,
As Queen of Death, that worship which is Fear,
Henceforth, as having risen from out the dead,
Shalt ever send thy life along with mine
From buried grain thro' springing blade, and bless
Their garner'd Autumn also, reap with me,
Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of Earth
The worship which is Love, and see no more
The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly-glimmering lawns
Of that Elysium, all the hateful fires
Of torment, and the shadowy warrior glide
Along the silent field of Asphodel.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
1469:The Staff And Scrip
“Who rules these lands?” the Pilgrim said.
“Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.”
“And who has thus harried them?” he said.
“It was Duke Luke did this:
God's ban be his!”
The Pilgrim said: “Where is your house?
I'll rest there, with your will.”
“You've but to climb these blackened boughs
And you'll see it over the hill,
For it burns still.”
“Which road, to seek your Queen?” said he.
“Nay, nay, but with some wound
You'll fly back hither, it may be,
And by your blood i' the ground
My place be found.”
“Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head,
And mine, where I will go;
For He is here and there,” he said.
He passed the hill-side, slow.
And stood below.
The Queen sat idle by her loom;
She heard the arras stir,
And looked up sadly: through the room
The sweetness sickened her
Of musk and myrrh.
Her women, standing two and two,
In silence combed the fleece.
The Pilgrim said, “Peace be with you,
Lady;” and bent his knees.
She answered, “Peace.”
Her eyes were like the wave within;
Like water-reed the poise
Of her soft body, dainty thin;
And like the water's noise
Her plaintive voice.
For him, the stream had never well'd
In desert tracts malign
So sweet; nor had he ever felt
So faint in the sunshine
466
Of Palestine.
Right so, he knew that he saw weep
Each night through every dream
The Queen's own face, confused in sleep
With visages supreme
Not known to him.
“Lady,” he said, “your lands lie burnt
And waste: to meet your foe
All fear: this I have seen and learnt.
Say that it shall be so,
And I will go.”
She gazed at him. “Your cause is just,
For I have heard the same,”
He said: “God's strength shall be my trust.
Fall it to good or grame,
'Tis in His name.”
“Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.
Why should you toil to break
A grave, and fall therein?” she said.
He did not pause but spake:
“For my vow's sake.”
“Can such vows be, Sir—to God's ear,
Not to God's will?” “My vow
Remains: God heard me there as here,”
He said with reverent brow,
“Both then and now.”
They gazed together, he and she,
The minute while he spoke;
And when he ceased, she suddenly
Looked round upon her folk
As though she woke.
“Fight, Sir,” she said; “my prayers in pain
Shall be your fellowship.”
He whispered one among her train,—
“To-morrow bid her keep
This staff and scrip.”
She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt
About his body there
As sweet as her own arms he felt.
He kissed its blade, all bare,
Instead of her.
She sent him a green banner wrought
467
With one white lily stem,
To bind his lance with when he fought.
He writ upon the same
And kissed her name.
She sent him a white shield, whereon
She bade that he should trace
His will. He blent fair hues that shone,
And in a golden space
He kissed her face.
Born of the day that died, that eve
Now dying sank to rest;
As he, in likewise taking leave,
Once with a heaving breast
Looked to the west.
And there the sunset skies unseal'd,
Like lands he never knew,
Beyond to-morrow's battle-field
Lay open out of view
To ride into.
Next day till dark the women pray'd:
Nor any might know there
How the fight went: the Queen has bade
That there do come to her
No messenger.
The Queen is pale, her maidens ail;
And to the organ-tones
They sing but faintly, who sang well
The matin-orisons,
The lauds and nones.
Lo, Father, is thine ear inclin'd,
And hath thine angel pass'd?
For these thy watchers now are blind
With vigil, and at last
Dizzy with fast.
Weak now to them the voice o' the priest
As any trance affords;
And when each anthem failed and ceas'd,
It seemed that the last chords
Still sang the words.
“Oh what is the light that shines so red?
'Tis long since the sun set;”
Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
468
“'Twas dim but now, and yet
The light is great.”
Quoth the other: “'Tis our sight is dazed
That we see flame i' the air.”
But the Queen held her brows and gazed,
And said, “It is the glare
Of torches there.”
“Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread?
All day it was so still;”
Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
“Unto the furthest hill
The air they fill.”
Quoth the other: “'Tis our sense is blurr'd
With all the chants gone by.”
But the Queen held her breath and heard,
And said, “It is the cry
Of Victory.”
The first of all the rout was sound,
The next were dust and flame,
And then the horses shook the ground:
And in the thick of them
A still band came.
“Oh what do ye bring out of the fight,
Thus hid beneath these boughs?”
“Thy conquering guest returns to-night,
And yet shall not carouse,
Queen, in thy house.”
“Uncover ye his face,” she said.
“O changed in little space!”
She cried, “O pale that was so red!
O God, O God of grace!
Cover his face.”
His sword was broken in his hand
Where he had kissed the blade.
“O soft steel that could not withstand!
O my hard heart unstayed,
That prayed and prayed!”
His bloodied banner crossed his mouth
Where he had kissed her name.
“O east, and west, and north, and south,
Fair flew my web, for shame,
To guide Death's aim!”
469
The tints were shredded from his shield
Where he had kissed her face.
“Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,
Death only keeps its place,
My gift and grace!”
Then stepped a damsel to her side,
And spoke, and needs must weep:
“For his sake, lady, if he died,
He prayed of thee to keep
This staff and scrip.”
That night they hung above her bed,
Till morning wet with tears.
Year after year above her head
Her bed his token wears,
Five years, ten years.
That night the passion of her grief
Shook them as there they hung.
Each year the wind that shed the leaf
Shook them and in its tongue
A message flung.
And once she woke with a clear mind
That letters writ to calm
Her soul lay in the scrip; to find
Only a torpid balm
And dust of palm.
They shook far off with palace sport
When joust and dance were rife;
And the hunt shook them from the court;
For hers, in peace or strife,
Was a Queen's life.
A Queen's death now: as now they shake
To gusts in chapel dim,—
Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake,
(Carved lovely white and slim),
With them by him.
Stand up to-day, still armed, with her,
Good knight, before His brow
Who then as now was here and there,
Who had in mind thy vow
Then even as now.
The lists are set in Heaven to-day,
The bright pavilions shine;
470
Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay;
The trumpets sound in sign
That she is thine.
Not tithed with days' and years' decease
He pays thy wage He owed,
But with imperishable peace
Here in His own abode
Thy jealous God.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
1470:Easter Eve
Hear me, Brother, gently met;
Just a little, turn, not yet,
Thou shalt laugh, and soon forget:
Now the midnight draweth near.
I have little more to tell;
Soon with hallow stroke and knell,
Thou shalt count the palace bell,
Calling that the hour is here.
Burdens black and strange to bear,
I must tell, and thou must share,
Listening with that stony stare,
Even as many a man before.
Years have lightly come and gone
In their jocund unison,
But the tides of life roll onThey remember now no more.
Once upon a night of glee,
In an hour of revelry,
As I wandered restlessly,
I beheld with burning eye,
How a pale procession rolled
Through a quarter quaint and old,
With its banners and its gold,
And the crucifix went by.
Well I knew that body brave
That was pierced and hung to save,
But my flesh was now a grave
For the soul that gnashed within.
He that they were bearing by,
With their banners white and high,
He was pure, and foul was I,
And his whiteness mocked my sin.
Ah, meseemed that even he,
Would not wait to look on me,
In my years and misery,
85
Things that he alone could heal.
In mine eyes I felt the flame
Of a rage that naught could tame,
And I cried and cursed his name,
Till my brain began to reel.
In a moment I was 'ware,
How that many watching there,
Fearfully with blanch and stare,
Crossed themselves and shrank away;
Then upon my reeling mind,
Like a sharp blow from behind,
Fell the truth, and left me blind,
Hopeless now and all astray.
O'er the city wandering wide,
Seeking but some place to hide,
Where the sounds of mirth had died,
Through the shaken night I stole;
From the ever-eddying stream
Of the crowds that did but seem
Like the processions in a dream
To my empty echoing soul.
Till I came at last alone
To a hidden street of stone,
Where the city's monotone
On the silence fell no more.
Then I saw how one in white
With a footstep mute and light,
Through the shadow of the night
Like a spirit paced before.
And a sudden stillness came
Through my spirit and my frame,
And a spell without a name
Held me in his mystic track.
Though his presence seemed so mild,
Yet he led me like a child,
With a yearning strange and wild,
That I dared not turn me back.
86
Oh, I could not see his face,
Nor behold his utmost grace,
Yet I might not change my pace
Fastened by a strange belief;
For his steps were sad and slow,
And his hands hung straight below,
And his head was bowed, as though
Pressed by some immortal grief.
So I followed, yet not I
Held alone that company:
Every silent passer-by
Paled and turned and joined with me;
So we followed still and fleet,
While the city street by street,
Fell behind our rustling feet
Like a deadened memory.
Where the sound of sin and riot
Broke upon the night's dim quiet,
And the solemn bells hung nigh it
Echoed from their looming towers;
Where the mourners wept alway,
Watching for the morning grey;
Where the weary toiler lay,
Husbanding the niggard hours;
By the gates where all night long
Guests in many a joyous throng,
With the sound of dance and song,
Dreamed in golden palaces;
Still he passed, and door by door
Opened with a pale outpour,
And the revel rose no more
Hushed in deeper phantasies.
As we passed, the talk and stir
Of the quiet wayfarer
And the noisy banqueter
Died upon the midnight dim.
They that reeled in drunken glee
Shrank upon the trembling knee,
87
And their jests died pallidly,
As they rose and followed him.
From the street and from the hall,
From the flare of festival
None that saw him stayed, but all
Followed where his wonder would:
And our feet at first so few
Gathered as those white feet drew
To a pallid multitude;
And the hushed and awful beat
Of our pale unnumbered feet
Made a murmur strange and sweet,
As we followed evermore.
Now the night was almost passed,
And the dawn was overcast,
When the stranger stayed at last
At a great cathedral door.
Never word the stranger said,
But he slowly raised his head,
And the vast door opened
By an unseen hand withdrawn;
And in silence wave on wave,
Like an army from the grave,
Up the aisles and up the nave,
All that spectral crowd rolled on.
As I followed close behind,
Knowledge like an awful wind
Seemed to blow my naked mind
Into darkness black and bare;
Yet with longing wild and dim,
And a terror vast and grim,
Nearer still I pressed to him,
Till I almost touched his hair.
From the gloom so strange and eery,
From the organ low and dreary,
Rose the wailing miserere,
By mysterious voices sung;
88
And a dim light shone, none knew,
How it came, or whence it grew,
From the dusky roof and through
All the solemn spaces flung.
But the stranger still passed on,
Till he reached the alter stone,
And with body white and prone
Sunk his forehead to the floor;
And I saw in my despair,
Standing like a spirit there,
How his head was bruised and bare,
And his hand were clenched before,
How his hair was fouled and knit
With the blood that clotted it,
Where the prickled thorns had bit
In his crowned agony;
In his hands so wan and blue,
Leaning out, I saw the two
Marks of where the nails pierced through,
Once on gloomy Calvary.
Then with trembling throat I owned
All my dark sin unatoned,
Telling it with lips that moaned,
And methought an echo came
From the bended crowd below,
Each one breathing faint and low,
Sins that none but he might know:
'Master I did curse thy name.'
And I saw him slowly rise
With his sad unearthly eyes,
Meeting mine with meek surprise,
And a voice came solemnly:
'Never more on mortal ground
For they soul shall rest be found,
But when bells at midnight sound
Thou must rise and come with me.'
Then my forehead smote the floor,
89
Swooning, and I knew no more,
Till I heard the chancel door
Open for the choristers:
But the stranger's form was gone,
And the church was dim and lone:
Through the silence, one by one
Stole the early worshippers.
I an ageing now I know;
That was many years ago,
Yet or I shall rest below
In the grave where none intrude,
Night by night I roam the street,
And that awful form I meet,
And I follow pale and fleet,
With a ghostly multitude.
Every night I see his face,
With its sad and burdened grace,
And the torn and bloody trace,
That in hands and feet he has.
Once my life was dark and bad;
Now its days are strange and sad,
And the people call me mad:
See, they whisper as they pass.
Even now the echoes roll
From the swinging bells that toll;
It is midnight, now my soul
Hasten, for he glideth by.
Stranger, 'tis no phantasie:
Look! my master waits for me
Mutely, but thou canst not see
With the mortal blinded eye.
~ Archibald Lampman,
1471:The Defence Of Lucknow
BANNER of England, not for a season, O banner of Britain, hast thou
Floated in conquering battle or flapt to the battle-cry!
Never with mightier glory than when we had rear’d thee on high
Flying at top of the roofs in the ghastly siege of Lucknow—
Shot thro’ the staff or the halyard, but ever we raised thee anew,
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.
II.
Frail were the works that defended the hold that we held with our lives—
Women and children among us, God help them, our children and wives!
Hold it we might—and for fifteen days or for twenty at most.
‘Never surrender, I charge you, but every man die at his post!’
Voice of the dead whom we loved, our Lawrence the best of the brave:
Cold were his brows when we kiss’d him—we laid him that night in his grave.
‘Every man die at his post!’ and there hail’d on our houses and halls
Death from their rifle-bullets, and death from their cannon-balls,
Death in our innermost chamber, and death at our slight barricade,
Death while we stood with the musket, and death while we stoopt to the spade,
Death to the dying, and wounds to the wounded, for often there fell,
Striking the hospital wall, crashing thro’ it, their shot and their shell,
Death—for their spies were among us, their marksmen were told of our best,
So that the brute bullet broke thro’ the brain that could think for the rest;
Bullets would sing by our foreheads, and bullets would rain at our feet—
Fire from ten thousand at once of the rebels that girdled us round—
Death at the glimpse of a finger from over the breadth of a street,
Death from the heights of the mosque and the palace, and death in the ground!
Mine? yes, a mine! Countermine! down, down! and creep thro’ the hole!
Keep the revolver in hand! you can hear him—the murderous mole!
Quiet, ah! quiet—wait till the point of the pickaxe be thro’!
Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer again than before—
Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is no more;
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew!
III.
Ay, but the foe sprung his mine many times, and it chanced on a day
Soon as the blast of that underground thunderclap echo ‘d away,
Dark thro’ the smoke and the sulphur like so many fiends in their hell—
Cannon-shot, musket-shot, volley on volley, and yell upon yell—
589
Fiercely on all the defences our myriad enemy fell.
What have they done? where is it? Out yonder. Guard the Redan!
Storm at the Water-gate! storm at the Bailey-gate! storm, and it ran
Surging and swaying all round us, as ocean on every side
Plunges and heaves at a bank that is daily devour’d by the tide—
So many thousands that if they be bold enough, who shall escape?
Kill or be kill’d, live or die, they shall know we are soldiers and men
Ready! take aim at their leaders—their masses are gapp’d with our grape—
Backward they reel like the wave, like the wave flinging forward again,
Flying and foil’d at the last by the handful they could not subdue;
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.
IV.
Handful of men as we were, we were English in heart and in limb,
Strong with the strength of the race to command, to obey, to endure,
Each of us fought as if hope for the garrison hung but on him;
Still—could we watch at all points? we were every day fewer and fewer.
There was a whisper among us, but only a whisper that past
‘Children and wives—if the tigers leap into the fold unawares—
Every man die at his post—and the foe may outlive us at last—
Better to fall by the hands that they love, than to fall into theirs!’
Roar upon roar in a moment two mines by the enemy sprung
Clove into perilous chasms our walls and our poor palisades.
Rifleman, true is your heart, but be sure that your hand be as true!
Sharp is the fire of assault, better aimed are your flank fusillades—
Twice do we hurl them to earth from the ladders to which they had clung,
Twice from the ditch where they shelter we drive them with hand-grenades;
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.
V.
Then on another wild morning another wild earthquake out-tore
Clean from our lines of defence ten or twelve good paces or more.
Rifleman, high on the roof, hidden there from the light of the sun—
One has leapt up on the breach, crying out: ‘Follow me, follow me!’—
Mark him—he falls! then another, and him too, and down goes he.
Had they been bold enough then, who can tell but the traitors had won?
Boardings and rafters and doors—an embrasure I make way for the gun!
Now double-charge it with grape! It is charged and we fire, and they run.
Praise to our Indian brothers, and let the dark face have his due!
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,
Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew,
That ever upon the topmost roof our banner in India blew.
590
VI.
Men will forget what we suffer and not what we do. We can fight!
But to be soldier all day and be sentinel all thro’ the night—
Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their lying alarms,
Bugles and drums in the darkness, and shoutings and soundings to arms,
Ever the labour of fifty that had to be done by five,
Ever the marvel among us that one should be left alive,
Ever the day with its traitorous death from the loopholes around,
Ever the night with its coffinless corpse to be laid in the ground,
Heat like the mouth of a hell, or a deluge of cataract skies,
Stench of old offal decaying, and infinite torment of flies.
Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field,
Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be heal’d,
Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful-pitiless knife,—
Torture and trouble in vain,—for it never could save us a life.
Valour of delicate women who tended the hospital bed,
Horror of women in travail among the dying and dead,
Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief,
Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes of relief,
Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butcher’d for all that we knew—
Then day and night, day and night, coming down on the still-shatter’d walls
Millions of musket-bullets, and thousands of cannon-balls—
But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.
VII.
Hark cannonade, fusillade! is it true what was told by the scout,
Outram and Havelock breaking their way through the fell mutineers?
Surely the pibroch of Europe is ringing again in our ears!
All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubilant shout,
Havelock’s glorious Highlanders answer with conquering cheers,
Sick from the hospital echo them, women and children come out,
Blessing the wholesome white faces of Havelock’s good fusileers,
Kissing the war-harden’d hand of the Highlander wet with their tears!
Dance to the pibroch!—saved! we are saved!—is it you? is it you?
Saved by the valour of Havelock, saved by the blessing of Heaven!
‘Hold it for fifteen days!’ we have held it for eighty-seven!
And ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of England blew.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
1472:was also renowned in Japan. Burton Watson says of ~ Bai Juyi



: "he worked to
develop a style that was simple and easy to understand, and posterity has
requited his efforts by making him one of the most well-loved and widely read of
all Chinese poets, both in his native land and in the other countries of the East
that participate in the appreciation of Chinese culture. He also, thanks to the
translations and biographical studies by Arthur Waley, one of the most accessible
to English readers". Today the fame of ~ Bai Juyi



is worldwide.
Name variants
Names
Pinyin: Bó Juyì or Bái Juyì
Wade-Giles: Po Chü-i or Pai Chü-i
Zì : Lètian
Hào : Xiangshan Jushì
Zuìyín Xiansheng
Shì Wén (hence referred
to as Bái Wéngong )
~ Bai Juyi



often referred to himself in life as Letian, the older English transcription
version being Lo-t'ien, meaning something like "happy-go-lucky". Later in life, he
referred to himself as the Hermit of Xiangshan.
Life
~ Bai Juyi



lived during the Middle Tang period. This was a period of rebuilding and
recovery for the Tang Empire, following the An Shi Rebellion, and following the
poetically flourishing era famous for Li Bo (701-762), Wang Wei (701-761), and
Du Fu (712-770). ~ Bai Juyi



lived through the reign of eight or nine emperors,
being born in the Dali regnal era (766-779) of Emperor Daizong of Tang. He had
a long and successful career both as a government official and a poet, although
these two facets of his career seemed to have come in conflict with each other at
certain points. ~ Bai Juyi



was also a devoted Chan Buddist.
Birth and childhood
~ Bai Juyi



was born in 772, in Taiyuan, Shanxi, which was then a few miles from
location of the modern city. Although he was in Zhengyang, Henan for most of
his childhood. His family was poor but scholarly, his father being an Assistant
Department Magistrate of the second-class. At the age of ten he was sent away
from his family to avoid a war that broke out in the north of China, and went to
live with relatives in the area known as Jiangnan, more specifically Xuzhou.
Early career
~ Bai Juyi



's official career was initially successful. He passed the jinshi
examinations in 800. ~ Bai Juyi



may have taken up residence in the western capital
city of Chang'an, in 801. Not long after this, ~ Bai Juyi



and formed a long
friendship with a scholar Yuan Zhen. ~ Bai Juyi



's father died in 804, and the young
Bai spent the traditional period of retirement mourning the death of his parent,
which he did along the Wei River, near to the capital. 806 was the first full year
of the reign of Emperor Xianzong of Tang. Also, 806 was the ~ Bai Juyi



was
appointed to a minor post as a government official, at Zhouzhi, which was not far
from the Chang'an (and also in Shaanxi province). He was made a member
(scholar) of the Hanlin Academy, in 807, and Reminder of the Left from 807 until
815, except in 811 when his mother died. He spent the traditional three year
mourning period again along the Wei River, and returned to court in the winter of
814, where he held the title of Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor. It was
not a high ranking position, but nevertheless one which he was soon to lose.
Exile
While serving as a minor palace official, 814, Bei Juyi managed to get himself in
official trouble. He made a few enemies at court and with certain individuals in
other positions. It was partly his written works which lead him into trouble. He
wrote two long memorials, translated by Arthur Waley as "On Stopping the War",
regarding what he considered to be an overly lengthy campaign against a minor
group of Tatars; and he wrote a series of poems, in which he satirized the actions
of greedy officials and highlighting the sufferings of the common folk.
At this time, one of the post-An Lushan warlords (jiedushi), Wu Yuanji in Henan,
had seized control of Zhangyi Circuit (centered in Zhumadian), an act for which
he sought reconciliation with the imperial government, trying to get an imperial
pardon as a necessary prerequisite. Despite the intercession of influential friends,
Wu was denied, thus officially putting him in the position of rebellion. Still
seeking a pardon, Wu turned to assassination, blaming the Prime Minister
(another Wu, Wu Yuanheng) and other officials: the imperial court generally
began by dawn, requiring the ministers to rise early in order to attend in a timely
manner; and, on July 13, 815, before dawn, the Tang Prime Minister Wu
Yuanheng was set to go to the palace for a meeting with Emperor Xianzong. As
he left his house, arrows were fired at his retinue. His servants all fled, and the
assassins seized Wu Yuanheng and his horse, and then decapitated him, taking
his head with them. The assassins also attacked another official who favored the
campaign against the rebellious warlords, Pei Du, but was unable to kill him. The
people at the capital were shocked and there was turmoil, with officials refusing
to leave their personal residences until after dawn.
In this context, ~ Bai Juyi



overstepped his minor position by memorializing the
emperor. As Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor, Bai's memorial was a
breach of protocol — he should have waited for those of censorial authority to
take the lead before offering his own criticism. This was not the only charge
which his opponents used against him. His mother had died, apparently caused
by falling into a well while looking at some flowers, and two poems written by Bai
Juyi — the titles of which Waley translates as "In Praise of Flowers" and "The
New Well" — were used against him as a sign of lack of Filial Piety, one of the
Confucian ideals. The result was exile: ~ Bai Juyi



was demoted to the rank of SubPrefect and banished from the court and the capital city to Jiujiang, then known
as Xun Yang on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi
Province, China. After three years he was sent as Governor of a remote place in
Sichuan. At the time, the main travel route there was up the Yangzi River. This
trip allowed ~ Bai Juyi



a few days to visit his friend Yuan Zhen, who was also in
exile and with whom he explored the rock caves located at Yichang. ~ Bai Juyi



was
delighted by the flowers and trees for which his new location was noted. In 819,
he was recalled back to the capital, ending his exile.
Return to the capital and a new emperor
In 819, ~ Bai Juyi



was recalled to the capital and given the position of second-class
Assistant Secretary. In 821, China got a new emperor, Muzong. After succeeding
to the throne, Muzong spent his time feasting and heavily drinking, and
neglecting his duties as emperor. Meanwhile, the temporarily subdued regional
military governors (jiedushi) began to challenge the central Tang government,
leading to the new de facto independence of three circuits north of the Yellow
River, which had been previously subdued by Emperor Xianzong. Furthermore,
Muzong's administration was characterized by massive corruption. Again, ~ Bai Juyi,
1473:Song Of Unending Sorrow.
China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,
At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.
If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells,
And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing.
...It was early spring. They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,
Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,
And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her
When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.
The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she
moved,
Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;
But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,
And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings
And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,
His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.
There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,
But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.
By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;
And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with
wine.
Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;
And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.
...High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,
And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes
Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.
The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enoughTill war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth
And broke the tunes of The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
The Forbidden City, the nine-tiered palace, loomed in the dust
From thousands of horses and chariots headed southwest.
The imperial flag opened the way, now moving and now pausing- But thirty miles from the capital, beyond the western gate,
65
The men of the army stopped, not one of them would stir
Till under their horses' hoofs they might trample those moth- eyebrows....
Flowery hairpins fell to the ground, no one picked them up,
And a green and white jade hair-tassel and a yellowgold hair- bird.
The Emperor could not save her, he could only cover his face.
And later when he turned to look, the place of blood and tears
Was hidden in a yellow dust blown by a cold wind.
... At the cleft of the Dagger-Tower Trail they crisscrossed through a cloud-line
Under Omei Mountain. The last few came.
Flags and banners lost their colour in the fading sunlight....
But as waters of Shu are always green and its mountains always blue,
So changeless was His Majesty's love and deeper than the days.
He stared at the desolate moon from his temporary palace.
He heard bell-notes in the evening rain, cutting at his breast.
And when heaven and earth resumed their round and the dragon car faced
home,
The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away
From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried
That memory, that anguish. Where was her jade-white face?
Ruler and lords, when eyes would meet, wept upon their coats
As they rode, with loose rein, slowly eastward, back to the capital.
...The pools, the gardens, the palace, all were just as before,
The Lake Taiye hibiscus, the Weiyang Palace willows;
But a petal was like her face and a willow-leaf her eyebrow -And what could he do but cry whenever he looked at them?
...Peach-trees and plum-trees blossomed, in the winds of spring;
Lakka-foliage fell to the ground, after autumn rains;
The Western and Southern Palaces were littered with late grasses,
And the steps were mounded with red leaves that no one swept away.
Her Pear-Garden Players became white-haired
And the eunuchs thin-eyebrowed in her Court of PepperTrees;
Over the throne flew fire-flies, while he brooded in the twilight.
He would lengthen the lamp-wick to its end and still could never sleep.
Bell and drum would slowly toll the dragging nighthours
And the River of Stars grow sharp in the sky, just before dawn,
And the porcelain mandarin-ducks on the roof grow thick with morning frost
And his covers of kingfisher-blue feel lonelier and colder
With the distance between life and death year after year;
And yet no beloved spirit ever visited his dreams.
...At Lingqiong lived a Taoist priest who was a guest of heaven,
Able to summon spirits by his concentrated mind.
And people were so moved by the Emperor's constant brooding
66
That they besought the Taoist priest to see if he could find her.
He opened his way in space and clove the ether like lightning,
Up to heaven, under the earth, looking everywhere.
Above, he searched the Green Void, below, the Yellow Spring;
But he failed, in either place, to find the one he looked for.
And then he heard accounts of an enchanted isle at sea,
A part of the intangible and incorporeal world,
With pavilions and fine towers in the five-coloured air,
And of exquisite immortals moving to and fro,
And of one among them-whom they called The Ever TrueWith a face of snow and flowers resembling hers he sought.
So he went to the West Hall's gate of gold and knocked at the jasper door
And asked a girl, called Morsel-of-Jade, to tell The Doubly- Perfect.
And the lady, at news of an envoy from the Emperor of China,
Was startled out of dreams in her nine-flowered, canopy.
She pushed aside her pillow, dressed, shook away sleep,
And opened the pearly shade and then the silver screen.
Her cloudy hair-dress hung on one side because of her great haste,
And her flower-cap was loose when she came along the terrace,
While a light wind filled her cloak and fluttered with her motion
As though she danced The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
And the tear-drops drifting down her sad white face
Were like a rain in spring on the blossom of the pear.
But love glowed deep within her eyes when she bade him thank her liege,
Whose form and voice had been strange to her ever since their parting -Since happiness had ended at the Court of the Bright Sun,
And moons and dawns had become long in Fairy-Mountain Palace.
But when she turned her face and looked down toward the earth
And tried to see the capital, there were only fog and dust.
So she took out, with emotion, the pledges he had given
And, through his envoy, sent him back a shell box and gold hairpin,
But kept one branch of the hairpin and one side of the box,
Breaking the gold of the hairpin, breaking the shell of the box;
"Our souls belong together," she said, " like this gold and this shell -Somewhere, sometime, on earth or in heaven, we shall surely
And she sent him, by his messenger, a sentence reminding him
Of vows which had been known only to their two hearts:
"On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,
We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
67
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.
~ Bai Juyi,
1474:Less profitable
than writing on the waters
  of a flowing stream
such is the futility
of unrequited passion.

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The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VI
He washed out his marred hair and cleaned up his equipment(?),
shaking out his locks down over his back,
throwing off his dirty clothes and putting on clean ones.
He wrapped himself in regal garments and fastened the sash.
When Gilgamesh placed his crown on his head,
a princess Ishtar raised her eyes to the beauty of Gilgamesh.
"Come along, Gilgamesh, be you my husband,
to me grant your lusciousness.'
Be you my husband, and I will be your wife.
I will have harnessed for you a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold,
with wheels of gold and 'horns' of electrum(?).
It will he harnessed with great storming mountain mules!
Come into our house, with the fragrance of cedar.
And when you come into our house the doorpost(?) and throne dais(?)'will kiss your feet.
Bowed down beneath you will be kings, lords, and princes.
The Lullubu people' will bring you the produce of the mountains and countryside as tribute.
Your she-goats will bear triplets, your ewes twins,
your donkey under burden will overtake the mule,
your steed at the chariot will be bristling to gallop,
your ax at the yoke will have no match."
Gilgamesh addressed Princess Ishtar saying:
"What would I have to give you if I married you!
Do you need oil or garments for your body! Do you lack anything for food or drink!
I would gladly feed you food fit far a god,
I would gladly give you wine fit for a king,
may the street(?) be your home(?), may you be clothed in a garment,
and may any lusting man (?) marry you!
an oven who ice,
a half-door that keeps out neither breeze nor blast,
a palace that crushes down valiant warriors,
an elephant who devours its own covering,
pitch that blackens the hands of its bearer,
a waterskin that soaks its bearer through,
limestone that buckles out the stone wall,
a battering ram that attracts the enemy land,
a shoe that bites its owner's feet!
Where are your bridegrooms that you keep forever'
Where is your 'Little Shepherd' bird that went up over you!
See here now, I will recite the list of your lovers.
Of the shoulder (?) his hand,
Tammuz, the lover of your earliest youth,
for him you have ordained lamentations year upon year!
You loved the colorful 'Little Shepherd' bird
and then hit him, breaking his wing, so
now he stands in the forest crying 'My Wing'!
You loved the supremely mighty lion,
yet you dug for him seven and again seven pits.
You loved the stallion, famed in battle,
yet you ordained for him the whip, the goad, and the lash,
ordained for him to gallop for seven and seven hours,
ordained for him drinking from muddled waters,'
you ordained far his mother Silili to wail continually.
You loved the Shepherd, the Master Herder,
who continually presented you with bread baked in embers,
and who daily slaughtered for you a kid.
Yet you struck him, and turned him into a wolf,
so his own shepherds now chase him
and his own dogs snap at his shins.
You loved Ishullanu, your father's date gardener,
who continually brought you baskets of dates,
and brightened your table daily.
You raised your eyes to him, and you went to him:
'Oh my Ishullanu, let us taste of your strength,
stretch out your hand to me, and touch our vulva.
Ishullanu said to you:
'Me! What is it you want from me!
Has my mother not baked, and have I not eaten
that I should now eat food under contempt and curses
and that alfalfa grass should be my only cover against
the cold?
As you listened to these his words
you struck him, turning him into a dwarf(?),
and made him live in the middle of his (garden of) labors,
where the mihhu do not go up, nor the bucket of dates (?) down.
And now me! It is me you love, and you will ordain for me as
for them!"
When Ishtar heard this, in a fury she went up to the heavens,
going to Anu, her father, and crying,
going to Anrum, her mother, and weeping:
"Father, Gilgamesh has insulted me over and over,
Gilgamesh has recounted despicable deeds about me,
despicable deeds and curses!"
Anu addressed Princess Ishtar, saying: "What is the matter?
Was it not you who provoked King Gilgamesh?
So Gilgamesh recounted despicable deeds about you,
despicable deeds and curses!"
Ishtar spoke to her father, Anu, saying:
"Father, give me the Bull of Heaven,
so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!"
Anu addressed princess Ishtar, saying:
"If you demand the Bull of Heaven from me,
there will be seven years of empty husks for the land of Uruk.
Have you collected grain for the people!
Have you made grasses grow for the animals?"
Ishtar addressed Anu, her father, saying:
"I have heaped grain in the granaries for the people,
I made grasses grow for the animals,
in order that they might eat in the seven years of empty husks.
I have collected grain for the people,
I have made grasses grow for the animals."
When Anu heard her words, he placed the noserope of the Bull of Heaven in her hand.
Ishtar led the Bull of Heaven down to the earth.
When it reached Uruk It climbed down to the Euphrates
At the snort of the Bull of Heaven a huge pit opened up,
and 100 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his second snort a huge pit opened up,
and 200 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his third snort a huge pit opened up,
and Enkidu fell in up to his waist.
Then Enkidu jumped out and seized the Bull of Heaven by its horns.
the Bull spewed his spittle in front of him,
with his thick tail he flung his dung behind him (?).
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, we can be bold(?)
How shall we respond
My friend, I saw
And my strength
I will rip out
I and you, we must share (?)
I shall grasp the Bull
I will fill my hands (?) ..
In front

between the nape, the horns, and thrust your sword."
Enkidu stalked and hunted down the Bull of Heaven.
He grasped it by the thick of its tail
and held onto it with both his hands (?),
while Gilgamesh, like an expert butcher,
boldly and surely approached the Bull of Heaven.
Between the nape, the horns, and he thrust his sword.
After they had killed the Bull of Heaven,
they ripped out its heart and presented it to Shamash.
They withdrew bowing down humbly to Shamash.
Then the brothers sat down together.
Ishtar went up onto the top of the Wall of Uruk-Haven,
cast herself into the pose of mourning, and hurled her woeful curse:
"Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of
Heaven!"
When Enkidu heard this pronouncement of Ishtar,
he wrenched off the Bull's hindquarter and flung it in her face:
"If I could only get at you I would do the same to you!
I would drape his innards over your arms!"
Ishtar assembled the (cultic women) of lovely-locks, joy-girls, and harlots,
and set them to mourning over the hindquarter of the Bull.
Gilgamesh summoned all the artisans and craftsmen.
(All) the artisans admired the thickness of its horns,
each fashioned from 30 minas of lapis lazuli!
Two fingers thick is their casing(?).
Six vats of oil the contents of the two
he gave as ointment to his (personal) god Lugalbanda.
He brought the horns in and hung them in the bedroom of the family
head (Lugalbanda?).
They washed their hands in the Euphrates,
and proceeded hand in hand,
striding through the streets of Uruk.
The men of Uruk gathered together, staring at them.
Gilgamesh said to the palace retainers:
"Who is the bravest of the men)
Who is the boldest of the males!
Gilgamesh is the bravest of the men,
the boldest of the males!
She at whom we flung the hindquarter of the Bull of Heaven in
anger,
Ishtar has no one that pleases her in the street (?)
Gilgamesh held a celebration in his palace.
The Young Men dozed off, sleeping on the couches of the night.
Enkidu was sleeping, and had a dream.
He woke up and revealed his dream to his friend.


~ Anonymous, Less profitable
,
1475:The Rape Of The Lock: Canto 4
But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress'd,
And secret passions labour'd in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinn'd awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravish'd hair.
For, that sad moment, when the Sylphs withdrew,
And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew,
Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite,
As ever sullied the fair face of light,
Down to the central earth, his proper scene,
Repair'd to search the gloomy cave of Spleen.
Swift on his sooty pinions flits the Gnome,
And in a vapour reach'd the dismal dome.
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
The dreaded East is all the wind that blows.
Here, in a grotto, shelter'd close from air,
And screen'd in shades from day's detested glare,
She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,
Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head.
Two handmaids wait the throne: alike in place,
But diff'ring far in figure and in face.
Here stood Ill Nature like an ancient maid,
Her wrinkled form in black and white array'd;
With store of pray'rs, for mornings, nights, and noons,
Her hand is fill'd; her bosom with lampoons.
There Affectation, with a sickly mien,
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,
Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside,
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride,
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
234
Wrapp'd in a gown, for sickness, and for show.
The fair ones feel such maladies as these,
When each new night-dress gives a new disease.
A constant vapour o'er the palace flies;
Strange phantoms, rising as the mists arise;
Dreadful, as hermit's dreams in haunted shades,
Or bright, as visions of expiring maids.
Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,
Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires:
Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes,
And crystal domes, and angels in machines.
Unnumber'd throngs on ev'ry side are seen,
Of bodies chang'd to various forms by Spleen.
Here living teapots stand, one arm held out,
One bent; the handle this, and that the spout:
A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod walks;
Here sighs a jar, and there a goose pie talks;
Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works,
And maids turn'd bottles, call aloud for corks.
Safe pass'd the Gnome through this fantastic band,
A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand.
Then thus address'd the pow'r: "Hail, wayward Queen!
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen:
Parent of vapours and of female wit,
Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit,
On various tempers act by various ways,
Make some take physic, others scribble plays;
Who cause the proud their visits to delay,
And send the godly in a pet to pray.
A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains,
And thousands more in equal mirth maintains.
But oh! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a grace,
Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face,
Like citron waters matrons' cheeks inflame,
Or change complexions at a losing game;
If e'er with airy horns I planted heads,
Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds,
Or caus'd suspicion when no soul was rude,
Or discompos'd the head-dress of a prude,
235
Or e'er to costive lap-dog gave disease,
Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease:
Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin;
That single act gives half the world the spleen."
The goddess with a discontented air
Seems to reject him, though she grants his pray'r.
A wondrous bag with both her hands she binds,
Like that where once Ulysses held the winds;
There she collects the force of female lungs,
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues.
A vial next she fills with fainting fears,
Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.
The Gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away,
Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day.
Sunk in Thalestris' arms the nymph he found,
Her eyes dejected and her hair unbound.
Full o'er their heads the swelling bag he rent,
And all the Furies issu'd at the vent.
Belinda burns with more than mortal ire,
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire.
"Oh wretched maid!" she spread her hands, and cried,
(While Hampton's echoes, "Wretched maid!" replied,
"Was it for this you took such constant care
The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?
For this your locks in paper durance bound,
For this with tort'ring irons wreath'd around?
For this with fillets strain'd your tender head,
And bravely bore the double loads of lead?
Gods! shall the ravisher display your hair,
While the fops envy, and the ladies stare!
Honour forbid! at whose unrivall'd shrine
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all, our sex resign.
Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honour in a whisper lost!
How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?
'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize,
Expos'd through crystal to the gazing eyes,
236
And heighten'd by the diamond's circling rays,
On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?
Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus grow,
And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;
Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all!"
She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs:
(Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
He first the snuffbox open'd, then the case,
And thus broke out--"My Lord, why, what the devil?
Z{-}{-}{-}ds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, pox!
Give her the hair"--he spoke, and rapp'd his box.
"It grieves me much," replied the peer again,
"Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain.
But by this lock, this sacred lock I swear,
(Which never more shall join its parted hair;
Which never more its honours shall renew,
Clipp'd from the lovely head where late it grew)
That while my nostrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear."
He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.
But Umbriel, hateful gnome! forbears not so;
He breaks the vial whence the sorrows flow.
Then see! the nymph in beauteous grief appears,
Her eyes half-languishing, half-drown'd in tears;
On her heav'd bosom hung her drooping head,
Which, with a sigh, she rais'd; and thus she said:
"For ever curs'd be this detested day,
Which snatch'd my best, my fav'rite curl away!
Happy! ah ten times happy, had I been,
If Hampton Court these eyes had never seen!
Yet am not I the first mistaken maid,
By love of courts to num'rous ills betray'd.
237
Oh had I rather unadmir'd remain'd
In some lone isle, or distant northern land;
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea!
There kept my charms conceal'd from mortal eye,
Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.
What mov'd my mind with youthful lords to roam?
Oh had I stay'd, and said my pray'rs at home!
'Twas this, the morning omens seem'd to tell,
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell;
The tott'ring china shook without a wind,
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind!
A Sylph too warn'd me of the threats of fate,
In mystic visions, now believ'd too late!
See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares:
These, in two sable ringlets taught to break,
Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck.
The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own;
Uncurl'd it hangs, the fatal shears demands
And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands.
Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"
~ Alexander Pope,
1476:The Land Of Pallas
Methought I journeyed along ways that led for ever
Throughout a happy land where strife and care were dead,
And life went by me flowing like a placid river
Past sandy eyots where the shifting shoals make head.
A land where beauty dwelt supreme, and right, the donor
Of peaceful days; a land of equal gifts and deeds,
Of limitless fair fields and plenty had with honour;
A land of kindly tillage and untroubled meads,
Of gardens, and great fields, and dreaming rose-wreathed alleys,
Wherein at dawn and dusk the vesper sparrows sang;
Of cities set far off on hills down vista'd valleys,
And floods so vast and old, men wist not whence they sprang,
Of groves, and forest depths, and fountains softly welling,
And roads that ran soft-shadowed past the open doors,
Of mighty palaces and many a lofty dwelling,
Where all men entered and no master trod their floors.
A land of lovely speech, where every tone was fashioned
By generations of emotion high and sweet,
Of thought and deed and bearing lofty and impassioned;
A land of golden calm, grave forms, and fretless feet.
And every mode and saying of that land gave token
Of limits where no death or evil fortune fell,
And men lived out long lives in proud content unbroken,
For there no man was rich, none poor, but all were well.
And all the earth was common, and no base contriving
Of money of coined gold was needed there or known,
But all men wrought together without greed or striving,
And all the store of all to each man was his own.
From all that busy land, grey town, and peaceful village,
Where never jar was heard, nor wail, nor cry of strife,
From every laden stream and all the fields of tillage,
Arose the murmur and the kindly hum of life.
181
At morning to the fields came forth the men, each neighbour
Hand linked to other, crowned, with wreaths upon their hair,
And all day long with joy they gave their hands to labour,
Moving at will, unhastened, each man to his share.
At noon the women came, the tall fair women, bearing
Baskets of wicker in their ample hands for each,
And learned the day's brief tale, and how the fields were faring,
And blessed them with their lofty beauty and blithe speech.
And when the great day's toil was over, and the shadows
Grew with the flocking stars, the sound of festival
Rose in each city square, and all the country meadows,
Palace, and paven court, and every rustic hall.
Beside smooth streams, where alleys and green gardens meeting
Ran downward to the flood with marble steps, a throng
Came forth of all the folk, at even, gaily greeting,
With echo of sweet converse, jest, and stately song.
In all their great fair cities there was neither seeking
For power of gold, nor greed of lust, nor desperate pain
Of multitudes that starve, or, in hoarse anger breaking,
Beat at the doors of princes, break and fall in vain.
But all the children of that peaceful land, like brothers,
Lofty of spirit, wise, and ever set to learn
The chart of neighbouring souls, the bent and need of others,
Thought only of good deeds, sweet speech, and just return.
And there there was no prison, power of arms, nor palace,
Where prince or judge held sway, for none was needed there;
Long ages since the very names of fraud and malice
Had vanished from men's tongues, and died from all men's care.
And there there were no bonds of contract, deed, or marriage,
No oath, nor any form, to make the word more sure,
For no man dreamed of hurt, dishonour, or miscarriage,
Where every thought was truth, and every heart was pure.
There were no castes of rich or poor, of slave or master,
182
Where all were brothers, and the curse of gold was dead,
But all that wise fair race to kindlier ends and vaster
Moved on together with the same majestic tread.
And all the men and women of that land were fairer
Than even the mightiest of our meaner race can be;
The men like gentle children, great of limb, yet rarer
For wisdom and high thought, like kings for majesty.
And all the women through great ages of bright living,
Grown goodlier of stature, strong, and subtly wise,
Stood equal with the men, calm counsellors, ever giving
The fire and succour of proud faith and dauntless eyes.
And as I journeyed in that land I reached a ruin,
The gateway of a lonely and secluded waste,
A phantom of forgotten time and ancient doing,
Eaten by age and violence, crumbled and defaced.
On its grim outer walls the ancient world's sad glories
Were recorded in fire; upon its inner stone,
Drawn by dead hands, I saw, in tales and tragic stories,
The woe and sickness of an age of fear made known.
And lo, in that grey storehouse, fallen to dust and rotten,
Lay piled the traps and engines of forgotten greed,
The tomes of codes and canons, long disused, forgotten,
The robes and sacred books of many a vanished creed.
An old grave man I found, white-haired and gently spoken,
Who, as I questioned, answered with a smile benign,
'Long years have come and gone since these poor gauds were broken,
Broken and banished from a life made more divine.
'But still we keep them stored as once our sires deemed fitting,
The symbol of dark days and lives remote and strange,
Lest o'er the minds of any there should come unwitting
The thought of some new order and the lust of change.
'If any grow disturbed, we bring them gently hither,
To read the world's grim record and the sombre lore
Massed in these pitiless vaults, and they returning thither,
183
Bear with them quieter thoughts, and make for change no more.'
And thence I journeyed on by one broad way that bore me
Out of that waste, and as I passed by tower and town
I saw amid the limitless plain far out before me
A long low mountain, blue as beryl, and its crown
Was capped by marble roofs that shone like snow for whiteness,
Its foot was deep in gardens, and that blossoming plain
Seemed in the radiant shower of its majestic brightness
A land for gods to dwell in, free from care and pain.
And to and forth from that fair mountain like a river
Ran many a dim grey road, and on them I could see
A multitude of stately forms that seemed for ever
Going and coming in bright bands; and near to me
Was one that in his journey seemed to dream and linger,
Walking at whiles with kingly step, then standing still,
And him I met and asked him, pointing with my finger,
The meaning of the palace and the lofty hill.
Whereto the dreamer: 'Art thou of this land, my brother,
And knowest not the mountain and its crest of walls,
Where dwells the priestless worship of the all-wise mother?
That is the hill of Pallas; those her marble halls!
'There dwell the lords of knowledge and of thought increasing,
And they whom insight and the gleams of song uplift;
And thence as by a hundred conduits flows unceasing
The spring of power and beauty, an eternal gift.'
Still I passed on until I reached at length, not knowing
Whither the tangled and diverging paths might lead,
A land of baser men, whose coming and whose going
Were urged by fear, and hunger, and the curse of greed.
I saw the proud and fortunate go by me, faring
In fatness and fine robes, the poor oppressed and slow,
The faces of bowed men, and piteous women bearing
The burden of perpetual sorrow and the stamp of woe.
184
And tides of deep solicitude and wondering pity
Possessed me, and with eager and uplifted hands
I drew the crowd about me in a mighty city,
And taught the message of those other kindlier lands.
I preached the rule of Faith and brotherly Communion,
The law of Peace and Beauty and the death of Strife,
And painted in great words the horror of disunion,
The vainness of self-worship, and the waste of life.
I preached, but fruitlessly; the powerful from their stations
Rebuked me as an anarch, envious and bad,
And they that served them with lean hands and bitter patience
Smiled only out of hollow orbs, and deemed me mad.
And still I preached, and wrought, and still I bore my message,
For well I knew that on and upward without cease
The spirit works for ever, and by Faith and Presage
That somehow yet the end of human life is Peace.
~ Archibald Lampman,
1477:The Poor Man's Lamb
NOW spent the alter'd King, in am'rous Cares,
The Hours of sacred Hymns and solemn Pray'rs:
In vain the Alter waits his slow returns,
Where unattended Incense faintly burns:
In vain the whisp'ring Priests their Fears express,
And of the Change a thousand Causes guess.
Heedless of all their Censures He retires,
And in his Palace feeds his secret Fires;
Impatient, till from Rabbah Tydings tell,
That near those Walls the poor Uriah fell,
Led to the Onset by a Chosen Few,
Who at the treacherous Signal, soon withdrew;
Nor to his Rescue e'er return'd again,
Till by fierce Ammon's Sword they saw the Victim slain.
'Tis pass'd, 'tis done! the holy Marriage-Knot,
Too strong to be unty'd, at last is cut.
And now to Bathsheba the King declares,
That with his Heart, the Kingdom too is hers;
That Israel's Throne, and longing Monarch's Arms
Are to be fill'd but with her widow'd Charms.
Nor must the Days of formal Tears exceed,
To cross the Living, and abuse the Dead.
This she denies; and signs of Grief are worn;
But mourns no more than may her Face adorn,
Give to those Eyes, which Love and Empire fir'd,
A melting Softness more to be desir'd;
Till the fixt Time, tho' hard to be endur'd,
Was pass'd, and a sad Consort's Name procur'd:
When, with the Pomp that suits a Prince's Thought,
By Passion sway'd, and glorious Woman taught,
A Queen she's made, than Michal seated higher,
Whilst light unusual Airs prophane the hallow'd Lyre.
Where art thou Nathan? where's that Spirit now,
Giv'n to brave Vice, tho' on a Prince's Brow?
In what low Cave, or on what Desert Coast,
Now Virtue wants it, is thy Presence lost?
170
But lo! he comes, the Rev'rend Bard appears,
Defil'd with Dust his awful silver Hairs,
And his rough Garment, wet with falling Tears.
The King this mark'd, and conscious wou'd have fled,
The healing Balm which for his Wounds was shed:
Till the more wary Priest the Serpents Art,
Join'd to the Dove-like Temper of his Heart,
And thus retards the Prince just ready now to part.
Hear me, the Cause betwixt two Neighbors hear,
Thou, who for Justice dost the Sceptre bear:
Help the Opprest, nor let me weep alone
For him, that calls for Succour from the Throne.
Good Princes for Protection are Ador'd,
And Greater by the Shield, than by the Sword.
This clears the Doubt, and now no more he fears
The Cause his Own, and therefore stays and hears:
When thus the Prophet: –
–In a flow'ry Plain
A King-like Man does in full Plenty reign;
Casts round his Eyes, in vain, to reach the Bound,
Which Jordan's Flood sets to his fertile Ground:
Countless his Flocks, whilst Lebanon contains
A Herd as large, kept by his numerous Swains,
That fill with morning Bellowings the cool Air,
And to the Cedar's shade at scorching Noon repair.
Near to this Wood a lowly Cottage stands,
Built by the humble Owner's painful Hands;
Fenc'd by a Stubble-roof, from Rain and Heat,
Secur'd without, within all Plain and Neat.
A Field of small Extent surrounds the Place,
In which One single Ewe did sport and graze:
This his whole Stock, till in full time there came,
To bless his utmost Hopes, a snowy Lamb;
Which, lest the Season yet too Cold might prove,
And Northern Blasts annoy it from the Grove,
Or tow'ring Fowl on the weak Prey might sieze,
(For with his Store his Fears must too increase)
He brings it Home, and lays it by his Side,
At once his Wealth, his Pleasure and his Pride;
Still bars the Door, by Labour call'd away,
171
And, when returning at the Close of Day,
With One small Mess himself, and that sustains,
And half his Dish it shares, and half his slender Gains.
When to the great Man's table now there comes
A Lord as great, follow'd by hungry Grooms:
For these must be provided sundry Meats,
The best for Some, for Others coarser Cates.
One Servant, diligent above the rest
To help his Master to contrive the Feast,
Extols the Lamb was nourished with such Care,
So fed, so lodg'd, it must be Princely Fare;
And having this, my Lord his own may spare.
In haste he sends, led by no Law, but Will,
Not to entreat, or purchase, but to Kill.
The Messenger's arriv'd: the harmless Spoil,
Unus'd to fly, runs Bleating to the Toil:
Whilst for the Innocent the Owner fear'd,
And, sure wou'd move, cou'd Poverty be heard.
Oh spare (he cries) the Product of my Cares,
My Stock's Encrease, the Blessing on my Pray'rs;
My growing Hope, and Treasure of my Life!
More was he speaking, when the murd'ring Knife
Shew'd him, his Suit, tho' just, must be deny'd,
And the white Fleece in its own Scarlet dy'd;
Whilst the poor helpless Wretch stands weeping by,
And lifts his Hands for Justice to the Sky.
Which he shall find, th' incensed King replies,
When for the proud Offence th' Oppressor dies.
O Nathan! by the Holy Name I swear,
Our Land such Wrongs unpunished shall not bear
If, with the Fault, th' Offender thou declare.
To whom the Prophet, closing with the Time,
Thou art the Man replies, and thine th' ill-natur'd Crime.
Nor think, against thy Place, or State, I err;
A Pow'r above thee does this Charge prefer;
Urg'd by whose Spirit, hither am I brought
T' expostulate his Goodness and thy Fault;
To lead thee back to those forgotten Years,
In Labour spent, and lowly Rustick Cares,
172
When in the Wilderness thy Flocks but few,
Thou didst the Shepherd's simple Art pursue
Thro' crusting Frosts, and penetrating Dew:
Till wondring Jesse saw six Brothers past,
And Thou Elected, Thou the Least and Last;
A Sceptre to thy Rural Hand convey'd,
And in thy Bosom Royal Beauties laid;
A lovely Princess made thy Prize that Day,
When on the shaken Ground the Giant lay
Stupid in Death, beyond the Reach of Cries
That bore thy shouted Fame to list'ning Skies,
And drove the flying Foe as fast away,
As Winds, of old, Locusts to Egypt's Sea.
Thy Heart with Love, thy Temples with Renown,
Th' All-giving Hand of Heav'n did largely crown,
Whilst yet thy Cheek was spread with youthful Down.
What more cou'd craving Man of God implore?
Or what for favour'd Man cou'd God do more?
Yet cou'd not These, nor Israel's Throne, suffice
Intemp'rate Wishes, drawn thro' wand'ring Eyes.
One Beauty (not thy own) and seen by chance,
Melts down the Work of Grace with an alluring Glance;
Chafes the Spirit, fed by sacred Art,
And blots the Title AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART;
Black Murder breeds to level at his Head,
Who boasts so fair a Part'ner of his Bed,
Nor longer must possess those envy'd Charms,
The single Treasure of his House, and Arms:
Giving, by this thy Fall, cause to Blaspheme
To all the Heathen the Almighty Name.
For which the Sword shall still thy Race pursue,
And, in revolted Israel's scornful View,
Thy captiv'd Wives shall be in Triumph led
Unto a bold Usurper's shameful Bed;
Who from thy Bowels sprung shall seize thy Throne,
And scourge thee by a Sin beyond thy own.
Thou hast thy Fault in secret Darkness done;
But this the World shall see before the Noonday's Sun.
Enough! the King, enough! the Saint replies,
173
And pours his swift Repentance from his Eyes;
Falls on the Ground, and tears the Nuptial Vest,
By which his Crime's Completion was exprest:
Then with a Sigh blasting to Carnal Love,
Drawn deep as Hell, and piercing Heaven, above
Let Me (he cries) let Me attend his Rod,
For I have sinn'd, for I have lost my God.
Hold! (says the Prophet ) of that Speech beware,
God ne'er was lost, unless by Man's Despair.
The Wound that is thus willingly reveal'd,
Th' Almighty is as willing should be heal'd.
Thus wash'd in Tears, thy Soul as fair does show
As the first Fleece, which on the Lamb does grow,
Or on the Mountain's top the lately fallen Snow.
Yet to the World that Justice may appear
Acting her Part impartial, and severe,
The Offspring of thy Sin shall soon resign
That Life, for which thou must not once repine;
But with submissive Grief his Fate deplore,
And bless the Hand, that does inflict no more.
Shall I then pay but Part, and owe the Whole?
My Body's Fruit, for my offending Soul?
Shall I no more endure (the King demands)
And 'scape thus lightly his offended Hands?
Oh! let him All resume, my Crown, my Fame;
Reduce me to the Nothing, whence I came;
Call back his Favours, faster than he gave;
And, if but Pardon'd, strip me to my Grave:
Since (tho' he seems to Lose ) He surely Wins,
Who gives but earthly Comforts for his Sins.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,
1478:
[Dedicated to General J.C.F. Fuller]
Velvet soft the night-star glowed
Over the untrodden road,
Through the giant glades of yew
Where its ray fell light as dew
Lighting up the shimmering veil
Maiden pure and aery frail
That the spiders wove to hide
Blushes of the sylvan bride
Earth, that trembled with delight
At the male caress of Night.

Velvet soft the wizard trod
To the Sabbath of his God.
With his naked feet he made
Starry blossoms in the glade,
Softly, softly, as he went
To the sombre sacrament,
Stealthy stepping to the tryst
In his gown of amethyst.

Earlier yet his soul had come
To the Hill of Martyrdom,
Where the charred and crooked stake
Like a black envenomed snake
By the hangman's hands is thrust
Through the wet and writhing dust,
Never black and never dried
Heart's blood of a suicide.

He had plucked the hazel rod
From the rude and goatish god,
Even as the curved moon's waning ray
Stolen from the King of Day.
He had learnt the elvish sign;
Given the Token of the Nine:
Once to rave, and once to revel,
Once to bow before the devil,
Once to swing the thurible,
Once to kiss the goat of hell,
Once to dance the aspen spring,
Once to croak, and once to sing,
Once to oil the savoury thighs
Of the witch with sea-green eyes
With the unguents magical.
Oh the honey and the gall
Of that black enchanter's lips
As he croons to the eclipse
Mingling that most puissant spell
Of the giant gods of hell
With the four ingredients
Of the evil elements;
Ambergris from golden spar,
Musk of ox from Mongol jar,
Civet from a box of jade,
Mixed with fat of many a maid
Slain by the inchauntments cold
Of the witches wild and old.

He had crucified a toad
In the basilisk abode,
Muttering the Runes averse
Mad with many a mocking curse.

He had traced the serpent sigil
In his ghastly virgin vigil.
Sursum cor! the elfin hill,
Where the wind blows deadly chill
From the world that wails beneath
Death's black throat and lipless teeth.
There he had stood - his bosom bare -
Tracing Life upon the Air
With the crook and with the flail
Lashing forward on the gale,
Till its blade that wavereth
Like the flickering of Death
Sank before his subtle fence
To the starless sea of sense.

Now at last the man is come
Haply to his halidom.
Surely as he waves his rod
In a circle on the sod
Springs the emerald chaste and clean
From the duller paler green.
Surely in the circle millions
Of immaculate pavilions
Flash upon the trembling turf
Like the sea-stars in the surf -
Millions of bejewelled tents
For the warrior sacraments.
Vaster, vaster, vaster, vaster,
Grows the stature of the master;
All the ringed encampment vies
With the infinite galaxies.
In the midst a cubic stone
With the Devil set thereon;
Hath a lamb's virginal throat;
Hath the body of a stoat;
Hath the buttocks of a goat;
Hath the sanguine face and rod
Of a goddess and a god!

Spell by spell and pace by pace!
Mystic flashes swing and trace
Velvet soft the sigils stepped
By the silver-starred adept.
Back and front, and to and fro,
Soul and body sway and flow
In vertiginous caresses
To imponderable recesses,
Till at last the spell is woven,
And the faery veil is cloven
That was Sequence, Space, and Stress
Of the soul-sick consciousness.

"Give thy body to the beasts!
Give thy spirit to the priests!
Break in twain the hazel rod
On the virgin lips of God!
Tear the Rosy Cross asunder!
Shatter the black bolt of thunder!
Suck the swart ensanguine kiss
Of the resolute abyss!"
Wonder-weft the wizard heard
This intolerable word.
Smote the blasting hazel rod
On the scarlet lips of God;
Trampled Cross and rosy core;
Brake the thunder-tool of Thor;
Meek and holy acolyte
Of the priestly hells of spite,
Sleek and shameless catamite
Of the beasts that prowl the night!

Like a star that streams from heaven
Through the virgin airs light-riven,
From the lift there shot and fell
An admirable miracle.
Carved minute and clean, a key
Of purest lapis-lazuli
More blue than the blind sky that aches
(Wreathed with the stars, her torturing snakes),
For the dead god's kiss that never wakes;
Shot with golden specks of fire
Like a virgin with desire.
Look, the levers! fern-frail fronds
Of fantastic diamonds,
Glimmering with ethereal azure
In each exquisite embrasure.
On the shaft the letters laced,
As if dryads lunar-chaste
With the satyrs were embraced,
Spelled the secret of the key:
Sic pervenias. And he
Went his wizard way, inweaving
Dreams of things beyond believing.

When he will, the weary world
Of the senses closely curled
Like a serpent round his heart
Shakes herself and stands apart.
So the heart's blood flames, expanding,
Strenuous, urgent, and commanding;
And the key unlocks the door
Where his love lives evermore.

She is of the faery blood;
All smaragdine flows its flood.
Glowing in the amber sky
To ensorcelled porphyry
She hath eyes of glittering flake
Like a cold grey water-snake.
She hath naked breasts of amber
Jetting wine in her bed-chamber,
Whereof whoso stoops and drinks
Rees the riddle of the Sphinx.

She hath naked limbs of amber
Whereupon her children clamber.
She hath five navels rosy-red
From the five wounds of God that bled;
Each wound that mothered her still bleeding,
And on that blood her babes are feeding.
Oh! like a rose-winged pelican
She hath bred blessed babes to Pan!
Oh! like a lion-hued nightingale
She hath torn her breast on thorns to avail
The barren rose-tree to renew
Her life with that disastrous dew,
Building the rose o' the world alight
With music out of the pale moonlight!
O She is like the river of blood
That broke from the lips of the bastard god,
When he saw the sacred mother smile
On the ibis that flew up the foam of Nile
Bearing the limbs unblessed, unborn,
That the lurking beast of Nile had torn!

So (for the world is weary) I
These dreadful souls of sense lay by.
I sacrifice these impure shoon
To the cold ray of the waning moon.
I take the forked hazel staff,
And the rose of no terrene graff,
And the lamp of no olive oil
With heart's blood that alone may boil.
With naked breast and feet unshod
I follow the wizard way to God.

Wherever he leads my foot shall follow;
Over the height, into the hollow,
Up to the caves of pure cold breath,
Down to the deeps of foul hot death,
Across the seas, through the fires,
Past the palace of desires;
Where he will, whether he will or no,
If I go, I care not whither I go.

For in me is the taint of the faery blood.
Fast, fast its emerald flood
Leaps within me, violent rude
Like a bestial faun's beatitude.
In me the faery blood runs hard:
My sires were a druid, a devil, a bard,
A beast, a wizard, a snake and a satyr;
For - as my mother said - what does it matter?
She was a fay, pure of the faery;
Queen Morgan's daughter by an aery
Demon that came to Orkney once
To pay the Beetle his orisons.

So, it is I that writhe with the twitch
Of the faery blood, and the wizard itch
To attain a matter one may not utter
Rather than sink in the greasy splutter
Of Britons munching their bread and butter;
Ailing boys and coarse-grained girls
Grown to sloppy women and brutal churls.
So, I am off with staff in hand
To the endless light of the nameless land.

Darkness spreads its sombre streams,
Blotting out the elfin dreams.
I might haply be afraid,
Were it not the Feather-maid
Leads me softly by the hand,
Whispers me to understand.
Now (when through the world of weeping
Light at last starrily creeping
Steals upon my babe-new sight,
Light - O light that is not light!)
On my mouth the lips of her
Like a stone on my sepulchre
Seal my speech with ecstasy,
Till a babe is born of me
That is silent more than I;
For its inarticulate cry
Hushes as its mouth is pressed
To the pearl, her honey breast;
While its breath divinely ripples
The rose-petals of her nipples,
And the jetted milk he laps
From the soft delicious paps,
Sweeter than the bee-sweet showers
In the chalice of the flowers,
More intoxicating than
All the purple grapes of Pan.

Ah! my proper lips are stilled.
Only, all the world is filled
With the Echo, that drips over
Like the honey from the clover.
Passion, penitence, and pain
Seek their mother's womb again,
And are born the triple treasure,
Peace and purity and pleasure.

- Hush, my child, and come aloft
Where the stars are velvet soft!

~ Aleister Crowley, The Wizard Way
,
1479:He sings.

I send my heart up to thee, all my heart
In this my singing.
For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

She speaks.

Say after me, and try to say
My very words, as if each word
Came from you of your own accord,
In your own voice, in your own way:
``This woman's heart and soul and brain
``Are mine as much as this gold chain
``She bids me wear; which'' (say again)
``I choose to make by cherishing
``A precious thing, or choose to fling
``Over the boat-side, ring by ring.''
And yet once more say no word more!
Since words are only words. Give o'er!

Unless you call me, all the same,
Familiarly by my pet name,
Which if the Three should hear you call,
And me reply to, would proclaim
At once our secret to them all.
Ask of me, too, command me, blame-
Do, break down the partition-wall
'Twixt us, the daylight world beholds
Curtained in dusk and splendid folds!
What's left but-all of me to take?
I am the Three's: prevent them, slake
Your thirst! 'Tis said, the Arab sage,
In practising with gems, can loose
Their subtle spirit in his cruce
And leave but ashes: so, sweet mage,
Leave them my ashes when thy use
Sucks out my soul, thy heritage!

He sings.

I.

Past we glide, and past, and past!
What's that poor Agnese doing
Where they make the shutters fast?
Grey Zanobi's just a-wooing
To his couch the purchased bride:
Past we glide!

II.

Past we glide, and past, and past!
Why's the Pucci Palace flaring
Like a beacon to the blast?
Guests by hundreds, not one caring
If the dear host's neck were wried:
Past we glide!

She sings.

I.

The moth's kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.

II.

The bee's kiss, now!
Kiss me as if you entered gay
My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dares not disallow
The claim, so all is rendered up,
And passively its shattered cup
Over your head to sleep I bow.

He sings.

I.

What are we two?
I am a Jew,
And carry thee, farther than friends can pursue,
To a feast of our tribe;
Where they need thee to bribe
The devil that blasts them unless he imbibe
Thy Scatter the vision for ever! And now,
As of old, I am I, thou art thou!

II.

Say again, what we are?
The sprite of a star,
I lure thee above where the destinies bar
My plumes their full play
Till a ruddier ray
Than my pale one announce there is withering away
Some Scatter the vision for ever! And now,
As of old, I am I, thou art thou!

He muses.

Oh, which were best, to roam or rest?
The land's lap or the water's breast?
To sleep on yellow millet-sheaves,
Or swim in lucid shallows just
Eluding water-lily leaves,
An inch from Death's black fingers, thrust
To lock you, whom release he must;
Which life were best on Summer eves?

He speaks, musing.

Lie back; could thought of mine improve you?
From this shoulder let there spring
A wing; from this, another wing;
Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you!
Snow-white must they spring, to blend
With your flesh, but I intend
They shall deepen to the end,
Broader, into burning gold,
Till both wings crescent-wise enfold
Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet
To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet
As if a million sword-blades hurled
Defiance from you to the world!

Rescue me thou, the only real!
And scare away this mad ideal
That came, nor motions to depart!
Thanks! Now, stay ever as thou art!

Still he muses.

I.

What if the Three should catch at last
Thy serenader? While there's cast
Paul's cloak about my head, and fast
Gian pinions me, himself has past
His stylet thro' my back; I reel;
And is it thou I feel?

II.

They trail me, these three godless knaves,
Past every church that saints and saves,
Nor stop till, where the cold sea raves
By Lido's wet accursed graves,
They scoop mine, roll me to its brink,
And on thy breast I sink

She replies, musing.

Dip your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep,
As I do: thus: were death so unlike sleep,
Caught this way? Death's to fear from flame or steel,
Or poison doubtless; but from water-feel!

Go find the bottom! Would you stay me? There!
Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass
To plait in where the foolish jewel was,
I flung away: since you have praised my hair,
'Tis proper to be choice in what I wear.

He speaks.

Row home? must we row home? Too surely
Know I where its front's demurely
Over the Giudecca piled;
Window just with window mating,
Door on door exactly waiting,
All's the set face of a child:
But behind it, where's a trace
Of the staidness and reserve,
And formal lines without a curve,
In the same child's playing-face?
No two windows look one way
O'er the small sea-water thread
Below them. Ah, the autumn day
I, passing, saw you overhead!
First, out a cloud of curtain blew,
Then a sweet cry, and last came you-
To catch your lory that must needs
Escape just then, of all times then,
To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds,
And make me happiest of men.
I scarce could breathe to see you reach
So far back o'er the balcony
To catch him ere he climbed too high
Above you in the Smyrna peach
That quick the round smooth cord of gold,
This coiled hair on your head, unrolled,
Fell down you like a gorgeous snake
The Roman girls were wont, of old,
When Rome there was, for coolness' sake
To let lie curling o'er their bosoms.
Dear lory,*
may his beak retain
Ever its delicate rose stain
As if the wounded lotus-blossoms
Had marked their thief to know again!

Stay longer yet, for others' sake
Than mine! What should your chamber do?
-With all its rarities that ache
In silence while day lasts, but wake
At night-time and their life renew,
Suspended just to pleasure you
Who brought against their will together
These objects, and, while day lasts, weave
Around them such a magic tether
That dumb they look: your harp, believe,
With all the sensitive tight strings
Which dare not speak, now to itself
Breathes slumberously, as if some elf
Went in and out the chords, his wings
Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze,
As an angel may, between the maze
Of midnight palace-pillars, on
And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone
Through guilty glorious Babylon.
And while such murmurs flow, the nymph
Bends o'er the harp-top from her shell
As the dry limpet for the lymph
Come with a tune be knows so well.
And how your statues' hearts must swell!
And how your pictures must descend
To see each other, friend with friend!
Oh, could you take them by surprise,
You'd find Schidone's eager Duke
Doing the quaintest courtesies
To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke!
And, deeper into her rock den,
Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen
You'd find retreated from the ken
Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser-
As if the Tizian thinks of her,
And is not, rather, gravely bent
On seeing for himself what toys
Are these, his progeny invent,
What litter now the board employs
Whereon he signed a document
That got him murdered! Each enjoys
Its night so well, you cannot break
The sport up, so, indeed must make
More stay with me, for others' sake.

She speaks.

I.

To-morrow, if a harp-string, say,
Is used to tie the jasmine back
That overfloods my room with sweets,
Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets
My Zanze! If the ribbon's black,
The Three are watching: keep away!

II.

Your gondola-let Zorzi wreathe
A mesh of water-weeds about
its prow, as if he unaware
Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair!
That I may throw a paper out
As you and he go underneath.

There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are we.
Only one minute more to-night with me?
Resume your past self of a month ago!
Be you the bashful gallant, I will be
The lady with the colder breast than snow.
Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand
More than I touch yours when I step to land,
And say, ``All thanks, Siora!''-
Heart to heart
And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part,
Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art!
[He is surprised, and stabbed.
It was ordained to be so, sweet!-and best
Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast.
Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care
Only to put aside thy beauteous hair
My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn
To death, because they never lived: but I
Have lived indeed, and so-(yet one more kiss)-can die!


~ Robert Browning, In A Gondola
,
1480:Alexander And Zenobia
Fair was the evening and brightly the sun
Was shining on desert and grove,
Sweet were the breezes and balmy the flowers
And cloudless the heavens above.
It was Arabia's distant land
And peaceful was the hour;
Two youthful figures lay reclined
Deep in a shady bower.
One was a boy of just fourteen
Bold beautiful and bright;
Soft raven curls hung clustering round
A brow of marble white.
The fair brow and ruddy cheek
Spoke of less burning skies;
Words cannot paint the look that beamed
In his dark lustrous eyes.
The other was a slender girl,
Blooming and young and fair.
The snowy neck was shaded with
The long bright sunny hair.
And those deep eyes of watery blue,
So sweetly sad they seemed.
And every feature in her face
With pensive sorrow teemed.
The youth beheld her saddened air
And smiling cheerfully
He said, 'How pleasant is the land
Of sunny Araby!
'Zenobia, I never saw
A lovelier eve than this;
I never felt my spirit raised
With more unbroken bliss!
27
'So deep the shades, so calm the hour,
So soft the breezes sigh,
So sweetly Philomel begins
Her heavenly melody.
'So pleasant are the scents that rise
From flowers of loveliest hue,
And more than all -- Zenobia,
I am alone with you!
Are we not happy here alone
In such a healthy spot?'
He looked to her with joyful smile
But she returned it not.
'Why are you sorrowful?' he asked
And heaved a bitter sigh,
'O tell me why those drops of woe
Are gathering in your eye.'
'Gladly would I rejoice,' she said,
'But grief weighs down my heart.
'Can I be happy when I know
Tomorrow we must part?
'Yes, Alexander, I must see
This happy land no more.
At break of day I must return
To distant Gondal's shore.
'At morning we must bid farewell,
And at the close of day
You will be wandering alone
And I shall be away.
'I shall be sorrowing for you
On the wide weltering sea,
And you will perhaps have wandered here
To sit and think of me.'
'And shall we part so soon?' he cried,
'Must we be torn away?
28
Shall I be left to mourn alone?
Will you no longer stay?
'And shall we never meet again,
Hearts that have grown together?
Must they at once be rent away
And kept apart for ever?'
'Yes, Alexander, we must part,
But we may meet again,
For when I left my native land
I wept in anguish then.
'Never shall I forget the day
I left its rocky shore.
We thought that we had bid adieu
To meet on earth no more.
'When we had parted how I wept
To see the mountains blue
Grow dimmer and more distant -- till
They faded from my view.
'And you too wept -- we little thought
After so long a time,
To meet again so suddenly
In such a distant clime.
'We met on Grecia's classic plain,
We part in Araby.
And let us hope to meet again
Beneath our Gondal's sky.'
'Zenobia, do you remember
A little lonely spring
Among Exina's woody hills
Where blackbirds used to sing,
'And when they ceased as daylight faded
From the dusky sky
The pensive nightingale began
Her matchless melody?
29
'Sweet bluebells used to flourish there
And tall trees waved on high,
And through their ever sounding leaves
The soft wind used to sigh.
'At morning we have often played
Beside that lonely well;
At evening we have lingered there
Till dewy twilight fell.
'And when your fifteenth birthday comes,
Remember me, my love,
And think of what I said to you
In this sweet spicy grove.
'At evening wander to that spring
And sit and wait for me;
And 'ere the sun has ceased to shine
I will return to thee.
'Two years is a weary time
But it will soon be fled.
And if you do not meet me -- know
I am not false but dead.'
Sweetly the summer day declines
On forest, plain, and hill
And in that spacious palace hall
So lonely, wide and still.
Beside a window's open arch,
In the calm evening air
All lonely sits a stately girl,
Graceful and young and fair.
The snowy lid and lashes long
Conceal her downcast eye,
She's reading and till now I have
Passed unnoticed by.
30
But see she cannot fix her thoughts,
They are wandering away;
She looks towards a distant dell
Where sunny waters play.
And yet her spirit is not with
The scene she looks upon;
She muses with a mournful smile
On pleasures that are gone.
She looks upon the book again
That chained her thoughts before,
And for a moment strives in vain
To fix her mind once more.
Then gently drops it on her knee
And looks into the sky,
While trembling drops are shining in
Her dark celestial eye.
And thus alone and still she sits
Musing on years gone by.
Till with a sad and sudden smile
She rises up to go;
And from the open window springs
On to the grass below.
Why does she fly so swiftly now
Adown the meadow green,
And o'er the gently swelling hills
And the vale that lies between?
She passes under giant trees
That lift their arms on high
And slowly wave their mighty boughs
In the clear evening sky,
And now she threads a path that winds
Through deeply shaded groves
Where nought is heard but sighing gales
And murmuring turtle doves.
31
She hastens on through sunless gloom
To a vista opening wide;
A marble fountain sparkles there
With sweet flowers by its side.
At intervals in the velvet grass
A few old elm trees rise,
While a warm flood of yellow light
Streams from the western skies.
Is this her resting place? Ah, no,
She hastens onward still,
The startled deer before her fly
As she ascends the hill.
She does not rest till she has gained
A lonely purling spring,
Where zephyrs wave the verdant trees
And birds in concert sing.
And there she stands and gazes round
With bright and searching eye,
Then sadly sighing turns away
And looks upon the sky.
She sits down on the flowery turf
Her head drooped on her hand;
Her soft luxuriant golden curls
Are by the breezes fanned.
A sweet sad smile plays on her lips;
Her heart is far away,
And thus she sits till twilight comes
To take the place of day.
But when she looks towards the west
And sees the sun is gone
And hears that every bird but one
To its nightly rest is flown,
And sees that over nature's face
32
A sombre veil is cast
With mournful voice and tearful eye
She says, 'The time is past!
'He will not come! I might have known
It was a foolish hope;
But it was so sweet to cherish
I could not yield it up.
'It may be foolish thus to weep
But I cannot check my tears
To see in one short hour destroyed
The darling hope of years.
'He is not false, but he was young
And time rolls fast away.
Has he forgotten the vow he made
To meet me here today?
'No. If he lives he loves me still
And still remembers me.
If he is dead -- my joys are sunk
In utter misery.
'We parted in the spicy groves
Beneath Arabia's sky.
How could I hope to meet him now
Where Gondal's breezes sigh?
'He was a shining meteor light
That faded from the skies,
But I mistook him for a star
That only set to rise.
'And with a firm yet trembling hand
I've clung to this false hope;
I dared not surely trust in it
Yet would not yield it up.
'And day and night I've thought of him
And loved him constantly,
And prayed that Heaven would prosper him
33
Wherever he might be.
'He will not come; he's wandering now
On some far distant shore,
Or else he sleeps the sleep of death
And cannot see me more!
'O, Alexander, is it thus?
Did we but meet to part?
Long as I live thy name will be
Engraven on my heart.
'I shall not cease to think of thee
While life and thought remain,
For well I know that I can never
See thy like again!'
She ceases now and dries her tears
But still she lingers there
In silent thought till night is come
And silver stars appear.
But lo! a tall and stately youth
Ascends the grassy slope;
His bright dark eyes are glancing round,
His heart beats high with hope.
He has journyed on unweariedly
From dawn of day till now,
The warm blood kindles in his cheek,
The sweat is on his brow.
But he has gained the green hill top
Where lies that lonely spring,
And lo! he pauses when he hears
Its gentle murmuring.
He dares not enter through the trees
That veil it from his eye;
He listens for some other sound
In deep anxiety.
34
But vainly -- all is calm and still;
Are his bright day dreams o'er?
Has he thus hoped and longed in vain,
And must they meet no more?
One moment more of sad suspense
And those dark trees are past;
The lonely well bursts on his sight
And they are met at last!
~ Anne Brontë,
1481:New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan

Scene.A large mean airy chamber. A girl, Pippa, from the Silk-mills, springing out of bed.
Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,
A mite of my twelve hours' treasure,
The least of thy gazes or glances,
(Be they grants thou art bound to or gifts above measure)
One of thy choices or one of thy chances,
(Be they tasks God imposed thee or freaks at thy pleasure)
My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure,
Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!
Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing,
Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good
Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going,
As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood
All shall be mine! But thou must treat me not
As prosperous ones are treated, those who live
At hand here, and enjoy the higher lot,
In readiness to take what thou wilt give,
And free to let alone what thou refusest;
For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest
Me, who am only Pippa,old-year's sorrow,
Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow:
Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow
Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow.
All other men and women that this earth
Belongs to, who all days alike possess,
Make general plenty cure particular dearth,
Get more joy one way, if another, less:
Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven
What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven,
Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!
Try now! Take Asolo's Four Happiest Ones
And let thy morning rain on that superb
Great haughty Ottima; can rain disturb
Her Sebald's homage? All the while thy rain
Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane,
He will but press the closer, breathe more warm
Against her cheek; how should she mind the storm?
And, morning past, if mid-day shed a gloom
O'er Jules and Phene,what care bride and groom
Save for their dear selves? 'T is their marriage-day;
And while they leave church and go home their way,
Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be
Sunbeams and pleasant weather spite of thee.
Then, for another trial, obscure thy eve
With mist,will Luigi and his mother grieve
The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth,
She in her age, as Luigi in his youth,
For true content? The cheerful town, warm, close
And safe, the sooner that thou art morose,
Receives them. And yet once again, outbreak
In storm at night on Monsignor, they make
Such stir about,whom they expect from Rome
To visit Asolo, his brothers' home,
And say here masses proper to release
A soul from pain,what storm dares hurt his peace?
Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward
Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard.
But Pippajust one such mischance would spoil
Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil
At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil!
And here I let time slip for nought!
Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam, caught
With a single splash from my ewer!
You that would mock the best pursuer,
Was my basin over-deep?
One splash of water ruins you asleep,
And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits
Wheeling and counterwheeling,
Reeling, broken beyond healing:
Now grow together on the ceiling!
That will task your wits.
Whoever it was quenched fire first, hoped to see
Morsel after morsel flee
As merrily, as giddily . . .
Meantime, what lights my sunbeam on,
Where settles by degrees the radiant cripple?
Oh, is it surely blown, my martagon?
New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple,
Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk bird's poll!
Be sure if corals, branching 'neath the ripple
Of ocean, bud there,fairies watch unroll
Such turban-flowers; I say, such lamps disperse
Thick red flame through that dusk green universe!
I am queen of thee, floweret!
And each fleshy blossom
Preserve I not(safer
Than leaves that embower it,
Or shells that embosom)
From weevil and chafer?
Laugh through my pane then; solicit the bee;
Gibe him, be sure; and, in midst of thy glee,
Love thy queen, worship me!
Worship whom else? For am I not, this day,
Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day?
My morn, noon, eve and nighthow spend my day?
To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk,
The whole year round, to earn just bread and milk:
But, this one day, I have leave to go,
And play out my fancy's fullest games;
I may fancy all dayand it shall be so
That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names
Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo!
See! Up the hill-side yonder, through the morning,
Some one shall love me, as the world calls love:
I am no less than Ottima, take warning!
The gardens, and the great stone house above,
And other house for shrubs, all glass in front,
Are mine; where Sebald steals, as he is wont,
To court me, while old Luca yet reposes:
And therefore, till the shrub-house door uncloses,
I . . . what now?give abundant cause for prate
About meOttima, I meanof late,
Too bold, too confident she'll still face down
The spitefullest of talkers in our town.
How we talk in the little town below!
But love, love, lovethere's better love, I know!
This foolish love was only day's first offer;
I choose my next love to defy the scoffer:
For do not our Bride and Bridegroom sally
Out of Possagno church at noon?
Their house looks over Orcana valley:
Why should not I be the bride as soon
As Ottima? For I saw, beside,
Arrive last night that little bride
Saw, if you call it seeing her, one flash
Of the pale snow-pure cheek and black bright tresses,
Blacker than all except the black eyelash;
I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses!
So strict was she, the veil
Should cover close her pale
Pure cheeksa bride to look at and scarce touch,
Scarce touch, remember, Jules! For are not such
Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature,
As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?
A soft and easy life these ladies lead:
Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed.
Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness,
Keep that foot its lady primness,
Let those ankles never swerve
From their exquisite reserve,
Yet have to trip along the streets like me,
All but naked to the knee!
How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss
So startling as her real first infant kiss?
Oh, nonot envy, this!
Not envy, sure!for if you gave me
Leave to take or to refuse,
In earnest, do you think I'd choose
That sort of new love to enslave me?
Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;
As little fear of losing it as winning:
Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,
And only parents' love can last our lives.
At eve the Son and Mother, gentle pair,
Commune inside our turret: what prevents
My being Luigi? While that mossy lair
Of lizards through the winter-time is stirred
With each to each imparting sweet intents
For this new-year, as brooding bird to bird
(For I observe of late, the evening walk
Of Luigi and his mother, always ends
Inside our ruined turret, where they talk,
Calmer than lovers, yet more kind than friends)
Let me be cared about, kept out of harm,
And schemed for, safe in love as with a charm;
Let me be Luigi! If I only knew
What was my mother's facemy father, too!
Nay, if you come to that, best love of all
Is God's; then why not have God's love befall
Myself as, in the palace by the Dome,
Monsignor?who to-night will bless the home
Of his dead brother; and God bless in turn
That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn
With love for all men! I, to-night at least,
Would be that holy and beloved priest.
Now wait!even I already seem to share
In God's love: what does New-year's hymn declare?
What other meaning do these verses bear?
All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can workGod's puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.
Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
Costs it more pain that this, ye call
A "great event," should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!
And more of it, and more of it!oh yes
I will pass each, and see their happiness,
And envy nonebeing just as great, no doubt,
Useful to men, and dear to God, as they!
A pretty thing to care about
So mightily, this single holiday!
But let the sun shine! Wherefore repine?
With thee to lead me, O Day of mine,
Down the grass path grey with dew,
Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs,
Where the swallow never flew
Nor yet cicala dared carouse
No, dared carouse!
[She enters the street]


~ Robert Browning, Introduction: Pippa Passes
,
1482:Merlin
“Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough
And hard enough into the feathery west
Ye’ll have a glimmer of the Grail itself?
And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady,
What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”
So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight
Because he loved him as he laughed at him,
Intoned his idle presence on a day
To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone,
Had there been in him thought of anything
Save what was murmured now in Camelot
Of Merlin’s hushed and all but unconfirmed
Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard
At first there was a ghost in Arthur’s palace,
But soon among the scullions and anon
Among the knights a firmer credit held
All tongues from uttering what all glances told—
Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon,
Fearing he might say more to Lancelot
Of Merlin’s rumor-laden resurrection
Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish,
Had sauntered off with his imagination
To Merlin’s Rock, where now there was no Merlin
To meditate upon a whispering town
Below him in the silence.—Once he said
To Gawaine: “You are young; and that being so,
Behold the shining city of our dreams
And of our King.”—“Long live the King,” said Gawaine.—
“Long live the King,” said Merlin after him;
“Better for me that I shall not be King;
Wherefore I say again, Long live the King,
And add, God save him, also, and all kings—
All kings and queens. I speak in general.
184
Kings have I known that were but weary men
With no stout appetite for more than peace
That was not made for them.”—“Nor were they made
For kings,” Gawaine said, laughing.—“You are young,
Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world
Between your fingers, knowing not what it is
That you are holding. Better for you and me,
I think, that we shall not be kings.”
Gawaine,
Remembering Merlin’s words of long ago,
Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again,
He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard:
“There’s more afoot and in the air to-day
Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin
May or may not know all, but he said well
To say to me that he would not be King.
Nor more would I be King.” Far down he gazed
On Camelot, until he made of it
A phantom town of many stillnesses,
Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings
To reign in, without omens and obscure
Familiars to bring terror to their days;
For though a knight, and one as hard at arms
As any, save the fate-begotten few
That all acknowledged or in envy loathed,
He felt a foreign sort of creeping up
And down him, as of moist things in the dark,—
When Dagonet, coming on him unawares,
Presuming on his title of Sir Fool,
Addressed him and crooned on till he was done:
“What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”
“Sir Dagonet, you best and wariest
Of all dishonest men, I look through Time,
For sight of what it is that is to be.
I look to see it, though I see it not.
I see a town down there that holds a king,
And over it I see a few small clouds—
Like feathers in the west, as you observe;
And I shall see no more this afternoon
Than what there is around us every day,
185
Unless you have a skill that I have not
To ferret the invisible for rats.”
“If you see what’s around us every day,
You need no other showing to go mad.
Remember that and take it home with you;
And say tonight, ‘I had it of a fool—
With no immediate obliquity
For this one or for that one, or for me.’”
Gawaine, having risen, eyed the fool curiously:
“I’ll not forget I had it of a knight,
Whose only folly is to fool himself;
And as for making other men to laugh,
And so forget their sins and selves a little,
There’s no great folly there. So keep it up,
As long as you’ve a legend or a song,
And have whatever sport of us you like
Till havoc is the word and we fall howling.
For I’ve a guess there may not be so loud
A sound of laughing here in Camelot
When Merlin goes again to his gay grave
In Brittany. To mention lesser terrors,
Men say his beard is gone.”
“Do men say that?”
A twitch of an impatient weariness
Played for a moment over the lean face
Of Dagonet, who reasoned inwardly:
“The friendly zeal of this inquiring knight
Will overtake his tact and leave it squealing,
One of these days.”—Gawaine looked hard at him:
“If I be too familiar with a fool,
I’m on the way to be another fool,”
He mused, and owned a rueful qualm within him:
“Yes, Dagonet,” he ventured, with a laugh,
“Men tell me that his beard has vanished wholly,
And that he shines now as the Lord’s anointed,
And wears the valiance of an ageless youth
Crowned with a glory of eternal peace.”
Dagonet, smiling strangely, shook his head:
“I grant your valiance of a kind of youth
186
To Merlin, but your crown of peace I question;
For, though I know no more than any churl
Who pinches any chambermaid soever
In the King’s palace, I look not to Merlin
For peace, when out of his peculiar tomb
He comes again to Camelot. Time swings
A mighty scythe, and some day all your peace
Goes down before its edge like so much clover.
No, it is not for peace that Merlin comes,
Without a trumpet—and without a beard,
If what you say men say of him be true—
Nor yet for sudden war.”
Gawaine, for a moment,
Met then the ambiguous gaze of Dagonet,
And, making nothing of it, looked abroad
As if at something cheerful on all sides,
And back again to the fool’s unasking eyes:
“Well, Dagonet, if Merlin would have peace,
Let Merlin stay away from Brittany,”
Said he, with admiration for the man
Whom Folly called a fool: “And we have known him;
We knew him once when he knew everything.”
“He knew as much as God would let him know
Until he met the lady Vivian.
I tell you that, for the world knows all that;
Also it knows he told the King one day
That he was to be buried, and alive,
In Brittany; and that the King should see
The face of him no more. Then Merlin sailed
Away to Vivian in Broceliande,
Where now she crowns him and herself with flowers
And feeds him fruits and wines and many foods
Of many savors, and sweet ortolans.
Wise books of every lore of every land
Are there to fill his days, if he require them,
And there are players of all instruments—
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols; and she sings
To Merlin, till he trembles in her arms
And there forgets that any town alive
Had ever such a name as Camelot.
187
So Vivian holds him with her love, they say,
And he, who has no age, has not grown old.
I swear to nothing, but that’s what they say.
That’s being buried in Broceliande
For too much wisdom and clairvoyancy.
But you and all who live, Gawaine, have heard
This tale, or many like it, more than once;
And you must know that Love, when Love invites
Philosophy to play, plays high and wins,
Or low and loses. And you say to me,
‘If Merlin would have peace, let Merlin stay
Away from Brittany.’ Gawaine, you are young,
And Merlin’s in his grave.”
“Merlin said once
That I was young, and it’s a joy for me
That I am here to listen while you say it.
Young or not young, if that be burial,
May I be buried long before I die.
I might be worse than young; I might be old.”—
Dagonet answered, and without a smile:
“Somehow I fancy Merlin saying that;
A fancy—a mere fancy.” Then he smiled:
“And such a doom as his may be for you,
Gawaine, should your untiring divination
Delve in the veiled eternal mysteries
Too far to be a pleasure for the Lord.
And when you stake your wisdom for a woman,
Compute the woman to be worth a grave,
As Merlin did, and say no more about it.
But Vivian, she played high. Oh, very high!
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols,—and her love.
Gawaine, farewell.”
“Farewell, Sir Dagonet,
And may the devil take you presently.”
He followed with a vexed and envious eye,
And with an arid laugh, Sir Dagonet’s
Departure, till his gaunt obscurity
Was cloaked and lost amid the glimmering trees.
“Poor fool!” he murmured. “Or am I the fool?
With all my fast ascendency in arms,
188
That ominous clown is nearer to the King
Than I am—yet; and God knows what he knows,
And what his wits infer from what he sees
And feels and hears. I wonder what he knows
Of Lancelot, or what I might know now,
Could I have sunk myself to sound a fool
To springe a friend.… No, I like not this day.
There’s a cloud coming over Camelot
Larger than any that is in the sky,—
Or Merlin would be still in Brittany,
With Vivian and the viols. It’s all too strange.”
And later, when descending to the city,
Through unavailing casements he could hear
The roaring of a mighty voice within,
Confirming fervidly his own conviction:
“It’s all too strange, and half the world’s half crazy!”—
He scowled: “Well, I agree with Lamorak.”
He frowned, and passed: “And I like not this day.”
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,
1483:Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
Of objects and of persons passed like things
Strange as a dreamers mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.

And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,--
And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious,--but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
Was less heavenly fair--her face was bowed,
And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
Were mirrored in the polished marble stair
Which led from the cathedral to the street;
And ever as she went her light fair feet
Erased these images.

The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,
Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,
Envying the unenviable; and others
Making the joy which should have been anothers
Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
Sighing to think of an unhappy home:
Some few admiring what can ever lure
Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure
Of parents smiles for lifes great cheat; a thing
Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.

But they are all dispersed--and, lo! she stands
Looking in idle grief on her white hands,
Alone within the garden now her own;
And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,
The music of the merry marriage-bells,
Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;--
Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams
That he is dreaming, until slumber seems
A mockery of itself--when suddenly
Antonio stood before her, pale as she.
With agony, with sorrow, and with pride,
He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,
And said--Is this thy faith? and then as one
Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun
With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise
And look upon his day of life with eyes
Which weep in vain that they can dream no more,
Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore
To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood
Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued
Said--Friend, if earthly violence or ill,
Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will
Of parents, chance or custom, time or change,
Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,
Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,
With all their stings and venom can impeach
Our love,--we love not:--if the grave which hides
The victim from the tyrant, and divides
The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart
Imperious inquisition to the heart
That is anothers, could dissever ours,
We love not.--What! do not the silent hours
Beckon thee to Gherardis bridal bed?
Is not that ring--a pledge, he would have said,
Of broken vows, but she with patient look
The golden circle from her finger took,
And said--Accept this token of my faith,
The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;
And I am dead or shall be soonmy knell
Will mix its music with that merry bell,
Does it not sound as if they sweetly said
We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed?
The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn
Will serve unfaded for my bierso soon
That even the dying violet will not die
Before Ginevra. The strong fantasy
Had made her accents weaker and more weak,
And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,
And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere
Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,
Making her but an image of the thought
Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought
News of the terrors of the coming time.
Like an accuser branded with the crime
He would have cast on a beloved friend,
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end
The pale betrayerhe then with vain repentance
Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence--
Antonio stood and would have spoken, when
The compound voice of women and of men
Was heard approaching; he retired, while she
Was led amid the admiring company
Back to the palace,--and her maidens soon
Changed her attire for the afternoon,
And left her at her own request to keep
An hour of quiet rest:--like one asleep
With open eyes and folded hands she lay,
Pale in the light of the declining day.

Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,
And in the lighted hall the guests are met;
The beautiful looked lovelier in the light
Of love, and admiration, and delight
Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes,
Kindling a momentary Paradise.
This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
Where loves own doubts disturb the solitude;
On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine
Falls, and the dew of music more divine
Tempers the deep emotions of the time
To spirits cradled in a sunny clime:--
How many meet, who never yet have met,
To part too soon, but never to forget.
How many saw the beauty, power and wit
Of looks and words which neer enchanted yet;
But lifes familiar veil was now withdrawn,
As the world leaps before an earthquakes dawn,
And unprophetic of the coming hours,
The matin winds from the expanded flowers
Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
From every living heart which it possesses,
Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,
As if the future and the past were all
Treasured i the instant;--so Gherardis hall
Laughed in the mirth of its lords festival,
Till some one asked--Where is the Bride? And then
A bridesmaid went,--and ere she came again
A silence fell upon the guests--a pause
Of expectation, as when beauty awes
All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;
Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;--
For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew
The colour from the hearers cheeks, and flew
Louder and swifter round the company;
And then Gherardi entered with an eye
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.

They found Ginevra dead! if it be death
To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,
With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,
And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light
Mocked at the speculation they had owned.
If it be death, when there is felt around
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
From the scalp to the ankles, as it were
Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
And giving all it shrouded to the earth,
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night
Of thought we know thus much of death,no more
Than the unborn dream of our life before
Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.
The marriage feast and its solemnity
Was turned to funeral pomp--the company,
With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,
On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,
Gleamed few and faint oer the abandoned feast,
Showed as it were within the vaulted room
A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
Had passed out of mens minds into the air.
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
Friends and relations of the dead,--and he,
A loveless man, accepted torpidly
The consolation that he wanted not;
Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.
Their whispers made the solemn silence seem
More still--some wept,...
Some melted into tears without a sob,
And some with hearts that might be heard to throb
Leaned on the table and at intervals
Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls
And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came
Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame
Of every torch and taper as it swept
From out the chamber where the women kept;--
Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled
The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
And finding Death their penitent had shrived,
Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning women came.--

...

THE DIRGE.
Old winter was gone
In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
And the spring came down
From the planet that hovers upon the shore

Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
On the limits of wintry night;--
If the land, and the air, and the sea,
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,
Ginevra!

She is still, she is cold
On the bridal couch,
One step to the white deathbed,
And one to the bier,
And one to the charnel--and one, oh where?
The dark arrow fled
In the noon.

Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled,
The rats in her heart
Will have made their nest,
And the worms be alive in her golden hair,
While the Spirit that guides the sun,
Sits throned in his flaming chair,
She shall sleep.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ginevra
,
1484:If solitude hath ever led thy steps
   To the wild ocean's echoing shore,
   And thou hast lingered there,
   Until the sun's broad orb
  Seemed resting on the burnished wave,
   Thou must have marked the lines
  Of purple gold that motionless
   Hung o'er the sinking sphere;
  Thou must have marked the billowy clouds,
  Edged with intolerable radiancy,
   Towering like rocks of jet
   Crowned with a diamond wreath;
   And yet there is a moment,
   When the sun's highest point
Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge,
When those far clouds of feathery gold,
  Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
  Like islands on a dark blue sea;
Then has thy fancy soared above the earth
   And furled its wearied wing
   Within the Fairy's fane.

   Yet not the golden islands
   Gleaming in yon flood of light,
     Nor the feathery curtains
   Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,
   Nor the burnished ocean-waves
     Paving that gorgeous dome,
  So fair, so wonderful a sight
As Mab's ethereal palace could afford.
Yet likest evening's vault, that fary Hall!
As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread
     Its floors of flashing light,
     Its vast and azure dome,
     Its fertile golden islands
     Floating on a silver sea;
Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted
Through clouds of circumambient darkness,
  And pearly battlements around
  Looked o'er the immense of Heaven.

  The magic car no longer moved.
   The Fairy and the Spirit
   Entered the Hall of Spells.
    Those golden clouds
   That rolled in glittering billows
   Beneath the azure canopy,
With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;
     The light and crimson mists,
Floating to strains of thrilling melody
   Through that unearthly dwelling,
Yielded to every movement of the will;
Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,
And, for the varied bliss that pressed around,
  Used not the glorious privilege
   Of virtue and of wisdom.

   'Spirit!' the Fairy said,
  And pointed to the gorgeous dome,
   'This is a wondrous sight
   And mocks all human grandeur;
But, were it virtue's only meed to dwell
In a celestial palace, all resigned
To pleasurable impulses, immured
Within the prison of itself, the will
Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.
Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!
This is thine high reward:the past shall rise;
Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach
     The secrets of the future.'

     The Fairy and the Spirit
Approached the overhanging battlement.
   Below lay stretched the universe!
   There, far as the remotest line
   That bounds imagination's flight,
    Countless and unending orbs
   In mazy motion intermingled,
   Yet still fulfilled immutably
     Eternal Nature's law.
     Above, below, around,
     The circling systems formed
     A wilderness of harmony;
   Each with undeviating aim,
In eloquent silence, through the depths of space
     Pursued its wondrous way.

     There was a little light
That twinkled in the misty distance.
     None but a spirit's eye
     Might ken that rolling orb.
     None but a spirit's eye,
     And in no other place
But that celestial dwelling, might behold
Each action of this earth's inhabitants.
     But matter, space, and time,
In those arial mansions cease to act;
And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps
The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds
Those obstacles of which an earthly soul
   Fears to attempt the conquest.

   The Fairy pointed to the earth.
   The Spirit's intellectual eye
   Its kindred beings recognized.
The thronging thousands, to a passing view,
   Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens.
     How wonderful! that even
  The passions, prejudices, interests,
That sway the meanest beingthe weak touch
     That moves the finest nerve
     And in one human brain
Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link
   In the great chain of Nature!

   'Behold,' the Fairy cried,
   'Palmyra's ruined palaces!
   Behold where grandeur frowned!
   Behold where pleasure smiled!
  What now remains?the memory
   Of senselessness and shame.
   What is immortal there?
   Nothingit stands to tell
   A melancholy tale, to give
   An awful warning; soon
  Oblivion will steal silently
   The remnant of its fame.
   Monarchs and conquerors there
  Proud o'er prostrate millions trod
  The earthquakes of the human race;
  Like them, forgotten when the ruin
   That marks their shock is past.

   'Beside the eternal Nile
   The Pyramids have risen.
  Nile shall pursue his changeless way;
    Those Pyramids shall fall.
  Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell
    The spot whereon they stood;
  Their very site shall be forgotten,
    As is their builder's name!

   'Behold yon sterile spot,
  Where now the wandering Arab's tent
    Flaps in the desert blast!
  There once old Salem's haughty fane
Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes,
  And in the blushing face of day
   Exposed its shameful glory.
Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
The building of that fane; and many a father,
Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth
And spare his children the detested task
Of piling stone on stone and poisoning
    The choicest days of life
    To soothe a dotard's vanity.
There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;
They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb
The unborn childold age and infancy
Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends!
But what was he who taught them that the God
Of Nature and benevolence had given
A special sanction to the trade of blood?
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing
  Itself into forgetfulness.

'Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
  There is a moral desert now.
  The mean and miserable huts,
  The yet more wretched palaces,
  Contrasted with those ancient fanes
  Now crumbling to oblivion,
  The long and lonely colonnades
  Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,
   Seem like a well-known tune,
Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
   Remembered now in sadness.
   But, oh! how much more changed,
   How gloomier is the contrast
   Of human nature there!
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,
A coward and a fool, spreads death around
   Then, shuddering, meets his own.
  Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
  A cowled and hypocritical monk
    Prays, curses and deceives.

   'Spirit! ten thousand years
   Have scarcely passed away,
Since in the waste, where now the savage drinks
His enemy's blood, and, aping Europe's sons,
   Wakes the unholy song of war,
     Arose a stately city,
Metropolis of the western continent.
  There, now, the mossy column-stone,
Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,
   Which once appeared to brave
   All, save its country's ruin,
   There the wide forest scene,
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
   Of gardens long run wild,
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner whose steps
  Chance in that desert has delayed,
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.
  Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
Whither, as to a common centre, flocked
  Strangers, and ships, and merchandise;
   Once peace and freedom blest
   The cultivated plain;
   But wealth, that curse of man,
Blighted the bud of its prosperity;
Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,
Fled, to return not, until man shall know
  That they alone can give the bliss
   Worthy a soul that claims
   Its kindred with eternity.

'There 's not one atom of yon earth
   But once was living man;
  Nor the minutest drop of rain,
  That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
   But flowed in human veins;
   And from the burning plains
   Where Libyan monsters yell,
   From the most gloomy glens
   Of Greenland's sunless clime,
   To where the golden fields
   Of fertile England spread
   Their harvest to the day,
   Thou canst not find one spot
   Whereon no city stood.

   'How strange is human pride!
  I tell thee that those living things,
  To whom the fragile blade of grass
   That springeth in the morn
   And perisheth ere noon,
   Is an unbounded world;
  I tell thee that those viewless beings,
  Whose mansion is the smallest particle
   Of the impassive atmosphere,
   Think, feel and live like man;
  That their affections and antipathies,
   Like his, produce the laws
   Ruling their moral state;
   And the minutest throb
  That through their frame diffuses
   The slightest, faintest motion,
   Is fixed and indispensable
   As the majestic laws
   That rule yon rolling orbs.'

   The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
In ecstasy of admiration, felt
All knowledge of the past revived; the events
   Of old and wondrous times,
Which dim tradition interruptedly
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded
  In just perspective to the view;
  Yet dim from their infinitude.
   The Spirit seemed to stand
High on an isolated pinnacle;
The flood of ages combating below,
The depth of the unbounded universe
   Above, and all around
  Nature's unchanging harmony.
  

  
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab - Part II.
,
1485:Vesalius In Zante
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
I loved light ever, light in eye and brain—
No tapers mirrored in long palace floors,
Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles,
But just the common dusty wind-blown day
That roofs earth’s millions.
O, too long I walked
In that thrice-sifted air that princes breathe,
Nor felt the heaven-wide jostling of the winds
And all the ancient outlawry of earth!
Now let me breathe and see.
This pilgrimage
They call a penance—let them call it that!
I set my face to the East to shrive my soul
Of mortal sin? So be it. If my blade
Once questioned living flesh, if once I tore
The pages of the Book in opening it,
See what the torn page yielded ere the light
Had paled its buried characters—and judge!
The girl they brought me, pinioned hand and foot
In catalepsy—say I should have known
That trance had not yet darkened into death,
And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I knew?
Sum up the facts—her life against her death.
Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure
Breeds such by thousands. And her death? Perchance
The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade,
And waft her into immortality.
Think what she purchased with that one heart-flutter
That whispered its deep secret to my blade!
For, just because her bosom fluttered still,
It told me more than many rifled graves;
Because I spoke too soon, she answered me,
Her vain life ripened to this bud of death
As the whole plant is forced into one flower,
All her blank past a scroll on which God wrote
90
His word of healing—so that the poor flesh,
Which spread death living, died to purchase life!
Ah, no! The sin I sinned was mine, not theirs.
Not that they sent me forth to wash away—
None of their tariffed frailties, but a deed
So far beyond their grasp of good or ill
That, set to weigh it in the Church’s balance,
Scarce would they know which scale to cast it in.
But I, I know. I sinned against my will,
Myself, my soul—the God within the breast:
Can any penance wash such sacrilege?
When I was young in Venice, years ago,
I walked the hospice with a Spanish monk,
A solitary cloistered in high thoughts,
The great Loyola, whom I reckoned then
A mere refurbisher of faded creeds,
Expert to edge anew the arms of faith,
As who should say, a Galenist, resolved
To hold the walls of dogma against fact,
Experience, insight, his own self, if need be!
Ah, how I pitied him, mine own eyes set
Straight in the level beams of Truth, who groped
In error’s old deserted catacombs
And lit his tapers upon empty graves!
Ay, but he held his own, the monk—more man
Than any laurelled cripple of the wars,
Charles’s spent shafts; for what he willed he willed,
As those do that forerun the wheels of fate,
Not take their dust—that force the virgin hours,
Hew life into the likeness of themselves
And wrest the stars from their concurrences.
So firm his mould; but mine the ductile soul
That wears the livery of circumstance
And hangs obsequious on its suzerain’s eye.
For who rules now? The twilight-flitting monk,
Or I, that took the morning like an Alp?
He held his own, I let mine slip from me,
The birthright that no sovereign can restore;
And so ironic Time beholds us now
Master and slave—he lord of half the earth,
91
I ousted from my narrow heritage.
For there’s the sting! My kingdom knows me not.
Reach me that folio—my usurper’s title!
Fallopius reigning, vice—nay, not so:
Successor, not usurper. I am dead.
My throne stood empty; he was heir to it.
Ay, but who hewed his kingdom from the waste,
Cleared, inch by inch, the acres for his sowing,
Won back for man that ancient fief o’ the Church,
His body? Who flung Galen from his seat,
And founded the great dynasty of truth
In error’s central kingdom?
Ask men that,
And see their answer: just a wondering stare
To learn things were not always as they are—
The very fight forgotten with the fighter;
Already grows the moss upon my grave!
Ay, and so meet—hold fast to that, Vesalius.
They only, who re-conquer day by day
The inch of ground they camped on over-night,
Have right of foothold on this crowded earth.
I left mine own; he seized it; with it went
My name, my fame, my very self, it seems,
Till I am but the symbol of a man,
The sign-board creaking o’er an empty inn.
He names me—true! Oh, give the door its due
I entered by. Only, I pray you, note,
Had door been none, a shoulder-thrust of mine
Had breached the crazy wall”—he seems to say.
So meet—and yet a word of thanks, of praise,
Of recognition that the clue was found,
Seized, followed, clung to, by some hand now dust—
Had this obscured his quartering of my shield?
How the one weakness stirs again! I thought
I had done with that old thirst for gratitude
That lured me to the desert years ago.
I did my work—and was not that enough?
No; but because the idlers sneered and shrugged,
The envious whispered, the traducers lied,
92
And friendship doubted where it should have cheered
I flung aside the unfinished task, sought praise
Outside my soul’s esteem, and learned too late
That victory, like God’s kingdom, is within.
(Nay, let the folio rest upon my knee.
I do not feel its weight.) Ingratitude?
The hurrying traveller does not ask the name
Of him who points him on his way; and this
Fallopius sits in the mid-heart of me,
Because he keeps his eye upon the goal,
Cuts a straight furrow to the end in view,
Cares not who oped the fountain by the way,
But drinks to draw fresh courage for his journey.
That was the lesson that Ignatius taught—
The one I might have learned from him, but would not—
That we are but stray atoms on the wind,
A dancing transiency of summer eves,
Till we become one with our purpose, merged
In that vast effort of the race which makes
Mortality immortal.
“He that loseth
His life shall find it”: so the Scripture runs.
But I so hugged the fleeting self in me,
So loved the lovely perishable hours,
So kissed myself to death upon their lips,
That on one pyre we perished in the end—
A grimmer bonfire than the Church e’er lit!
Yet all was well—or seemed so—till I heard
That younger voice, an echo of my own,
And, like a wanderer turning to his home,
Who finds another on the hearth, and learns,
Half-dazed, that other is his actual self
In name and claim, as the whole parish swears,
So strangely, suddenly, stood dispossessed
Of that same self I had sold all to keep,
A baffled ghost that none would see or hear!
“Vesalius? Who’s Vesalius? This Fallopius
It is who dragged the Galen-idol down,
Who rent the veil of flesh and forced a way
Into the secret fortalice of life”—
Yet it was I that bore the brunt of it!
93
Well, better so! Better awake and live
My last brief moment as the man I was,
Than lapse from life’s long lethargy to death
Without one conscious interval. At least
I repossess my past, am once again
No courtier med’cining the whims of kings
In muffled palace-chambers, but the free
Friendless Vesalius, with his back to the wall
And all the world against him. O, for that
Best gift of all, Fallopius, take my thanks—
That, and much more. At first, when Padua wrote:
“Master, Fallopius dead, resume again
The chair even he could not completely fill,
And see what usury age shall take of youth
In honours forfeited”—why, just at first,
I was quite simply credulously glad
To think the old life stood ajar for me,
Like a fond woman’s unforgetting heart.
But now that death waylays me—now I know
This isle is the circumference of my days,
And I shall die here in a little while—
So also best, Fallopius!
For I see
The gods may give anew, but not restore;
And though I think that, in my chair again,
I might have argued my supplanters wrong
In this or that—this Cesalpinus, say,
With all his hot-foot blundering in the dark,
Fabricius, with his over-cautious clutch
On Galen (systole and diastole
Of Truth’s mysterious heart!)—yet, other ways,
It may be that this dying serves the cause.
For Truth stays not to build her monument
For this or that co-operating hand,
But props it with her servants’ failures—nay,
Cements its courses with their blood and brains,
A living substance that shall clinch her walls
Against the assaults of time. Already, see,
Her scaffold rises on my hidden toil,
I but the accepted premiss whence must spring
94
The airy structure of her argument;
Nor could the bricks it rests on serve to build
The crowning finials. I abide her law:
A different substance for a different end—
Content to know I hold the building up;
Though men, agape at dome and pinnacles,
Guess not, the whole must crumble like a dream
But for that buried labour underneath.
Yet, Padua, I had still my word to say!
Let others say it!—Ah, but will they guess
Just the one word—? Nay, Truth is many-tongued.
What one man failed to speak, another finds
Another word for. May not all converge
In some vast utterance, of which you and I,
Fallopius, were but halting syllables?
So knowledge come, no matter how it comes!
No matter whence the light falls, so it fall!
Truth’s way, not mine—that I, whose service failed
In action, yet may make amends in praise.
Fabricius, Cesalpinus, say your word,
Not yours, or mine, but Truth’s, as you receive it!
You miss a point I saw? See others, then!
Misread my meaning? Yet expound your own!
Obscure one space I cleared? The sky is wide,
And you may yet uncover other stars.
For thus I read the meaning of this end:
There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.
I let my wick burn out—there yet remains
To spread an answering surface to the flame
That others kindle.
Turn me in my bed.
The window darkens as the hours swing round;
But yonder, look the other casement glows!
Let me face westward as my sun goes down.
~ Edith Wharton,
1486:A Treatise On Poetry: Iv Natura
Pennsylvania, 1948-1949
The garden of Nature opens.
The grass at the threshold is green.
And an almond tree begins to bloom.
Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii!
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae!
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus,
Salvete!—says the entering guest.
Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree,
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp’s wing,
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans,
Will not descend from a mulberry bush
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path.
But a rhododendron walks among the rocks
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell.
A hummingbird, a child’s top in the air,
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion.
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout.
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief,
As he’s been called, more than a magician,
The Socrates of snails, as he’s been called,
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man?
In sculptures and canvases our individuality
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes.
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon,
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn.
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber.
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves.
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists
14
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter.
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir.
Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child,
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern
Of things, if only he understood the pattern,
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others,
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly,
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art.
To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks,
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains
And settled in the forests of the continent:
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud,
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh,
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly.
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat’s bow.
Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray.
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour
In the silence, senses tuned to a beaver’s lodge.
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast’s
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes.
I am not immaterial and never will be.
My scent in the air, my animal smell,
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the beaver:
A sudden splat.
I remained where I was
In the high, soft coffer of the night’s velvet,
Mastering what had come to my senses:
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel.
It does not know time, hasn’t heard of death,
Is submitted to me because I know I’ll die.
15
I remember everything. That wedding in Basel,
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy,
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips,
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine.
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin,
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk
And the dress opened like a nutshell,
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly.
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch,
In pits where the arms of various creeds
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars.
Perhaps this is only my own love speaking
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity,
Obsession, bar the way to it.
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden,
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs
Are spared the distortions of memory.
And the grass says: how it was I don’t know.
Splash of a beaver in the American night.
The memory grows larger than my life.
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever.
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs,
The tufts of their sex shadowed by ribbon.
Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks.
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids.
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes,
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb,
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity.
Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk.
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt.
16
We are both the snake and the wheel.
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting
and not lasting. Where the parallel lines intersect,
Time lifted above time by time.
Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
Formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thaïs?
And what is Julia without a butterfly’s down
In her eyes, her hair, the smooth grain of her belly?
The kingdom, you say. We do not belong to it,
And still, in the same instant, we belong.
For how long will a nonsensical Poland
Where poets write of their emotions as if
They had a contract of limited liability
Suffice? I want not poetry, but a new diction,
Because only it might allow us to express
A new tenderness and save us from a law
That is not our law, from necessity
Which is not ours, even if we take its name.
From broken armor, from eyes stricken
By the command of time and taken back
Into the jurisdiction of mold and fermentation,
We draw our hope. Yes, to gather in an image
The furriness of the beaver, the smell of rushes,
And the wrinkles of a hand holding a pitcher
From which wine trickles. Why cry out
That a sense of history destroys our substance
If it, precisely, is offered to our powers,
A muse of our gray-haired father, Herodotus,
As our arm and our instrument, though
It is not easy to use it, to strengthen it
So that, like a plumb with a pure gold center,
It will serve again to rescue human beings.
With such reflections I pushed a rowboat,
In the middle of the continent, through tangled stalks,
17
In my mind an image of the waves of two oceans
And the slow rocking of a guard-ship’s lantern.
Aware that at this moment I—and not only I—
Keep, as in a seed, the unnamed future.
And then a rhythmic appeal composed itself,
Alien to the moth with its whirring of silk:
O City, O Society, O Capital,
We have seen your steaming entrails.
You will no longer be what you have been.
Your songs no longer gratify our hearts.
Steel, cement, lime, law, ordinance,
We have worshipped you too long,
You were for us a goal and a defense,
Ours was your glory and your shame.
And where was the covenant broken?
Was it in the fires of war, the incandescent sky?
Or at twilight, as the towers fly past, when one looked
From the train across a desert of tracks
To a window out past the maneuvering locomotives
Where a girl examines her narrow, moody face
In a mirror and ties a ribbon to her hair
Pierced by the sparks of curling papers?
Those walls of yours are shadows of walls,
And your light disappeared forever.
Not the world's monument anymore, an oeuvre of your own
Stands beneath the sun in an altered space.
From stucco and mirrors, glass and paintings,
Tearing aside curtains of silver and cotton,
Comes man, naked and mortal,
Ready for truth, for speech, for wings.
18
Lament, Republic! Fall to your knees!
The loudspeaker’s spell is discontinued.
Listen! You can hear the clocks ticking.
Your death approaches by his hand.
An oar over my shoulder, I walked from the woods.
A porcupine scolded from the fork of a tree,
A horned owl, not changed by the century,
Not changed by place or time, looked down.
Bubo maximus, from the work of Linnaeus.
America for me has the pelt of a raccoon,
Its eyes are a raccoon’s black binoculars.
A chipmunk flickers in a litter of dry bark
Where ivy and vines tangle in the red soil
At the roots of an arcade of tulip trees.
America’s wings are the color of a cardinal,
Its beak is half-open and a mockingbird trills
From a leafy bush in the sweat-bath of the air.
Its line is the wavy body of a water moccasin
Crossing a river with a grass-like motion,
A rattlesnake, a rubble of dots and speckles,
Coiling under the bloom of a yucca plant.
America is for me the illustrated version
Of childhood tales about the heart of tanglewood,
Told in the evening to the spinning wheel’s hum.
And a violin, shivvying up a square dance,
Plays the fiddles of Lithuania or Flanders.
My dancing partner’s name is Birute Swenson.
She married a Swede, but was born in Kaunas.
Then from the night window a moth flies in
As big as the joined palms of the hands,
With a hue like the transparency of emeralds.
Why not establish a home in the neon heat
Of Nature? Is it not enough, the labor of autumn,
19
Of winter and spring and withering summer?
You will hear not one word spoken of the court
of Sigismund Augustus on the banks of the Delaware River.
The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys is not needed.
Herodotus will repose on his shelf, uncut.
And the rose only, a sexual symbol,
Symbol of love and superterrestrial beauty,
Will open a chasm deeper than your knowledge.
About it we find a song in a dream:
Inside the rose
Are houses of gold,
black isobars, streams of cold.
Dawn touches her finger to the edge of the Alps
And evening streams down to the bays of the sea.
If anyone dies inside the rose,
They carry him down the purple-red road
In a procession of clocks all wrapped in folds.
They light up the petals of grottoes with torches.
They bury him there where color begins,
At the source of the sighing,
Inside the rose.
Let names of months mean only what they mean.
Let the Aurora’s cannons be heard in none
Of them, or the tread of young rebels marching.
We might, at best, keep some kind of souvenir,
Preserved like a fan in a garret. Why not
Sit down at a rough country table and compose
An ode in the old manner, as in the old times
Chasing a beetle with the nib of our pen?
~ Czeslaw Milosz,
1487:From The First Act Of The Aminta Of Tasso
Daphne's Answer to Sylvia, declaring she
should esteem all as Enemies,
who should talk to her of LOVE.
THEN, to the snowy Ewe, in thy esteem,
The Father of the Flock a Foe must seem,
The faithful Turtles to their yielding Mates.
The cheerful Spring, which Love and Joy creates,
That reconciles the World by soft Desires,
And tender Thoughts in ev'ry Breast inspires,
To you a hateful Season must appear,
Whilst Love prevails, and all are Lovers here.
Observe the gentle Murmurs of that Dove,
And see, how billing she confirms her Love!
For this, the Nightingale displays her Throat,
And Love, Love, Love, is all her Ev'ning Note.
The very Tygers have their tender Hours,
And prouder Lyons bow beneath Love's Pow'rs.
Thou, prouder yet than that imperious Beast,
Alone deny'st him Shelter in thy Breast.
But why should I the Creatures only name
That Sense partake, as Owners of this Flame?
Love farther goes, nor stops his Course at these:
The Plants he moves, and gently bends the Trees.
See how those Willows mix their am'rous Boughs;
And, how that Vine clasps her supporting Spouse!
The silver Firr dotes on the stately Pine;
By Love those Elms, by Love those Beeches join.
But view that Oak; behold his rugged Side:
Yet that rough Bark the melting Flame do's hide.
All, by their trembling Leaves, in Sighs declare
And tell their Passions to the gath'ring Air.
Which, had but Love o'er Thee the least Command,
Thou, by their Motions, too might'st understand.
AMINTOR, being ask'd by THIRSIS
74
Who is the Object of his Love?
speaks as follows.
Amint. THIRSIS! to Thee I mean that Name to show,
Which, only yet our Groves, and Fountains know:
That, when my Death shall through the Plains be told,
Thou with the wretched Cause may'st that unfold
To every-one, who shall my Story find
Carv'd by thy Hand, in some fair Beeches rind;
Beneath whose Shade the bleeding Body lay:
That, when by chance she shall be led that way,
O'er my sad Grave the haughty Nymph may go,
And the proud Triumph of her Beauty shew
To all the Swains, to Strangers as they pass;
And yet at length she may (but Oh! alas!
I fear, too high my flatt'ring Hopes do soar)
Yet she at length may my sad Fate deplore;
May weep me Dead, may o'er my Tomb recline,
And sighing, wish were he alive and Mine!
But mark me to the End–
Thir. Go on; for well I do thy Speech attend,
Perhaps to better Ends, than yet thou know'st.
Amint. Being now a Child, or but a Youth at most,
When scarce to reach the blushing Fruit I knew,
Which on the lowest bending Branches grew;
Still with the dearest, sweetest, kindest Maid
Young as myself, at childish Sports I play'd.
The Fairest, sure, of all that Lovely Kind,
Who spread their golden Tresses to the Wind;
Cydippe's Daughter, and Montano's Heir,
Whose Flocks and Herds so num'rous do appear;
The beauteous Sylvia; She, 'tis She I love,
Warmth of all Hearts, and Pride of ev'ry Grove.
With Her I liv'd, no Turtles e'er so fond.
Our Houses met, but more our Souls were join'd.
Together Nets for Fish, and Fowl we laid;
Together through the spacious Forest stray'd;
Pursu'd with equal Speed the flying Deer,
And of the Spoils there no Divisions were.
But whilst I from the Beasts their Freedom won,
Alas! I know not how, my Own was gone.
By unperceiv'd Degrees the Fire encreas'd,
75
Which fill'd, at last, each corner of my Breast;
As from a Root, tho' scarce discern'd so small,
A Plant may rise, that grows amazing tall.
From Sylvia's Presence now I could not move,
And from her Eyes took in full Draughts of Love,
Which sweetly thro' my ravish'd Mind distill'd;
Yet in the end such Bitterness wou'd yield,
That oft I sigh'd, ere yet I knew the cause,
And was a Lover, ere I dream'd I was.
But Oh! at last, too well my State I knew;
And now, will shew thee how this Passion grew.
Then listen, while the pleasing Tale I tell.
THIRSIS persuades AMINTOR not to despair upon the
redictions of Mopsus discov'ring him to be an Impostor.
Thirsis. Why dost thou still give way to such Despair!
Amintor. Too just, alas! the weighty Causes are.
Mopsus, wise Mopsus, who in Art excels,
And of all Plants the secret Vertue tells,
Knows, with what healing Gifts our Springs abound,
And of each Bird explains the mystick Sound;
'Twas He, ev'n He! my wretched Fate foretold.
Thir. Dost thou this Speech then of that Mopsus hold,
Who, whilst his Smiles attract the easy View,
Drops flatt'ring Words, soft as the falling Dew;
Whose outward Form all friendly still appears,
Tho' Fraud and Daggers in his Thoughts he wears,
And the unwary Labours to surprize
With Looks affected, and with riddling Lyes.
If He it is, that bids thy Love despair,
I hope the happier End of all thy Care.
So far from Truth his vain Predictions fall.
Amint. If ought thou know'st, that may my Hopes recall,
Conceal it not; for great I've heard his Fame,
And fear'd his Words–
Thir. –When hither first I came,
And in these Shades the false Imposter met,
Like Thee I priz'd, and thought his Judgment great;
On all his study'd Speeches still rely'd,
76
Nor fear'd to err, whilst led by such a Guide:
When on a Day, that Bus'ness and Delight
My Steps did to the Neighb'ring Town invite,
Which stands upon that rising Mountain's side,
And from our Plains this River do's divide,
He check'd me thus–Be warn'd in time, My Son,
And that new World of painted Mischiefs shun,
Whose gay Inhabitants thou shalt behold
Plum'd like our Birds, and sparkling all in Gold;
Courtiers, that will thy rustick Garb despise,
And mock thy Plainness with disdainful Eyes.
But above all, that Structure see thou fly,
Where hoarded Vanities and Witchcrafts lie;
To shun that Path be thy peculiar Care.
I ask, what of that Place the Dangers are:
To which he soon replies, there shalt thou meet
Of soft Enchantresses th' Enchantments sweet,
Who subt'ly will thy solid Sense bereave,
And a false Gloss to ev'ry Object give.
Brass to thy Sight as polish'd Gold shall seem,
And Glass thou as the Diamond shalt esteem.
Huge Heaps of Silver to thee shall appear,
Which if approach'd, will prove but shining Air.
The very Walls by Magick Art are wrought,
And Repitition to all Speakers taught:
Not such, as from our Ecchoes we obtain,
Which only our last Words return again;
But Speech for Speech entirely there they give,
And often add, beyond what they receive.
There downy Couches to false Rest invite,
The Lawn is charm'd, that faintly bars the Light.
No gilded Seat, no iv'ry Board is there,
But what thou may'st for some Delusion fear:
Whilst, farther to abuse thy wond'ring Eyes,
Strange antick Shapes before them shall arise;
Fantastick Fiends, that will about thee flock,
And all they see, with Imitation mock.
Nor are these Ills the worst. Thyself may'st be
Transform'd into a Flame, a Stream, a Tree;
A Tear, congeal'd by Art, thou may'st remain,
'Till by a burning Sigh dissolv'd again.
77
Thus spake the Wretch; but cou'd not shake my Mind.
My way I take, and soon the City find,
Where above all that lofty Fabrick stands,
Which, with one View, the Town and Plains commands.
Here was I stopt, for who cou'd quit the Ground,
That heard such Musick from those Roofs resound!
Musick! beyond th' enticing Syrene's Note;
Musick! beyond the Swan's expiring Throat;
Beyond the softest Voice, that charms the Grove,
And equal'd only by the Spheres above.
My Ear I thought too narrow for the Art,
Nor fast enough convey'd it to my Heart:
When in the Entrance of the Gate I saw
A Man Majestick, and commanding Awe;
Yet temper'd with a Carriage, so refin'd
That undetermin'd was my doubtful Mind,
Whether for Love, or War, that Form was most design'd.
With such a Brow, as did at once declare
A gentle Nature, and a Wit severe;
To view that Palace me he ask'd to go,
Tho' Royal He, and I Obscure and Low.
But the Delights my Senses there did meet,
No rural Tongue, no Swain can e'er repeat.
Celestial Goddesses, or Nymphs as Fair,
In unveil'd Beauties, to all Eyes appear
Sprinkl'd with Gold, as glorious to the View,
As young Aurora, deck'd with pearly Dew;
Bright Rays dispensing, as along they pass'd,
And with new Light the shining Palace grac'd.
Phoebus was there by all the Muses met,
And at his Feet was our Elpino set.
Ev'n humble Me their Harmony inspir'd,
My Breast expanded, and my Spirits fir'd.
Rude Past'ral now, no longer I rehearse,
But Heroes crown with my exalted Verse.
Of Arms I sung, of bold advent'rous Wars;
And tho' brought back by my too envious Stars,
Yet kept my Voice and Reed those lofty Strains,
And sent loud Musick through the wond'ring Plains:
Which Mopsus hearing, secretly malign'd,
78
And now to ruin Both at once design'd.
Which by his Sorceries he soon brought to pass;
And suddenly so clogg'd, and hoarse I was,
That all our Shepherds, at the Change amaz'd,
Believ'd, I on some Ev'ning-Wolf had gaz'd:
When He it was, my luckless Path had crost,
By whose dire Look, my Skill awhile was lost.
This have I told, to raise thy Hopes again,
And render, by distrust, his Malice vain.
From the AMINTA of TASSO.
THO' we, of small Proportion see
And slight the armed Golden Bee;
Yet if her Sting behind she leaves,
No Ease th' envenom'd Flesh receives.
Love, less to Sight than is this Fly,
In a soft Curl conceal'd can lie;
Under an Eyelid's lovely Shade,
Can form a dreadful Ambuscade;
Can the most subtil Sight beguile
Hid in the Dimples of a Smile.
But if from thence a Dart he throw,
How sure, how mortal is the Blow!
How helpless all the Pow'r of Art
To bind, or to restore the Heart!
From the AMINTA of TASSO.
Part of the Description of the Golden Age.
THEN, by some Fountains flow'ry side
The Loves unarm'd, did still abide.
Then, the loos'd Quiver careless hung,
The Torch extinct, the Bow unstrung.
Then, by the Nymphs no Charms were worn,
But such as with the Nymphs were born.
The Shepherd cou'd not, then, complain,
Nor told his am'rous Tale in vain.
79
No Veil the Beauteous Face did hide,
Nor harmless Freedom was deny'd.
Then, Innocence and Virtue reign'd
Pure, unaffected, unconstrain'd.
Love was their Pleasure, and their Praise,
The soft Employment of their Days.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,
1488:'Fairy!' the Spirit said,
   And on the Queen of Spells
   Fixed her ethereal eyes,
   'I thank thee. Thou hast given
A boon which I will not resign, and taught
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know
The past, and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors and derive
   Experience from his folly;
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
   Requires no other heaven.'

MAB
   'Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
   Much yet remains unscanned.
   Thou knowest how great is man,
   Thou knowest his imbecility;
   Yet learn thou what he is;
   Yet learn the lofty destiny
   Which restless Time prepares
   For every living soul.

'Behold a gorgeous palace that amid
Yon populous city rears its thousand towers
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops
Of sentinels in stern and silent ranks
Encompass it around; the dweller there
Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not
The curses of the fatherless, the groans
Of those who have no friend? He passes on
The King, the wearer of a gilded chain
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
Even to the basest appetitesthat man
Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles
At the deep curses which the destitute
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan
But for those morsels which his wantonness
Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
All that they love from famine; when he hears
The tale of horror, to some ready-made face
Of hypocritical assent he turns,
Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,
Flushes his bloated cheek.

               Now to the meal
Of silence, grandeur and excess he drags
His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,
Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled
From every clime could force the loathing sense
To overcome satiety,if wealth
The spring it draws from poisons not,or vice,
Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not
Its food to deadliest venom; then that king
Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils
His unforced task, when he returns at even
And by the blazing fagot meets again
Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,
Tastes not a sweeter meal.

               Behold him now
Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain
Reels dizzily awhile; but ah! too soon
The slumber of intemperance subsides,
And conscience, that undying serpent, calls
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.
Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye
Oh! mark that deadly visage!'

KING
                 'No cessation!
Oh! must this last forever! Awful death,
I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!Not one moment
Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessd Peace,
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity
In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurkest
With danger, death, and solitude; yet shun'st
The palace I have built thee? Sacred Peace!
Oh, visit me but once,but pitying shed
One drop of balm upon my withered soul!'

THE FAIRY
'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
And Peace defileth not her snowy robes
In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;
His slumbers are but varied agonies;
They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
To punish those who err; earth in itself
Contains at once the evil and the cure;
And all-sufficing Nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law; she only knows
How justly to proportion to the fault
The punishment it merits.

               Is it strange
That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?
Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug
The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange
That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,
Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured
Within a splendid prison whose stern bounds
Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth,
His soul asserts not its humanity?
That man's mild nature rises not in war
Against a king's employ? No'tis not strange.
He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives
Just as his father did; the unconquered powers
Of precedent and custom interpose
Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,
To those who know not Nature nor deduce
The future from the present, it may seem,
That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes
Of this unnatural being, not one wretch,
Whose children famish and whose nuptial bed
Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm
To dash him from his throne!

                Those gilded flies
That, basking in the sunshine of a court,
Fatten on its corruption! what are they?
The drones of the community; they feed
On the mechanic's labor; the starved hind
For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield
Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,
Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes
A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,
Drags out in labor a protracted death
To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil
That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?
Whence that unnatural line of drones who heap
Toil and unvanquishable penury
On those who build their palaces and bring
Their daily bread?From vice, black loathsome vice;
From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
From all that genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,
Revenge, and murder.And when reason's voice,
Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked
The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
Is discord, war and misery; that virtue
Is peace and happiness and harmony;
When man's maturer nature shall disdain
The playthings of its childhood;kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle, its authority
Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
As that of truth is now.

              Where is the fame
Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth
Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound
From time's light footfall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! to-day
Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze
That flashes desolation, strong the arm
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died
In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
On which the midnight closed; and on that arm
The worm has made his meal.

               The virtuous man,
Who, great in his humility as kings
Are little in their grandeur; he who leads
Invincibly a life of resolute good
And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths
More free and fearless than the trembling judge
Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove
To bind the impassive spirit;when he falls,
His mild eye beams benevolence no more;
Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;
Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled
But to appall the guilty. Yes! the grave
Hath quenched that eye and death's relentless frost
Withered that arm; but the unfading fame
Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb,
The deathless memory of that man whom kings
Call to their minds and tremble, the remembrance
With which the happy spirit contemplates
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,
Shall never pass away.

'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.

             When Nero
High over flaming Rome with savage joy
Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear
The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld
The frightful desolation spread, and felt
A new-created sense within his soul
Thrill to the sight and vibrate to the sound,
Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome
The force of human kindness? And when Rome
With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down,
Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood,
Had not submissive abjectness destroyed
Nature's suggestions?

             Look on yonder earth:
The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,
Arise in due succession; all things speak
Peace, harmony and love. The universe,
In Nature's silent eloquence, declares
That all fulfil the works of love and joy,
All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates
The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth
The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up
The tyrant whose delight is in his woe,
Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,
Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch
Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth
A step-dame to her numerous sons who earn
Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;
A mother only to those puling babes
Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men
The playthings of their babyhood and mar
In self-important childishness that peace
Which men alone appreciate?

   'Spirit of Nature, no!
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs
  Alike in every human heart.
   Thou aye erectest there
  Thy throne of power unappealable;
  Thou art the judge beneath whose nod
  Man's brief and frail authority
   Is powerless as the wind
   That passeth idly by;
  Thine the tribunal which surpasseth
   The show of human justice
   As God surpasses man!

   'Spirit of Nature! thou
Life of interminable multitudes;
  Soul of those mighty spheres
Whose changeless paths through Heaven's deep silence lie;
  Soul of that smallest being,
   The dwelling of whose life
  Is one faint April sun-gleam;
   Man, like these passive things,
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth;
  Like theirs, his age of endless peace,
   Which time is fast maturing,
   Will swiftly, surely, come;
And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest,
   Will be without a flaw
  Marring its perfect symmetry!
  

  
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab - Part III.
,
1489:'O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!
To which those restless souls that ceaselessly
Throng through the human universe, aspire!
Thou consummation of all mortal hope!
Thou glorious prize of blindly working will,
Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,
Verge to one point and blend forever there!
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,
Languor, disease and ignorance dare not come!
O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

'Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams;
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,
Haunting the human heart, have there entwined
Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss,
Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.
Thou art the end of all desire and will,
The product of all action; and the souls,
That by the paths of an aspiring change
Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace,
There rest from the eternity of toil
That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.

'Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;
That hoary giant, who in lonely pride
So long had ruled the world that nations fell
Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,
That for millenniums had withstood the tide
Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand
Across that desert where their stones survived
The name of him whose pride had heaped them there.
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,
Was but the mushroom of a summer day,
That his light-wingd footstep pressed to dust;
Time was the king of earth; all things gave way
Before him but the fixed and virtuous will,
The sacred sympathies of soul and sense,
That mocked his fury and prepared his fall.

'Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love;
Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene,
Till from its native heaven they rolled away:
First, crime triumphant o'er all hope careered
Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong,
Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue's attributes,
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe,
Till, done by her own venomous sting to death,
She left the moral world without a law,
No longer fettering passion's fearless wing,
Nor searing reason with the brand of God.
Then steadily the happy ferment worked;
Reason was free; and wild though passion went
Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads,
Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers,
Yet, like the bee returning to her queen,
She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow,
Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child,
No longer trembling at the broken rod.

'Mild was the slow necessity of death.
The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
The deadly germs of languor and disease
Died in the human frame, and purity
Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.
How vigorous then the athletic form of age!
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride or care
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time.
How lovely the intrepid front of youth,
Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;
Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,
And elevated will, that journeyed on
Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness,
With virtue, love and pleasure, hand in hand!

'Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self,
And rivets with sensation's softest tie
The kindred sympathies of human souls,
Needed no fetters of tyrannic law.
Those delicate and timid impulses
In Nature's primal modesty arose,
And with undoubting confidence disclosed
The growing longings of its dawning love,
Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,
That virtue of the cheaply virtuous,
Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.
No longer prostitution's venomed bane
Poisoned the springs of happiness and life;
Woman and man, in confidence and love,
Equal and free and pure together trod
The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more
Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.

'Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride
The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked
Famine's faint groan and penury's silent tear,
A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw
Year after year their stones upon the field,
Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves
Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower
Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook
In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower,
And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear.

'Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles
The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung.
It were a sight of awfulness to see
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal,
Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall!
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above
To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life; to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.

'Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,
Fearless and free the ruddy children played,
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows
With the green ivy and the red wall-flower
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;
The ponderous chains and gratings of strong iron
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone
That mingled slowly with their native earth;
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity
With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness;
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair
Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes
Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds
And merriment were resonant around.

'These ruins soon left not a wreck behind;
Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,
To happier shapes were moulded, and became
Ministrant to all blissful impulses;
Thus human things were perfected, and earth,
Even as a child beneath its mother's love,
Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew
Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

'Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene
Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past
Fades from our charmd sight. My task is done;
Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own
With all the fear and all the hope they bring.
My spells are passed; the present now recurs.
Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.

'Yet, human Spirit! bravely hold thy course;
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue
The gradual paths of an aspiring change;
For birth and life and death, and that strange state
Before the naked soul has found its home,
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge
The restless wheels of being on their way,
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal;
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
Life is its state of action, and the store
Of all events is aggregated there
That variegate the eternal universe;
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies
And happy regions of eternal hope.
Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on.
Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,
Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth
To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower,
That blooms in mossy bank and darksome glens,
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.

'Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,
So welcome when the tyrant is awake,
So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns;
'T is but the voyage of a darksome hour,
The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.
Death is no foe to virtue; earth has seen
Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,
Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.
Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still,
When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led,
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast,
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed,
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod,
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?
Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will
Is destined an eternal war to wage
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot
The germs of misery from the human heart.
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease;
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
When fenced by power and master of the world.
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.
Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,
And therefore art thou worthy of the boon
Which thou hast now received; virtue shall keep
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,
And many days of beaming hope shall bless
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.
Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy,
  Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
  Light, life and rapture from thy smile!'

  The Fairy waves her wand of charm.
Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,
  That rolled beside the battlement,
Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.
  Again the enchanted steeds were yoked;
  Again the burning wheels inflame
The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way.
  Fast and far the chariot flew;
  The vast and fiery globes that rolled
  Around the Fairy's palace-gate
Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs
That there attendant on the solar power
With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.

   Earth floated then below;
  The chariot paused a moment there;
   The Spirit then descended;
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done,
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven.

  The Body and the Soul united then.
A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame;
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained.
She looked around in wonder, and beheld
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,
Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
   And the bright beaming stars
   That through the casement shone.
  
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab - Part IX.
,
1490:Two Christmas Eves
THE white snow veils the earth's brown face,
Strong frost has bound the veil in place-Under the wide, clear, dark-blue sky
All choked with snow the hollows lie,
Dead-white the fields--once summer sweet-And woodlands where we used to meet:
We don't meet now, we never part.
Ever together, heart to heart,
We've worked, lost often, seldom won,
Seen pleasures ended, pains begun,
Have done our best, and faced, we two,
Almost the worst that Fate could do-Yet not Fate's uttermost of ill,
Since here we are--together still!
For me you left, my dearest, best,
Your girlhood's safe warm sheltered nest;
For me gave up all else that could
Have made your woman-life seem good.
You thought a man's whole heart was worth
Just all the other wealth of earth;
I thought my painter's brush would be
A magic wand for you and me.
What dreams we had of fame and gold,
Of Art-that never could withhold
From me, who loved her so, full powers
To make my love for her serve ours,
To shape and build a palace fair
Of radiant hours, and place you there!
Art turned away her face from us,
And all the dreaming's ended--thus!
Our garret's cold; the wind is keen,
And cuts these rotten boards between.
There is no lock upon the door,
No carpet on the uneven floor,
No curtain to the window where
442
Through frost-blanched panes the moon's cold stare
Fronts us. She's careless--used to see
This world of ours, and misery!
Why, how you shiver! Oh, my sweet,
How cold your hands are, and your feet!
How hot this face of yours I kiss!
How could our love have led to this?
What devil is there over all
That lets such things as this befall?
It was not want of striving. Love,
Bear witness for me how I strove,
Worked till I grew quite sick and faint,
Worked till I could not see to paint
Because my eyes were sore and wet,
Yet never sold one picture yet.
We would have worked--yes, there's the sting-We would have worked at anything!
Our hands asked work. There's work somewhere,
That makes it all more hard to bear;
Yet we could never understand
Where is the work that asks our hand!
There's no more firing, and the cold
Is biting through your shawl's thin fold,
And both the blankets have been sold.
Nestle beside me, in my arm,
And let me try to keep you warm.
We pawned the table and the bed,
To get our last week's fire and bread,
And now the last crust's eaten. Well,
There's nothing left to pawn or sell!
Our rent is due on Monday too,
How can we pay it--I and you?
What shall we do? What shall we do?
And we are--what was that you said?
You are so tired ? Your dearest head
Is burning hot, and aching so?
443
Ah, yes! I know it is--I know!
You're tired and weak and faint and ill,
And fevers burn and shiverings chill
This world of mine I'm holding here.
If I could suffer only, dear-But all the burdens on you fall,
And I sit here, and bear it all!
And other men and other wives,
Who never worked in all their lives-No, nor yet loved as we have, sweet-Are wrapped in furs, warm hands and feet,
And feast to-night in homes made bright
With blazing logs and candle-light;
Not dark like this, where we two sit,
Who chose to work, and starve for it!
Don't go to sleep; you mustn't sleep
Here on the frozen floor! Yes, creep
Closer to me. Oh, if I knew
What is this something left to do!
Listen to me! It's Christmas Eve,
When hearts grow warmer, I believe,
And friends forget and friends forgive.
What if we stifled down my pride,
And put your bitter thoughts aside,
And asked your father's help once more?
True, when we asked for it before,
He turned and cursed us both, and swore
That he disowned you. You and I
Had made our bed, and there must lie;
That he would help us not one whit,
Though we should die for want of it.
Now I shall ask his help again.
It's colder now than it was then;
The cold creeps closer to life's core-Death's nearer to us than before;
And when your father sees how near,
He may relent, and save you, dear.
444
For my sake, love! I am too weak
To bear your tears upon my cheek,
Your sobs against my heart, to bear
Those eyes of yours, and their despair!
Not faltering, my own pain I bore-I cannot bear yours any more!
Stand up. You're stiff? That will not last!
The stairs are dark? They'll soon be passed!
You're tired? My sweet, I know you are;
But try to walk--it isn't far.
Oh, that the Christ they say was born
On that dream-distant Christmas morn
May hear and help us now! Be strong!
Yes, lean on me. Perhaps ere long,
All this, gone by, will only seem
A half-remembered evil dream.
Come; I will help you walk. We'll try
Just this last venture, you and I!
II
Failed! Back again in the ice-gloom
Of our bare, bleak, rat-haunted room!
The moon still looks--what does she care
To see my moon-flower lying there?
My rose, once red and white and fair,
Now white and wan, and pinched and thin,
Cold, through the coat I've wrapped her in,
And shivering, even in her sleep,
To hear how wakeful rats can keep.
We dragged our weary faltering feet
Through the bright noisy crowded street,
And reached the square where, stern in stone,
Her father's town-house sulks alone.
Sick, stupid, helpless, wretched, poor,
We waited at her father's door.
They let us in. Then let us tread
445
Through the warm hall with soft furs spread.
Next, 'Name and business.' Oh, exact
Were the man's orders how to act,
If e'er his master's child should come
To cross the threshold of her home!
I told our name. The man 'would see
If any message was' for me.
We waited there without a word.
How warm the whole house was! We heard
Soft music with soft voices blent,
And smelt sweet flowers with mingled scent,
And heard the wine poured out--that chink
That glass makes as the diners drink-The china clatter. We, at least,
Appreciated that night's feast.
Then some one gave a note to me
With insolent smile. I read: 'When she
Is tired of love and poverty,
And chooses to return to what
She left, the duties she forgot,
And never see again this man,
And be here as before--she can.'
We came away: that much is clear;
I don't know how we got back here-I must have carried her somehow,
And have been strong enough. And now
She lies asleep--and I, awake,
Must do this something for her sake-The only possible thing to do,
Oh, love! to cut our soul in two,
And take 'this man' away from you!
If now I let your father know
My choice is made, and that I go
And you are here--oh, love! oh, wife!
446
I break my heart and save your life.
Doubt what to do? All doubt's about
The deeds that are not worth a doubt!
This deed takes me, and I obey,
And there is nothing left to say.
Good-bye, dear eyes I cannot see-Weep only gently, eyes, for me;
Dear lips, I've kissed and kissed again,
Lose those encircling lines of pain;
Dear face, so thin and faded now,
Win back youth's grace, and light, and glow;
Oh, hands I hold in mine--oh, heart
That holds mine in it--we must part!
When you wake up, and find me fled,
And find your father here instead,
Will you not wonder how my feet
Ever could turn from you, my sweet?
Ah, no! your heart and mine are one;
Our heart will tell you how 'twas done.
No more we meet until I've won
Enough to dare be happy on;
And if I fail--I have known bliss,
And bliss has bred an hour like this.
I am past Fate's harming--all her power
Could mix nought bitterer than this hour.
Good-bye--our room--our marriage life!-Oh, kiss me through your dreams, my wife!
III
I have grown rich! I have found out
The thing men break their hearts about!
I have dug gold, and gold, and sold
My diggings, and reaped in more gold-Sowed that, and reaped again, and played
For stakes, and always won, and made
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More money than we'll ever spend,
And have forborne one word to send.
It has been easier for her so:
To wait one year, and then to know
How all is well, and how we two
Shall part no more our whole lives through.
It had been harder to have heard
Some incomplete, imperfect word
Of how I prospered, how despaired,
How well I strove, how ill I fared,
Or strove well and fared well, nor know
Each day which way the scale would go;
Rejoice, and grieve, and hope, and fear,
As I have done throughout the year.
The year is over now--the prize
Is--all our lives of Paradise!
Through all the year her lips and hands
Have drawn me on with passion-bands,
Her soul has held my soul, and taught
The way of storming Fortune's fort.
My little love, those days of ours,
Our dear delight, our sacred hours
Have wrapped me round in all the year;
And brought the gold and brought me here,
And brought this hour than all more fair-Our triumph hour! What shall we care
For all the past's most maddening pain
When you are in my arms again?
The yellow dust I loved to hold
Was like your hair's less heavy gold;
The clear, deep sea, that bore me hence,
Was like your eyes' grey innocence;
And not one fair thing could I see
But somehow seemed yourself to me.
The very work I had to do
Easier than rest was, done for you.
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And through my dreams you walked all night
And filled sleep's byways with delight!
How I have wondered every day
How you would look, and what would say
On that same day! 'Perhaps she paints,
Thinks of our lessons--prays to saints
With my name in her prayers--or goes
Through gardens, heaping rose on rose.
How I love roses! Or mayhap
Sits with some work dropped in her lap,
And dreams and dreams--what could there be
For her to dream about but me?'
This London--how I hated it
A year ago! It now seems fit
Even to be our meeting-place.
It holds the glory of her face,
The wonder of her eyes, the grace
Of lovely lines and curves--in fine,
The soul of sweetness that is mine!
I'll seek her at her father's; say,
'I claim my wife. I will repay
A hundredfold all you have spent
On keeping me in banishment,
On keeping her in affluence,
At her heart's dearest coin's expense!
That is past now, and I have come
To take my wife and sweetheart home,
To show her all my golden store,
My heart, hers to the very core,
And never leave her any more!'
But just before that hour supreme,
Close here our old house is, that dream
And daylight have been showing me
The year through. I would like to see
That room I found so hard to leave,
So hard to keep, last Christmas Eve.
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Faith's easy now! There is a God
Who trod the earth we two have trod;
He pays me for our pain last year,
For all these months of longing, fear,
Doubt and uncertainty--outright,
By letting me come here to-night
And just contrast that dead despair
With the Earth-Heaven we two shall share!
Just one look at the old room's door,
If I can get no chance of more;
Yet gold will buy most things--may buy
The leave to see that room. We'll try!
May I go up? Just once to see
The room that sheltered her and me?-My God! the rapture of to-day
Has sent me mad;--you did not say
She died the night I went away!
~ Edith Nesbit,
1491:The Princess (Part 1)
A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,
Of temper amorous, as the first of May,
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,
For on my cradle shone the Northern star.
There lived an ancient legend in our house.
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold,
Dying, that none of all our blood should know
The shadow from the substance, and that one
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall.
For so, my mother said, the story ran.
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less,
An old and strange affection of the house.
Myself too had weird seizures, Heaven knows what:
On a sudden in the midst of men and day,
And while I walked and talked as heretofore,
I seemed to move among a world of ghosts,
And feel myself the shadow of a dream.
Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane,
And pawed his beard, and muttered 'catalepsy'.
My mother pitying made a thousand prayers;
My mother was as mild as any saint,
Half-canonized by all that looked on her,
So gracious was her tact and tenderness:
But my good father thought a king a king;
He cared not for the affection of the house;
He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand
To lash offence, and with long arms and hands
Reached out, and picked offenders from the mass
For judgment.
Now it chanced that I had been,
While life was yet in bud and blade, bethrothed
To one, a neighbouring Princess: she to me
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf
At eight years old; and still from time to time
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South,
And of her brethren, youths of puissance;
And still I wore her picture by my heart,
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And one dark tress; and all around them both
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen.
But when the days drew nigh that I should wed,
My father sent ambassadors with furs
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her: these brought back
A present, a great labour of the loom;
And therewithal an answer vague as wind:
Besides, they saw the king; he took the gifts;
He said there was a compact; that was true:
But then she had a will; was he to blame?
And maiden fancies; loved to live alone
Among her women; certain, would not wed.
That morning in the presence room I stood
With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends:
The first, a gentleman of broken means
(His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts
Of revel; and the last, my other heart,
And almost my half-self, for still we moved
Together, twinned as horse's ear and eye.
Now, while they spake, I saw my father's face
Grow long and troubled like a rising moon,
Inflamed with wrath: he started on his feet,
Tore the king's letter, snowed it down, and rent
The wonder of the loom through warp and woof
From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware
That he would send a hundred thousand men,
And bring her in a whirlwind: then he chewed
The thrice-turned cud of wrath, and cooked his spleen,
Communing with his captains of the war.
At last I spoke. 'My father, let me go.
It cannot be but some gross error lies
In this report, this answer of a king,
Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable:
Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen,
Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame,
May rue the bargain made.' And Florian said:
'I have a sister at the foreign court,
Who moves about the Princess; she, you know,
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Who wedded with a nobleman from thence:
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear,
The lady of three castles in that land:
Through her this matter might be sifted clean.'
And Cyril whispered: 'Take me with you too.'
Then laughing 'what, if these weird seizures come
Upon you in those lands, and no one near
To point you out the shadow from the truth!
Take me: I'll serve you better in a strait;
I grate on rusty hinges here:' but 'No!'
Roared the rough king, 'you shall not; we ourself
Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead
In iron gauntlets: break the council up.'
But when the council broke, I rose and past
Through the wild woods that hung about the town;
Found a still place, and plucked her likeness out;
Laid it on flowers, and watched it lying bathed
In the green gleam of dewy-tasselled trees:
What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?
Proud looked the lips: but while I meditated
A wind arose and rushed upon the South,
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
Went with it, 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win.'
Then, ere the silver sickle of that month
Became her golden shield, I stole from court
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived,
Cat-footed through the town and half in dread
To hear my father's clamour at our backs
With Ho! from some bay-window shake the night;
But all was quiet: from the bastioned walls
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt,
And flying reached the frontier: then we crost
To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange,
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness,
We gained the mother city thick with towers,
And in the imperial palace found the king.
His name was Gama; cracked and small his voice,
But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind
721
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines;
A little dry old man, without a star,
Not like a king: three days he feasted us,
And on the fourth I spake of why we came,
And my bethrothed. 'You do us, Prince,' he said,
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
'All honour. We remember love ourselves
In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony-I think the year in which our olives failed.
I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart,
With my full heart: but there were widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed her theories, in and out of place
Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man.
They harped on this; with this our banquets rang;
Our dances broke and buzzed in knots of talk;
Nothing but this; my very ears were hot
To hear them: knowledge, so my daughter held,
Was all in all: they had but been, she thought,
As children; they must lose the child, assume
The woman: then, Sir, awful odes she wrote,
Too awful, sure, for what they treated of,
But all she is and does is awful; odes
About this losing of the child; and rhymes
And dismal lyrics, prophesying change
Beyond all reason: these the women sang;
And they that know such things--I sought but peace;
No critic I--would call them masterpieces:
They mastered ~me~. At last she begged a boon,
A certain summer-palace which I have
Hard by your father's frontier: I said no,
Yet being an easy man, gave it: and there,
All wild to found an University
For maidens, on the spur she fled; and more
We know not,--only this: they see no men,
Not even her brother Arac, nor the twins
Her brethren, though they love her, look upon her
As on a kind of paragon; and I
(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed
Dispute betwixt myself and mine: but since
722
(And I confess with right) you think me bound
In some sort, I can give you letters to her;
And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance
Almost at naked nothing.'
Thus the king;
And I, though nettled that he seemed to slur
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies
Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets
But chafing me on fire to find my bride)
Went forth again with both my friends. We rode
Many a long league back to the North. At last
From hills, that looked across a land of hope,
We dropt with evening on a rustic town
Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve,
Close at the boundary of the liberties;
There, entered an old hostel, called mine host
To council, plied him with his richest wines,
And showed the late-writ letters of the king.
He with a long low sibilation, stared
As blank as death in marble; then exclaimed
Averring it was clear against all rules
For any man to go: but as his brain
Began to mellow, 'If the king,' he said,
'Had given us letters, was he bound to speak?
The king would bear him out;' and at the last-The summer of the vine in all his veins-'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.
She once had past that way; he heard her speak;
She scared him; life! he never saw the like;
She looked as grand as doomsday and as grave:
And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there;
He always made a point to post with mares;
His daughter and his housemaid were the boys:
The land, he understood, for miles about
Was tilled by women; all the swine were sows,
And all the dogs'-But while he jested thus,
A thought flashed through me which I clothed in act,
Remembering how we three presented Maid
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast,
In masque or pageant at my father's court.
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We sent mine host to purchase female gear;
He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake
The midriff of despair with laughter, holp
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes
We rustled: him we gave a costly bribe
To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds,
And boldly ventured on the liberties.
We followed up the river as we rode,
And rode till midnight when the college lights
Began to glitter firefly-like in copse
And linden alley: then we past an arch,
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings
From four winged horses dark against the stars;
And some inscription ran along the front,
But deep in shadow: further on we gained
A little street half garden and half house;
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir
Of fountains spouted up and showering down
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose:
And all about us pealed the nightingale,
Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare.
There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign,
By two sphere lamps blazoned like Heaven and Earth
With constellation and with continent,
Above an entry: riding in, we called;
A plump-armed Ostleress and a stable wench
Came running at the call, and helped us down.
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sailed,
Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave
Upon a pillared porch, the bases lost
In laurel: her we asked of that and this,
And who were tutors. 'Lady Blanche' she said,
'And Lady Psyche.' 'Which was prettiest,
Best-natured?' 'Lady Psyche.' 'Hers are we,'
One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote,
In such a hand as when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East;
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'Three ladies of the Northern empire pray
Your Highness would enroll them with your own,
As Lady Psyche's pupils.'
This I sealed:
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll,
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung,
And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes:
I gave the letter to be sent with dawn;
And then to bed, where half in doze I seemed
To float about a glimmering night, and watch
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell
On some dark shore just seen that it was rich.
As through the land at eve we went,
And plucked the ripened ears,
We fell out, my wife and I,
O we fell out I know not why,
And kissed again with tears.
And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!
For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,
There above the little grave,
O there above the little grave,
We kissed again with tears.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
1492:'Thus do the generations of the earth
Go to the grave and issue from the womb,
Surviving still the imperishable change
That renovates the world; even as the leaves
Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year
Has scattered on the forest-soil and heaped
For many seasons therethough long they choke,
Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,
All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees
From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes,
Lie level with the earth to moulder there,
They fertilize the land they long deformed;
Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs
Of youth, integrity and loveliness,
Like that which gave it life, to spring and die.
Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights
The fairest feelings of the opening heart,
Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil
Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,
And judgment cease to wage unnatural war
With passion's unsubduable array.
Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled by its deformity to screen
With flimsy veil of justice and of right
Its unattractive lineaments that scare
All save the brood of ignorance; at once
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness;
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.

'Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange
Of all that human art or Nature yield;
Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,
And natural kindness hasten to supply
From the full fountain of its boundless love,
Forever stifled, drained and tainted now.
Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade
No solitary virtue dares to spring,
But poverty and wealth with equal hand
Scatter their withering curses, and unfold
The doors of premature and violent death
To pining famine and full-fed disease,
To all that shares the lot of human life,
Which, poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain
That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.

'Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
The signet of its all-enslaving power,
Upon a shining ore, and called it gold;
Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings,
And with blind feelings reverence the power
That grinds them to the dust of misery.
But in the temple of their hireling hearts
Gold is a living god and rules in scorn
All earthly things but virtue.

'Since tyrants by the sale of human life
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,
Success has sanctioned to a credulous world
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.
His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes
The despot numbers; from his cabinet
These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,
Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,
Beneath a vulgar master, to perform
A task of cold and brutal drudgery;
Hardened to hope, insensible to fear,
Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,
Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!

'The harmony and happiness of man
Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts
His nature to the heaven of its pride,
Is bartered for the poison of his soul;
The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes,
Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,
Withering all passion but of slavish fear,
Extinguishing all free and generous love
Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse
That fancy kindles in the beating heart
To mingle with sensation, it destroys,
Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self,
The grovelling hope of interest and gold,
Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed
Even by hypocrisy.

           And statesmen boast
Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives
After the ruin of their hearts, can gild
The bitter poison of a nation's woe;
Can turn the worship of the servile mob
To their corrupt and glaring idol, fame,
From virtue, trampled by its iron tread,
Although its dazzling pedestal be raised
Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,
With desolated dwellings smoking round.
The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,
To deeds of charitable intercourse
And bare fulfilment of the common laws
Of decency and prejudice confines
The struggling nature of his human heart,
Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds
A passing tear perchance upon the wreck
Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door
The frightful waves are driven,when his son
Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion
Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man
Whose life is misery, and fear and care;
Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil;
Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream;
Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze
Forever meets, and the proud rich man's eye
Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene
Of thousands like himself;he little heeds
The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate
Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn
The vain and bitter mockery of words,
Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds,
And unrestrained but by the arm of power,
That knows and dreads his enmity.

'The iron rod of penury still compels
Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,
And poison, with unprofitable toil,
A life too void of solace to confirm
The very chains that bind him to his doom.
Nature, impartial in munificence,
Has gifted man with all-subduing will.
Matter, with all its transitory shapes,
Lies subjected and plastic at his feet,
That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.
How many a rustic Milton has passed by,
Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
In unremitting drudgery and care!
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled
His energies, no longer tameless then,
To mould a pin or fabricate a nail!
How many a Newton, to whose passive ken
Those mighty spheres that gem infinity
Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven
To light the midnights of his native town!

'Yet every heart contains perfection's germ.
The wisest of the sages of the earth,
That ever from the stores of reason drew
Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone,
Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,
Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued
With pure desire and universal love,
Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,
Untainted passion, elevated will,
Which death (who even would linger long in awe
Within his noble presence and beneath
His changeless eye-beam) might alone subdue.
Him, every slave now dragging through the filth
Of some corrupted city his sad life,
Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,
Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense
With narrow schemings and unworthy cares,
Or madly rushing through all violent crime
To move the deep stagnation of his soul,
Might imitate and equal.

              But mean lust
Has bound its chains so tight about the earth
That all within it but the virtuous man
Is venal; gold or fame will surely reach
The price prefixed by Selfishness to all
But him of resolute and unchanging will;
Whom nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,
Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,
Can bribe to yield his elevated soul
To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield
With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.

'All things are sold: the very light of heaven
Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love,
The smallest and most despicable things
That lurk in the abysses of the deep,
All objects of our life, even life itself,
And the poor pittance which the laws allow
Of liberty, the fellowship of man,
Those duties which his heart of human love
Should urge him to perform instinctively,
Are bought and sold as in a public mart
Of undisguising Selfishness, that sets
On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.
Even love is sold; the solace of all woe
Is turned to deadliest agony, old age
Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,
And youth's corrupted impulses prepare
A life of horror from the blighting bane
Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs
From unenjoying sensualism, has filled
All human life with hydra-headed woes.

'Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs
Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest
Sets no great value on his hireling faith;
A little passing pomp, some servile souls,
Whom cowardice itself might safely chain
Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe
To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,
Can make him minister to tyranny.
More daring crime requires a loftier meed.
Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends
His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,
When the dread eloquence of dying men,
Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,
Assails that nature whose applause he sells
For the gross blessings of the patriot mob,
For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,
And for a cold world's good word,viler still!

'There is a nobler glory which survives
Until our being fades, and, solacing
All human care, accompanies its change;
Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom,
And in the precincts of the palace guides
Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;
Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness,
Even when from power's avenging hand he takes
Its sweetest, last and noblest titledeath;
The consciousness of good, which neither gold,
Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss,
Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,
Unalterable will, quenchless desire
Of universal happiness, the heart
That beats with it in unison, the brain
Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change
Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.
'This commerce of sincerest virtue needs
No meditative signs of selfishness,
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,
No balancings of prudence, cold and long;
In just and equal measure all is weighed,
One scale contains the sum of human weal,
And one, the good man's heart.

                 How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,
Who hope for peace amid the storms of care,
Who covet power they know not how to use,
And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,
Madly they frustrate still their own designs;
And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy
Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul,
Pining regrets, and vain repentances,
Disease, disgust and lassitude pervade
Their valueless and miserable lives.

'But hoary-headed selfishness has felt
Its death-blow and is tottering to the grave;
A brighter morn awaits the human day,
When every transfer of earth's natural gifts
Shall be a commerce of good words and works;
When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,
The fear of infamy, disease and woe,
War with its million horrors, and fierce hell,
Shall live but in the memory of time,
Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,
Look back, and shudder at his younger years.'



~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab - Part V.
,
1493:But do not let us quarrel any more,
  No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
  Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
  You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
  I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
  Treat his own subject after his own way,
  Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
  And shut the money into this small hand
  When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
Oh, I'll content him,but to-morrow, Love!
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it seems
As ifforgive nowshould you let me sit
Here by the window with your hand in mine
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up to-morrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this!
Your soft hand is a woman of itself,
And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.
Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve
For each of the five pictures we require:
It saves a model. So! keep looking so
My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!
How could you ever prick those perfect ears,
Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet
My face, my moon, my everybody's moon,
Which everybody looks on and calls his,
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,
While she looksno one's: very dear, no less.
You smile? why, there's my picture ready made,
There's what we painters call our harmony!
A common greyness silvers everything,
All in a twilight, you and I alike
You, at the point of your first pride in me
(That's gone you know),but I, at every point;
My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down
To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.
There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
That length of convent-wall across the way
Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,
And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self
And all that I was born to be and do,
A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand.
How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead;
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for exampleturn your head
All that's behind us! You don't understand
Nor care to understand about my art,
But you can hear at least when people speak:
And that cartoon, the second from the door
It is the thing, Love! so such things should be
Behold Madonna!I am bold to say.
  I can do with my pencil what I know,
What I see, what at bottom of my heart
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep
Do easily, toowhen I say, perfectly,
I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,
Who listened to the Legate's talk last week,
And just as much they used to say in France.
At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!
No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who striveyou don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
The sudden blood of these men! at a word
Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.
I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
I know both what I want and what might gain,
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
"Had I been two, another and myself,
"Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt.
Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth
The Urbinate who died five years ago.
('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)
Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
Above and through his artfor it gives way;
That arm is wrongly putand there again
A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,
He means rightthat, a child may understand.
Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:
But all the play, the insight and the stretch
(Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?
Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,
We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!
Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think
More than I merit, yes, by many times.
But had youoh, with the same perfect brow,
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged
"God and the glory! never care for gain.
"The present by the future, what is that?
"Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
"Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
I might have done it for you. So it seems:
Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.
Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;
The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will's somewhatsomewhat, too, the power
And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,
God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.
'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict,
That I am something underrated here,
Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.
I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,
For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.
The best is when they pass and look aside;
But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.
Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,
And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!
I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,
Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear,
In that humane great monarch's golden look,
One finger in his beard or twisted curl
Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile,
One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,
The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,
I painting proudly with his breath on me,
All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,
Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls
Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,
And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,
This in the background, waiting on my work,
To crown the issue with a last reward!
A good time, was it not, my kingly days?
And had you not grown restless but I know
'Tis done and past: 'twas right, my instinct said:
Too live the life grew, golden and not grey,
And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your heart.
The triumph wasto reach and stay there; since
I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?
Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,
You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
"Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
"The Roman's is the better when you pray,
"But still the other's Virgin was his wife"
Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows
My better fortune, I resolve to think.
For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
Said one day Agnolo, his very self,
To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . .
(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,
Too lifted up in heart because of it)
"Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub
"Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
"Who, were he set to plan and execute
"As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
"Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"
To Rafael's!And indeed the arm is wrong.
I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see,
Give the chalk herequick, thus, the line should go!
Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out!
Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,
(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
Do you forget already words like those?)
If really there was such a chance, so lost,
Is, whether you'renot gratefulbut more pleased.
Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!
This hour has been an hour! Another smile?
If you would sit thus by me every night
I should work better, do you comprehend?
I mean that I should earn more, give you more.
See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star;
Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall,
The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.
Come from the window, love,come in, at last,
Inside the melancholy little house
We built to be so gay with. God is just.
King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights
When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,
The walls become illumined, brick from brick
Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,
That gold of his I did cement them with!
Let us but love each other. Must you go?
That Cousin here again? he waits outside?
Must see youyou, and not with me? Those loans?
More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?
Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?
While hand and eye and something of a heart
Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?
I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit
The grey remainder of the evening out,
Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
How I could paint, were I but back in France,
One picture, just one morethe Virgin's face,
Not yours this time! I want you at my side
To hear themthat is, Michel Agnolo
Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.
I take the subjects for his corridor,
Finish the portrait out of handthere, there,
And throw him in another thing or two
If he demurs; the whole should prove enough
To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside,
What's better and what's all I care about,
Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!
Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,
The Cousin! what does he to please you more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.
I regret little, I would change still less.
Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
The very wrong to Francis!it is true
I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
And built this house and sinned, and all is said.
My father and my mother died of want.
Well, had I riches of my own? you see
How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.
They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:
And I have laboured somewhat in my time
And not been paid profusely. Some good son
Paint my two hundred pictureslet him try!
No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,
You loved me quite enough. it seems to-night.
This must suffice me here. What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel's reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me
To coverthe three first without a wife,
While I have mine! Sostill they overcome
Because there's still Lucrezia,as I choose.

Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.


~ Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto
,
1494:Have the poets left in the garment a place for a patch to be patched by me;
and did you know the abode of your beloved after reflection?

The vestige of the house, which did not speak, confounded thee,
until it spoke by means of signs, like one deaf and dumb.

Verily, I kept my she-camel there long grumbling,
with a yearning at the blackened stones,
keeping and standing firm in their own places.

It is the abode of a friend, languishing in her glance,
submissive in the embrace, pleasant of smile.

Oh house of 'Ablah situated at Jiwaa,
talk with me about those who resided in you.
Good morning to you, O house of 'Ablah,
and be safe from ruin.

I halted my she-camel in that place;
and it was as though she were a high palace;
in order that I might perform the wont of the lingerer.

And 'Ablah takes up her abode at Jiwaa;
while our people went to Eazan, then to Mutathallam.

She took up her abode in the land of my enemies;
so it became difficult for me to seek you, O daughter of Mahzam.

I was enamored of her unawares,
at a time when I was killing her people,
desiring her in marriage; but by your father's
life I swear, this was not the time for desiring.

And verily you have occupied in my heart the place of the honored loved one,
so do not think otherwise than this, that you are my beloved.

And how may be the visiting of her,
while her people have taken up their residence
in the spring at 'Unaizatain and our people at Ghailam?

I knew that you had intended departing,
for, verily, your camels were bridled on a dark night.

Nothing caused me fear of her departure,
except that the baggage camels of her people
were eating the seeds of the Khimkhim tree throughout the country.

Amongst them were two and forty milk-giving camels,
black as the wing-feathers of black crows.

When she captivates you with a mouth possessing sharp and white teeth,
sweet as to its place of kissing, delicious of taste.

As if she sees with the two eyes of a young, grown up gazelle from the deer.
It was as though the musk bag of a merchant in his case of perfumes
preceded her teeth toward you from her mouth.

Or as if it is an old wine-skin, from Azri'at, preserved long,
such as the kings of Rome preserve;

Or her mouth is as an ungrazed meadow,
whose herbage the rain has guaranteed,
in which there is but little dung;
and which is not marked with the feet of animals.

The first pure showers of every rain-cloud rained upon it,
and left every puddle in it bright and round like a dirham;

Sprinkling and pouring; so that the water flows upon it
every evening, and is not cut off from it.

The fly enjoyed yet alone, and so it did not cease humming,
as is the act of the singing drunkard;

Humming, while he rubs one foreleg against the other, as
the striking on the flint of one, bent on the flint,
and cut off as to his palm.

She passes her evenings and her mornings on the surface
of a well-stuffed couch, while I pass my nights on the back of
a bridled black horse.

And my couch is a saddle upon a horse big-boned in the leg,
big in his flanks, great of girth.

Would a Shadanian she-camel cause me to arrive at her
abode, who is cursed with an udder scanty of milk and cut off?

After traveling all night, she is lashing her sides with her tail, and is strutting proudly,
and she breaks up the mounds of earth she passes over with her foot with its sole, treading hard.

As if I in the evening am breaking the mounds of earth by means of an ostrich,
very small as to the distance between its two feet, and earless.

The young ostriches flock toward him, as the herds of Yemenian camels
flock to a barbarous, unintelligible speaker.

They follow the crest of his head,
as though it was a howdah on a large litter, tented for them.

He is small headed, who returns constantly to look after his
eggs at Zil-'Ushairah; he is like a slave, with a long fur cloak and without ears.

She drank of the water of Duhruzain and then turned away,
being disgusted, from the pools of stagnant water.

And she swerves away with her right side from the fear of
one, whistling in the evening, a big, ugly-headed one;

From the fear of a cat, led at her side, every time she
turned toward him in anger, he met her with both claws and mouth.

She knelt down at the edge of the pool of Rada', and groaned
as though she had knelt on a reed, broken, and emitting a cracking noise.

And the sweat on the back was as though it were oil or thick pitch,
with which fire is lighted round the sides of a retort.

Her places of flexure were wetted with it and she lavishly poured of it,
on a spreading forelock, short and well-bred.

The length of the journey left her a strong, well-built body, like a high palace,
built with cement, and rising high; and feet like the supports of a firmly pitched tent.

And surely I recollected you, even when the lances were drinking my blood,
and bright swords of Indian make were dripping with my blood.

I wished to kiss the swords, for verily they shone as bright
as the flash of the foretooth of your smiling mouth.

If you lower your veil over yourself in front of me, of what use will it be?
for, verily, I am expert in capturing the mailed horseman.

Praise me for the qualities which you know I possess, for,
verily, when I am not ill-treated, I am gentle to associate with.

And if I am ill-treated, then, verily, my tyranny is severe,
very bitter is the taste of it, as the taste of the colocynth.

And, verily, I have drunk wine after the midday heats have subsided,
buying it with the bright-stamped coin.

From a glass, yellow with the lines of the glass-cutter on it,
which was accompanied by a white-stoppered bottle on the lefthand side.

And when I have drunk, verily, I am the squanderer of my property,
and my honor is great, and is not sullied.

And when I have become sober, I do not diminish in my generosity,
and, as you know, so are my qualities and my liberality.

And many a husband of a beautiful woman, I have left prostrate on the ground,
with his shoulders hissing like the side of the mouth of one with a split lip.

My two hands preceeded him with a hasty blow, striking him before he could strike me;
and with the drops of blood from a penetrating stroke, red like the color of Brazil wood.

Why did you not ask the horsemen, O daughter Malik!
If you were ignorant, concerning what you did not know about my condition,

At a time when I never ceased to be in the saddle of a long striding,
wounded, sturdy horse, against whom the warriors came in succession.

At one time he is detached to charge the enemy with the lance,
and at another he joins the large host with their bows tightly strung.

He who was present in the battle will inform you that verily I rush into battle,
but I abstain at the time of taking the booty.

I see spoils, which, if I want I would win;
but my bashfulness and my magnanimity hold me back from them.

And many a fully-armed one, whom the warriors shunned fighting with,
neither a hastener in flight, nor a surrenderer;

My hands were generous to him by a quick point with a straightened spear strong in the joints;
Inflicting a wound wide of its two sides, the sound of the flow of blood from it leads
at night the prowling wolves, burning with hunger.

I rent his vesture with a rigid spear,
for the noble one is not forbidden to the spears.

Then I left him a prey for the wild beasts, who seize him,
and gnaw the beauty of his fingers and wrist.

And many a long, closely-woven coat of mail,
I have split open the links of it with a sword,
off one defending his rights,
and renowned for bravery.

Whose hands are ready, with gambling arrows when it is winter,
a tearer-down of the signs of the wine-sellers, and one reproached for his extravagance.

When he saw that I had descended from my horse, and was intending killing him,
he showed his teeth, but without smiling.

My meeting with him was when the day spread out,
and he was as if his fingers and his head were dyed with indigo.

I pierced him with my spear, and then I set upon him with my Indian sword
pure of steel, and keen.
A warrior, so stately in size as if his clothes were on a high tree:
soft leather shoes are worn by him and he is not twinned.

Oh, how wonderful is the beauty of the doe of the hunt,
to whom is she lawful? To me she is unlawful;
would to God that she was not unlawful.

So, I sent my female slave, and said to her,
"Go, find out news of her and inform me."

She said, "I saw carelessness on the part of the enemies,
and that the doe is possible to him who is shooting."

And it was as though she looked toward me with the neck of
a doe, a fawn of the gazelles, pure and with a white upper lip.

I am informed that 'Amru is unthankful for my kindness
while ingratitude is a cause of evil to the soul of the giver.

And, verily, I remember the advice of my uncle, in the battle,
when the two lips quiver from off the white teeth of the mouth,

In the thick of the battle, of which the warriors do not complain of the rigors,
except with an unintelligible noise.

When my people) defended themselves with me against the spears of the enemy,
I did not refrain from the spears through cowardice,
but the place of my advance had become too strait.

When I heard the cry of Murrah rise, and saw the two sons of Rabi'ah in the thick dust,
While the tribe of Muhallam were struggling under their banners,
and death was under the banners of the tribe of Mulhallam,

I made sure that at the time of their encounter there would be a blow,
which would make the heads fly from the bodies,
as the bird flies from off her young ones sitting close.

When I saw the people, while their mass advanced, excite one another to fight,
I turned against them without being reproached for any want of bravery.

They were calling 'Antarah, while the spears were as though
they were well-ropes in the breast of Adham.

They were calling 'Antarah, while the swords were as
though they were the flash of lightnings in a dark cloud.

They were calling 'Antarah, while the arrows were flying,
as though they were a flight of locusts, hovering above watering places.

They were calling "O 'Antarah," while the coats of mail shone with close rings,
shining as though they were the eyeballs of frogs floating in a wavy pond.

I did not cease charging the enemy, with the prominent part of his throat and breast,
until he became covered with a shirt of blood.

Then he turned on account of the falling of the spears on
his breast, and complained to me with tears and whinnyings.

If he had known what conversation was, he would have complained with words,
and verily he would have, had he known speech, talked with me.

And verily the speech of the horsemen,
"Woe to you, 'Antarah, advance, and attack the enemy,"
cured my soul and removed its sickness.

While the horses sternly frowning were charging over the soft soil,
being partly the long-bodied mares, and partly the long-bodied, well-bred horses.

My riding-camels are tractable, they go wherever I wish;
while my intellect is my helper, and I drive it forward with a firm order.

Verily, it lay beyond my power that I should visit you; so,
know what you have known, and some of what you have not known.

The lances of the tribe of Bagheez intercepted you and the perpetrators of the war
set aside those who did not perpetrate it.

And, verily, I turned the horse for the attack, while his neck
was bleeding, until the horses began to shun me.

And verily I feared that I should die, while there has not
yet been a turn for war against the two sons of Zamzam;

The two revilers of my honor, while I did not revile them,
and the threateners of my blood, when I did not see them.

There is no wonder should they do so, for I left their father
a prey for the wild beasts and every large old vulture.

~ Anonymous, The Poem of Antar
,
1495:Palinodia
TO THE MARQUIS GINO CAPPONI.
I was mistaken, my dear Gino. Long
And greatly have I erred. I fancied life
A vain and wretched thing, and this, our age,
Now passing, vainest, silliest of all.
Intolerable seemed, and _was_, such talk
Unto the happy race of mortals, if,
Indeed, man ought or could be mortal called.
'Twixt anger and surprise, the lofty creatures laughed
Forth from the fragrant Eden where they dwell;
Neglected, or unfortunate, they called me;
Of joy incapable, or ignorant,
To think my lot the common lot of all,
Mankind, the partner in my misery.
At length, amid the odor of cigars,
The crackling sound of dainty pastry, and
The orders loud for ices and for drinks,
'Midst clinking glasses, and 'midst brandished spoons,
The daily light of the gazettes flashed full
On my dim eyes. I saw and recognized
The public joy, and the felicity
Of human destiny. The lofty state
I saw, and value of all human things;
Our mortal pathway strewed with flowers; I saw
How naught displeasing here below endures.
Nor less I saw the studies and the works
Stupendous, wisdom, virtue, knowledge deep
Of this our age. From far Morocco to
Cathay, and from the Poles unto the Nile,
From Boston unto Goa, on the track
Of flying Fortune, emulously panting,
The empires, kingdoms, dukedoms of the earth
I saw, now clinging to her waving locks,
Now to the end of her encircling boa.
Beholding this, and o'er the ample sheets
Profoundly meditating, I became
Of my sad blunder, and myself, ashamed.
64
The age of gold the spindles of the Fates,
O Gino, are evolving. Every sheet,
In each variety of speech and type,
The splendid promise to the world proclaims,
From every quarter. Universal love,
And iron roads, and commerce manifold,
Steam, types, and cholera, remotest lands,
Most distant nations will together bind;
Nor need we wonder if the pine or oak
Yield milk and honey, or together dance
Unto the music of the waltz. So much
The force already hath increased, both of
Alembics, and retorts, and of machines,
That vie with heaven in working miracles,
And will increase, in times that are to come:
For, evermore, from better unto best,
Without a pause, as in the past, the race
Of Shem, and Ham, and Japhet will progress.
And yet, on acorns men will never feed,
Unless compelled by hunger; never will
Hard iron lay aside. Full oft, indeed,
They gold and silver will despise, bills of
Exchange preferring. Often, too, the race
Its generous hands with brothers' blood will stain,
With fields of carnage filling Europe, and
The other shore of the Atlantic sea,
The new world, that the old still nourishes,
As often as it sends its rival bands
Of armed adventurers, in eager quest
Of pepper, cinnamon, or other spice,
Or sugar-cane, aught that ministers
Unto the universal thirst for gold.
True worth and virtue, modesty and faith,
And love of justice, in whatever land,
From public business will be still estranged,
Or utterly humiliated and
O'erthrown; condemned by Nature still,
To sink unto the bottom. Insolence
And fraud, with mediocrity combined,
Will to the surface ever rise, and reign.
65
Authority and strength, howe'er diffused,
However concentrated, will be still
Abused, beneath whatever name concealed,
By him who wields them; this the law by Fate
And nature written first, in adamant:
Nor can a Volta with his lightnings, nor
A Davy cancel it, nor England with
Her vast machinery, nor this our age
With all its floods of Leading Articles.
The good man ever will be sad, the wretch
Will keep perpetual holiday; against
All lofty souls both worlds will still be armed
Conspirators; true honor be assailed
By calumny, and hate, and envy; still
The weak will be the victim of the strong;
The hungry man upon the rich will fawn,
Beneath whatever form of government,
Alike at the Equator and the Poles;
So will it be, while man on earth abides,
And while the sun still lights him on his way.
These signs and tokens of the ages past
Must of necessity their impress leave
Upon our brightly dawning age of gold:
Because society from Nature still
Receives a thousand principles and aims,
Diverse, discordant; which to reconcile,
No wit or power of man hath yet availed,
Since first our race, illustrious, was born;
Nor _will_ avail, or treaty or gazette,
In any age, however wise or strong.
But in things more important, how complete,
Ne'er seen, till now, will be our happiness!
More soft, from day to day, our garments will
Become, of woollen or of silk. Their rough
Attire the husbandman and smith will cast
Aside, will swathe in cotton their rough hides,
And with the skins of beavers warm their backs.
More serviceable, more attractive, too,
Will be our carpets and our counterpanes,
Our curtains, sofas, tables, and our chairs;
Our beds, and their attendant furniture,
66
Will a new grace unto our chambers lend;
And dainty forms of kettles and of pans,
On our dark kitchens will their lustre shed.
From Paris unto Calais, and from there
To London, and from there to Liverpool,
More rapid than imagination can
Conceive, will be the journey, nay the flight;
While underneath the ample bed of Thames,
A highway will be made, immortal work,
That _should_ have been completed, years ago.
Far better lighted, and perhaps as safe,
At night, as now they are, will be the lanes
And unfrequented streets of Capitals;
Perhaps, the main streets of the smaller towns.
Such privileges, such a happy lot,
Kind heaven reserves unto the coming race.
How fortunate are they, whom, as I write,
Naked and whimpering, in her arms receives
The midwife! They those longed-for days may hope
To see, when, after careful studies we
Shall know, and every nursling shall imbibe
That knowledge with the milk of the dear nurse,
How many hundred-weight of salt, and how
Much flesh, how many bushels, too, of flour,
His native town in every month consumes;
How many births and deaths in every year
The parish priest inscribes: when by the aid
Of mighty steam, that, every second, prints
Its millions, hill and dale, and ocean's vast
Expanse, e'en as we see a flock of cranes
Aërial, that suddenly the day obscure, will with Gazettes be overrun;
Gazettes, of the great Universe the life
And soul, sole fount of wisdom and of wit,
To this, and unto every coming age!
E'en as a child, who carefully constructs,
Of little sticks and leaves, an edifice,
In form of temple, palace, or of tower;
And, soon as he beholds the work complete,
The impulse feels, the structure to destroy,
Because the self-same sticks and leaves he needs,
67
To carry out some other enterprise;
So Nature every work of hers, however
It may delight us with its excellence,
No sooner sees unto perfection brought,
Than she proceeds to pull it all to pieces,
For other structures using still the parts.
And vainly seeks the human race, itself
Or others from the cruel sport to save,
The cause of which is hidden from its sight
Forever, though a thousand means it tries,
With skilful hand devising remedies:
For cruel Nature, child invincible,
Our efforts laughs to scorn, and still its own
Caprices carries out, without a pause,
Destroying and creating, for its sport.
And hence, a various, endless family
Of ills incurable and sufferings
Oppresses the frail mortal, doomed to death
Irreparably; hence a hostile force,
Destructive, smites him from within, without,
On every side, perpetual, e'en from
The day of birth, and wearies and exhausts,
Itself untiring, till he drops at last,
By the inhuman mother crushed, and killed.
Those crowning miseries, O gentle friend,
Of this our mortal life, old age and death,
E'en then commencing, when the infant lip
The tender breast doth press, that life instils,
This happy nineteenth century, I think,
Can no more help, than could the ninth, or tenth,
Nor will the coming ages, more than this.
Indeed, if we may be allowed to call
The truth by its right name, no other than
Supremely wretched must each mortal be,
In every age, and under every form
Of government, and walk and mode of life;
By nature hopelessly incurable,
Because a universal law hath so
Decreed, which heaven and earth alike obey.
And yet the lofty spirits of our age
A new discovery have made, almost
Divine; for, though they cannot make
68
A single person happy on the earth,
The man forgetting, they have gone in quest
Of universal happiness, and this,
Forsooth, have found so easily, that out
Of many wretched individuals,
They can a happy, joyful people make.
And at this miracle, not yet explained
By quarterly reviews, or pamphlets, or
Gazettes, the common herd in wonder smile.
O minds, O wisdom, insight marvellous
Of this our passing age! And what profound
Philosophy, what lessons deep, O Gino,
In matters more sublime and recondite,
This century of thine and mine will teach
To those that follow! With what constancy,
What yesterday it scorned, upon its knees
To-day it worships, and will overthrow
To-morrow, merely to pick up again
The fragments, to the idol thus restored,
To offer incense on the following day!
How estimable, how inspiring, too,
This unanimity of thought, not of
The age alone, but of each passing year!
How carefully should we, when we our thought
With this compare, however different
From that of next year it may be, at least
Appearance of diversity avoid!
What giant strides, compared with those of old,
Our century in wisdom's school has made!
One of thy friends, O worthy Gino, once,
A master poet, nay, of every Art,
And Science, every human faculty,
For past, and present, and for future times,
A learned expositor, remarked to me:
'Of thy own feelings, care to speak no more!
Of them, this manly age makes no account,
In economic problems quite absorbed,
And with an eye for politics alone,
Of what avail, thy own heart to explore?
Seek not within thyself material
69
For song; but sing the needs of this our age,
And consummation of its ripening hope!'
O memorable words! Whereat I laughed
Like chanticleer, the name of _hope_ to hear
Thus strike upon my ear profane, as if
A jest it were, or prattle of a child
Just weaned. But now a different course I take,
Convinced by many shining proofs, that he
Must not resist or contradict the age,
Who seeketh praise or pudding at its hands,
But faithfully and servilely obey;
And so will find a short and easy road
Unto the stars. And I who long to reach
The stars will not, howe'er, select the needs
Of this our age for burden of my song;
For these, increasing constantly, are still
By merchants and by work-shops amply met;
But I will sing of hope, of hope whereof
The gods now grant a pledge so palpable.
The first-fruits of our new felicity
Behold, in the enormous growth of hair,
Upon the lip, upon the cheek, of youth!
O hail, thou salutary sign, first beam
Of light of this our wondrous, rising age!
See, how before thee heaven and earth rejoice,
How sparkle all the damsels' eyes with joy,
How through all banquets and all festivals
The fame of the young bearded heroes flies!
Grow for your country's sake, ye manly youth!
Beneath the shadow of your fleecy locks,
Will Italy increase, and Europe from
The mouths of Tagus to the Hellespont,
And all the world will taste the sweets of peace.
And thou, O tender child, for whom these days
Of gold are yet in store, begin to greet
Thy bearded father with a smile, nor fear
The harmless blackness of his loving face.
Laugh, darling child; for thee are kept the fruits
Of so much dazzling eloquence. Thou shalt
Behold joy reign in cities and in towns,
Old age and youth alike contented dwell,
70
And undulating beards of two spans long!
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,
1496: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
,
1497:Absolution
THREE months had passed since she had knelt before
The grate of the confessional, and he,
--The priest--had wondered why she came no more
To tell her sinless sins--the vanity
Whose valid reason graced her simple dress-The prayers forgotten, or the untold beads-The little thoughtless words, the slight misdeeds,
Which made the sum of her unrighteousness.
She was the fairest maiden in his fold,
With her sweet mouth and musical pure voice,
Her deep grey eyes, her hair's tempestuous gold,
Her gracious graceful figure's perfect poise.
Her happy laugh, her wild unconscious grace,
Her gentle ways to old, or sick, or sad,
The comprehending sympathy she had,
Had made of her the idol of the place.
And when she grew so silent and so sad,
So thin and quiet, pale and hollow-eyed,
And cared no more to laugh and to be glad
With other maidens by the waterside-All wondered, kindly grieved the elders were,
And some few girls went whispering about,
'She loves--who is it? Let us find it out!'
But never dared to speak of it to her.
But the priest's duty bade him seek her out
And say, 'My child, why dost thou sit apart?
Hast thou some grief? Hast thou some secret doubt?
Come and unfold to me thine inmost heart.
God's absolution can assuage all grief
And all remorse and woe beneath the sun.
Whatever thou hast said, or thought, or done,
The Holy Church can give thy soul relief.'
38
He stood beside her, young and strong, and swayed
With pity for the sorrow in her eyes-Which, as she raised them to his own, conveyed
Into his soul a sort of sad surprise--
For in those grey eyes had a new light grown,
The light that only bitter love can bring,
And he had fancied her too pure a thing
For even happy love to dare to own.
Yet all the more he urged on her--'Confess,
And do not doubt some comfort will be lent
By Holy Church thy penitence to bless.
Trust her, my child.' With unconvinced consent
She answered, 'I will come;' and so at last
Out of the summer evening's crimson glow,
With heart reluctant and with footsteps slow
Into the cool great empty church she passed.
'By my own fault, my own most grievous fault,
I cannot say, for it is not!' she said,
Kneeling within the grey stone chapel's vault;
And on the ledge her golden hair was spread
Over the clasping hands that still increased
Their nervous pressure, poor white hands and thin,
While with hot lips she poured her tale of sin
Into the cold ear of the patient priest.
'Love broke upon me in a dream; it came
Without beginning, for to me it seemed
That all my life this thing had been the same,
And never otherwise than as I dreamed.
I only knew my heart, entire, complete,
Was given to my other self, my love-That I through all the world would gladly move
So I might follow his adorèd feet.
39
'I dreamed my soul saw suddenly appear
Immense abysses, infinite heights unknown;
Possessed new worlds, new earths, sphere after sphere,
New sceptres, kingdoms, crowns, became my own.
When I had all, all earth, all time, all space,
And every blessing, human and divine,
I hated the possessions that were mine,
And only cared for his belovèd face.
'I dreamed that in unmeasured harmony,
Rain of sweet sounds fell on my ravished sense,
And thrilled my soul with swelling ecstasy,
And rose to unimagined excellence.
And while the music bade my heart rejoice,
And on my senses thrust delicious sway,
I wished the perfect melody away,
And in its place longed for his worshipped voice.
'And at the last I felt his arms enfold,
His kisses crown my life--his whispered sighs
Echo my own unrest--his spirit hold
My spirit powerless underneath his eyes,
My face flushed with new joy, and felt more fair:
He clasped me close, and cried, 'My own, my own!'
And then I woke in dawn's chill light, alone,
With empty arms held out to empty air.
'I never knew I loved him till that dream
Drew from my eyes the veil and left me wise.
What I had thought was reverence grew to seem
Only my lifelong love in thin disguise.
And in my dream it looked so sinless too,
So beautiful, harmonious, and right;
The vision faded with the morning light,
The love will last as long as I shall do.
40
'But in the world where I have wept my tears,
My love is sinful and a bitter shame.
How can I bear the never-ending years,
When every night I hear him call my name?
For though that first dream's dear delight is past,
Yet since that night each night I dream him there
With lips caressing on my brow and hair,
And in my arms I hold my heaven fast!'
'Child, have you prayed against it?' 'Have I prayed?
Have I not clogged my very soul with prayer;
Stopped up my ears with sound of praying, made
My very body faint with kneeling there
Before the sculptured Christ, and all for this,
That when my lips can pray no more, and sleep
Shuts my unwilling eyes, my love will leap
To dreamland's bounds, to meet me with his kiss?
'Strive against this?--what profit is the strife?
If through the day a little strength I gain,
At night he comes and calls me 'love' and 'wife,'
And straightway I am all his own again.
And if from love's besieging force my fight
Some little victory have hardly won,
What do I gain? As soon as day is done,
I yield once more to love's delicious might.'
'Avoid him!' 'Ay, in dewy garden walk
How often have I strayed, avoiding him.
And heard his voice mix with the common talk,
Yet never turned his way. My eyes grow dim
With weeping over what I lose by day
And find by night, yet never have to call
My own. O God! is there no help at all-No hope, no chance, and no escapeful way?'
41
'And who is he to whom thy love is given?'
'What? Holy Church demands to know his name?
No rest for me on earth, no hope of heaven
Unless I tell it? Ah, for very shame
I cannot--yet why not?--I will--I can!
I have grown mad with brooding on my curse.
Here! Take the name, no better and no worse
My case will be. Father, thou art the man!'
An icy shock shivered through all his frame-An overwhelming cold astonishment;
But on the instant the revulsion came,
His blood felt what her revelation meant,
And madly rushed along his veins and cried:
'For you too life is possible, and love
No more a word you miss the meaning of,
But all your life's desire unsatisfied.'
Then through his being crept a new strange fear-Fear of himself, and through himself, for her;
His every fibre felt her presence near,
Disquiet in his breast began to stir.
'Lord Christ,' his soul cried, while his heart beat fast,
'Give strength in this, my hour of utmost need.'
And with the prayer strength came to him indeed,
And with calm voice he answered her at last.
'Child, go in peace! Wrestle, and watch, and pray,
And I will spend this night in prayer for thee,
That God will take thy strange great grief away.
Thou hast confessed thy sin. Absolvo te.'
Silence most absolute a little while,
Then passed the whisper of her trailing gown
Over the knee-worn stones, and soft died down
The dim deserted incense-memoried aisle.
42
She passed away, and yet, when she was gone,
His heart still echoed her remembered sighs:
What sin unpardonable had he done
That evermore those grey unquiet eyes
Floated between him and the dying day?
How had she grown so desperately dear?
Why did her love-words echo in his ear
Through all the prayers he forced his lips to say?
All night he lay upon the chancel floor,
And coined his heart in tears and prayers, and new
Strange longings he had never known before.
Her very memory so thrilled him through,
That to his being's core a shiver stole
Of utter, boundless, measureless delight,
Even while with unceasing desperate might
His lips prayed for God's armour for his soul!
The moon had bathed the chancel with her light,
But now she crept into a cloud. No ray
Was left to break the funeral black of night
That closely hung around the form that lay
So tempest-tossed within, so still without.
'God! I love her, love her, love her so!
Oh, for one spark of heaven's fire to show
Some way to cast this devil's passion out!
'I cannot choose but love--Thou knowest, Lord-Yet is my spirit strong to fly from sin,
But oh, my flesh is weak, too weak the word
I have to clothe its utter weakness in!
I am Thy priest, vowed to be Thine alone,
Yet if she came here with those love-dimmed eyes,
How could I turn away from Paradise?
Should I not wreck her soul, and blast my own?
'Christ, by Thy passion, by Thy death for men,
43
Oh, save me from myself, save her from me!'
And at the word the moon came out again
From her cloud-palace, and threw suddenly
A shadow from the great cross overhead
Upon the priest; and with it came a sense
Of strength renewed, of perfect confidence
In Him who on that cross for men hung dead.
Beneath that shadow safety seemed to lie;
And as he knelt before the altar there,
Beside the King of Heaven's agony
Light seemed all pangs His priest might have to bear-His grief, his love, his bitter wild regret,
Would they not be a fitting sacrifice,
A well-loved offering, blessed in the eyes
That never scorned a sad heart's offering yet?
But as the ghostly moon began to fade,
And moonlight glimmered into ghostlier dawn,
The shadow that the crucifix had made
With twilight mixed; and with it seemed withdrawn
The peace that with its shadowy shape began,
And as the dim east brightened, slowly ceased
The wild devotion that had filled the priest-And with full sunlight he sprang up--a man!
'Ten thousand curses on my priestly vow-The hated vow that held me back from thee!
Down with the cross! no death-dark emblems now!
I have done with death: life wakes for thee and me!'
He tore the cross from out his breast, and trod
The sacred symbol underfoot and cried,
'I am set free, unbound, unsanctified!
I am thy lover--not the priest of God!'
He strode straight down the church and passed along
44
The grave-set garden's dewy grass-grown slope:
The woods about were musical with song,
The world was bright with youth, and love, and hope;
The flowers were sweet, and sweet his visions were,
The sunlight glittered on the lily's head
And on the royal roses, rich and red,
And never had the earth seemed half so fair.
Soon would he see her--soon would kneel before
Her worshipped feet, and cry, 'I am thine own,
As thou art mine, now, and for evermore!'
And she should kiss the lips that had not known
The kiss of love in any vanished year.
And as he dreamed of his secured delight,
Round the curved road there slowly came in sight
A mourning band, and in their midst a bier.
He hastened to pass on. Why should he heed
A bier--a blot on earth's awakened face?
For to his love-warm heart it seemed indeed
That in sweet summer's bloom death had no place.
Yet still he glanced--a pale concealing fold
Veiled the dead, quiet face--and yet--and yet-Did he not know that hand, so white and wet?
Did he not know those dripping curls of gold?
'We came to you to know what we should do,
Father: we found her body in the stream,
And how it happed, God knows!' One other knew-Knew that of him had been her last wild dream-Knew the full reason of that life-disdain-Knew how the shame of hopeless love confessed
And unreturned had seemed to stain her breast,
Till only death could make her clean again.
They left her in the church where sunbeams bright
45
Gilded the wreathèd oak and carven stone
With golden floods of consecrating light;
And here at last, together and alone,
The lovers met, and here upon her hair
He set his lips, and dry-eyed kissed her face,
And in the stillness of the holy place
He spoke in tones of bitter blank despair:
'Oh, lips so quiet, eyes that will not see!
Oh, clinging hands that not again will cling!
This last poor sin may well be pardoned thee,
Since for the right's sake thou hast done this thing.
Oh, poor weak heart, for ever laid to rest,
That could no longer strive against its fate,
For thee high heaven will unbar its gate,
And thou shalt enter in and shalt be blessed.
'The chances were the same for us,' he said,
'Yet thou hast won, and I have lost, the whole;
Thou wouldst not live in sin, and thou art dead-But I--against thee I have weighed my soul,
And, losing thee, have lost my soul as well.
I have cursed God, and trampled on His cross;
Earth has no measurement for all my loss,
But I shall learn to measure it in hell!'
~ Edith Nesbit,
1498:The Beggar's Daughter Of Bednall-Green
Part the First
Itt was a blind beggar, had long lost his sight,
He had a faire daughter of bewty most bright;
And many a gallant brave suiter had shee,
For none was soe comelye as pretty Bessee.
And though shee was of favor most faire,
Yett seing shee was but a poor beggars heyre,
Of ancyent housekeepers despised was shee,
Whose sonnes came as suitors to prettye Bessee.
Wherefore in great sorrow faire Bessy did say,
'Good father, and mother, let me goe away
To seeke out my fortune, whatever itt bee.'
This suite then they granted to prettye Bessee.
Then Bessy, that was of bewtye soe bright,
All cladd in gray russett, and late in the night
From father and mother alone parted shee,
Who sighed and sobbed for prettye Bessee.
Shee went till shee came to Stratford-le-Bow,
Then knew shee not whither, nor which way to goe;
With teares shee lamented her hard destinie,
So sadd and soe heavy was pretty Bessee.
Shee kept on her journey untill it was day,
And went unto Rumford along the hye way;
Where at the Queenes Armes entertained was shee,
Soe faire and wel favoured was pretty Bessee.
Shee had not beene there a month to an end,
But master and mistres and all was her friend;
And every brave gallant that once did her see
Was straight-way enamoured of pretty Bessee.
Great gifts they did send her of silver and gold,
And in their songs daylye her love was extold;
Her beawtye was blazed in every degree,
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Soe faire and soe comelye was pretty Bessee.
The young men of Rumford in her had their joy;
Shee shewed herself courteous, and modestlye coye,
And at her commandment still wold they bee,
Soe fayre and so comelye was pretty Bessee.
Foure suitors att once unto her did goe,
They craved her favor, but still she sayd noe;
'I wild not wish gentles to marry with mee,-'
Yett ever they honored pretty Bessee.
The first of them was a gallant young knight,
And he came unto her disguisde in the night;
The second a gentleman of good degree,
Who wooed and sued for prettye Bessee.
A merchant of London, whose wealth was not small,
He was the third suiter, and proper withall;
Her masters owne sonne the fourth man must bee,
Who swore he would dye for pretty Bessee.
'And, if thou wilt marry with mee,' quoth the knight,
'Ile make thee a ladye with joy and delight;
My hart's so enthralled by thy bewtie,
That soone I shall dye for prettye Bessee.'
The gentleman sayd, 'Come marry with mee,
As fine as a ladye my Bessy shal bee;
My life is distressed, O heare me,' quoth hee,
'And grant me thy love, my prettye Bessee.'
'Let me bee thy husband,' the merchant cold say,
'Thou shalt live in London both gallant and gay;
My shippes shall bring home rych jewells for thee,
And I will for ever love pretty Bessee.'
Then Bessy shee sighed, and thus shee did say;
'My father and mother I meane to obey;
First gett their good will, and be faithfull to me,
And you shall enjoye your prettye Bessee.'
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To every one this answer shee made;
Wherfore unto her they joyfullye sayd,
'This thing to fulfill we all doe agree;
But where dwells thy father, my prettye Bessee?'
'My father,' shee said, 'is soone to be seene;
The seely blind beggar of Bednall-greene,
That daylye sits begging for charitie,
He is the good father of pretty Bessee.
'His markes and his tokens are knowen very well;
He always is led with a dogg and a bell;
A seely olde man, God knoweth, is hee,
Yet hee is the father of pretty Bessee.'
'Nay then,' quoth the merchant, 'thou art not for mee;'
'Nor,' quoth the innholder, 'my wiffe thou shalt bee;'
'I lothe,' sayd the gentle, 'a beggars degree,
And therefore, adewe, my pretty Bessee!'
'Why then,' quoth the knight, 'hap better or worse,
I waighe not true love by the waight of the pursse,
And bewtye is bewtye in every degree;
Then welcome unto me, my pretty Bessee.
'With thee to thy father forthwith I will goe.'
'Nay soft,' quoth his kinsmen, 'it must not be soe:
A poor beggars daughter noe ladye shal bee;
Then take thy adew of pretty Bessee.'
But soone after this, by breake of the day,
The knight had from Rumford stole Bessy away;
The younge men of Rumford, as thicke might bee,
Rode after to feitch againe pretty Bessee.
As swifte as the winde to ryde they were seene,
Until they came neare unto Rednall-greene,
And as the knight lighted most courteouslie,
They all fought against him for pretty Bessee.
But rescew came speedilye over the plaine,
Or else the young knight for his love had been slaine;
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This fray being ended, then straitway he see
His kinsmen come rayling at pretty Bessee.
Then spake the blind beggar, 'Although I bee poore,
Yett rayle not against my child at my own doore;
Though shee be not decked in velvett and pearle,
Yet will I dropp angells with you for my girle;
'And then if my gold may better her birthe,
And equall the gold that you lay on the earth,
Then neyther rayle nor grudge you to see
The blind beggars daughter a lady to bee.
'But first you shall promise, and have itt well knowne,
The gold that you drop shall all be your owne.'
With that they replyed, 'Contented bee wee.'
'Then here's,' quoth the beggar, 'for pretty Bessee.'
With that an angell he cast on the ground,
And dropped, in angels, full three thousand pound;
And oftentimes itt was proved most plaine,
For the gentlemens one, the beggar droppt twayne:
Soe that the place wherin they did sitt
With gold it was covered every whitt;
The gentlemen then having dropt all their store,
Sayd, 'Now, beggar, hold, for wee have noe more.
'Thou hast fulfilled thy promise arright;'
'Then marry,' quoth he, 'my girle to this knight;
And heere,' added hee, 'I will now throwe you downe,
A hundred pounds more to buy her a gowne.'
The gentlemen all, that this treasure had seene,
Admired the beggar of Bednall-greene.
And all those that were her suitors before,
There fleshe for very anger they tore.
Thus was faire Besse matched to the knight,
And then made a ladye in others despite:
A fairer ladye there never was seene,
Than the blind beggars daughter of Bednall-greene.
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But of their sumptuous marriage and feast,
What brave lords and knights thither were prest,
The Second Fitt shall set forth to your sight,
With marveilous pleasure, and wished delight.
Part the Second
Off a blind beggars daughter most bright,
That late was betrothed unto a younge knight,
All the discourse therof you did see,
But now comes the wedding of pretty Bessee.
Within a gorgeous palace most brave,
Adorned with all the cost they cold have,
This wedding was kept most sumptuouslie,
And all for the creditt of pretty Bessee.
All kind of dainties and delicates sweete
Were bought for the banquet, as it was most meete;
Partridge, and plover, and venison most free,
Against the brave wedding of pretty Bessee.
This marriage through England was spread by report,
Soe that a great number thereto did resort,
Of nobles and gentles in every degree,
And all for the fame of prettye Bessee.
To church then went this gallant younge knight;
His bride followed after, an angell most bright,
With troopes of ladyes, the like nere was seene
As went with sweete Bessy of Bednall-greene.
This marryage being solempnized then,
With musicke performed by the skilfullest men,
The nobles and gentles sate downe at that tyde,
Each one admiring the beautifull bryde.
Now, after the sumptuous dinner was done,
To talke and to reason a number begunn,
They talkt of the blind beggars daughter most bright,
And what with his daughter he gave to the knight.
723
Then spake the nobles, 'Much marveil have wee
This jolly blind beggar wee cannot here see.'
'My Lords,' qouth the bride, 'my father's so base
He is loth with his presence these states to disgrace.'
'The prayse of a woman in questyon to bringe,
Before her own face, were a flattering thinge;
But wee thinke thy father's baseness,' quoth they,
'Might by thy bewtye be cleane put away.'
They had noe sooner these pleasant words spoke,
But in comes the beggar cladd in a silke cloke,
A faire velvet capp and a fether had hee,
And now a musicyan, forsooth, he wold bee.
He had a daintye lute under his arme,
He touched the strings, which made such a charme;
Saies, 'Please you to heare any musicke of mee,
Ile sing you a song of pretty Bessee.'
With that his lute he twanged straightway,
And thereon begann most sweetlye to play,
And after that lessons were playd two or three,
He strayn'd out this song most delicatlie:
'A poore beggars daughter did dwell on a greene,
Who for her fairenesse might well be a queene,
A blithe bonny lasse, and a daintye was shee,
And many one called her pretty Bessee.
'Her father hee had noe goods, nor noe land,
But beggd for a penny all day with his hand,
And yett to her marriage hee gave thousands three,
And still he hath somewhat for pretty Bessee.
'And if any one here her berth doe disdaine,
Her father is ready, with might and with maine,
To proove shee is come of noble degree,
Therfore never flout att prettye Bessee.'
With that the lords and the companye round
724
With harty laughter were readye to swound;
Att last said the lords, 'Full well wee may see,
The bride and the beggar's behoulden to thee.'
On this the bride all blushing did rise,
The pearlie dropps standing within her faire eyes;
'O pardon my father, grave nobles,' quoth shee,
'That throughe blind affection thus doteth on mee.'
'If this be thy father,' the nobles did say,
'Well may he be proud of this happy day,
Yett by his countenance well may wee see,
His birth and his fortune did never agree.
'And therfore, blind man, we pray thee bewray,
(And looke that the truth thou to us doe say),
Thy birth and thy parentage what itt may bee,
For the love that thou bearest to pretty Bessee.'
'Then give me leave, nobles and gentles, each one,
One song more to sing and then I have done;
And if that itt may not winn good report,
Then doe not give me a Groat for my sport:
'[Sir Simon de Montfort my subject shal bee;
Once chiefe of all the great barons was hee,
Yet fortune so cruelle this lorde did abase,
Now loste and forgotten are hee and his race.
'When the barons in armes did King Henrye oppose,
Sir Simon de Montfort their leader they chose;
A leader of courage undaunted was hee,
And oft-times he made their enemyes flee.
'At length in the battle on Evashame plaine
The barons were routed, and Montfort was slaine;
Most fatall that battel did prove unto thee,
Thoughe thou wast not borne then, my prettye Bessee!
'Along with the nobles that fell at that tyde,
His eldest son Henrye, who fought by his side,
Was fellde by a blowe he receivde in the fight!
725
A blowe that deprivde him for ever of sight.
'Among the dead bodyes all lifelesse he laye,
Till evening drewe on of the following daye,
When by a yong ladye discoverd was hee;
And this was thy mother, my prettye Bessee!
'A barons faire daughter stept forth in the nighte
To search for her father who fell in the fight,
And seeing yong Montfort, where gasping he laye,
Was moved with pitye and brought him awaye.
'In secrette she nurst him and swaged his paine,
While he throughe the realme was beleevd to be slaine;
At lengthe his faire bride she consented to bee,
And made him glad father of prettye Bessee.
'And nowe lest oure foes our lives sholde betraye,
We clothed ourselves in beggars arraye;
Her jewelles shee solde, and hither came wee;
All our comfort and care was our prettye Bessee.]
'And here have wee lived in fortunes despite,
Thoughe poore, yet contented, with humble delighte:
Full forty winters thus have I beene
A silly blind beggar of Bednall-greene.
'And here, noble lordes, is ended the song
Of one that once to your own ranke did belong;
And thus have you learned a secrette from mee,
That ne'er had beene knowne but for prettye Bessee.'
Now when the faire companye everye one
Had heard the strange tale in the song he had showne,
They all were amazed, as well they might bee,
Both at the blinde beggar and pretty Bessee.
With that the faire bride they all did embrace,
Saying, 'Sure thou art come of an honourable race;
Thy father likewise is of noble degree,
And thou art well worthy a lady to bee.'
726
Thus was the feast ended with joye and delighte;
A bridegroome most happy then was the young knighte,
In joy and felicitie long lived hee,
All with his faire ladye, the pretty Bessee.
~ Anonymous Olde English,
1499:A Hymn In Honour Of Beauty
Ah whither, Love, wilt thou now carry me?
What wontless fury dost thou now inspire
Into my feeble breast, too full of thee?
Whilst seeking to aslake thy raging fire,
Thou in me kindlest much more great desire,
And up aloft above my strength dost raise
The wondrous matter of my fire to praise.
That as I erst in praise of thine own name,
So now in honour of thy mother dear,
An honourable hymn I eke should frame,
And with the brightness of her beauty clear,
The ravish'd hearts of gazeful men might rear
To admiration of that heavenly light,
From whence proceeds such soul-enchanting might.
Thereto do thou, great goddess, queen of beauty,
Mother of love, and of all world's delight,
Without whose sovereign grace and kindly duty
Nothing on earth seems fair to fleshly sight,
Do thou vouchsafe with thy love-kindling light
T' illuminate my dim and dulled eyne,
And beautify this sacred hymn of thine:
That both to thee, to whom I mean it most,
And eke to her, whose fair immortal beam
Hath darted fire into my feeble ghost,
That now it wasted is with woes extreme,
It may so please, that she at length will stream
Some dew of grace into my withered heart,
After long sorrow and consuming smart.
WHAT time this world's great Workmaster did cast
To make all things such as we now behold,
It seems that he before his eyes had plac'd
A goodly pattern, to whose perfect mould
He fashion'd them as comely as he could;
That now so fair and seemly they appear,
As nought may be amended anywhere.
That wondrous pattern, wheresoe'er it be,
Whether in earth laid up in secret store,
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see
With sinful eyes, for fear it to deflore,
Is perfect Beauty, which all men adore;
Whose face and feature doth so much excel
All mortal sense, that none the same may tell.
Thereof as every earthly thing partakes
Or more or less, by influence divine,
So it more fair accordingly it makes,
And the gross matter of this earthly mine,
Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refine,
Doing away the dross which dims the light
Of that fair beam which therein is empight.
For, through infusion of celestial power,
The duller earth it quick'neth with delight,
And lifeful spirits privily doth pour
Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight
They seem to please. That is thy sovereign might,
O Cyprian queen, which flowing from the beam
Of thy bright star, thou into them dost stream.
That is the thing which giveth pleasant grace
To all things fair, that kindleth lively fire,
Light of thy lamp, which, shining in the face,
Thence to the soul darts amorous desire,
And robs the hearts of those which it admire;
Therewith thou pointest thy son's poison'd arrow,
That wounds the life, and wastes the inmost marrow.
How vainly then do idle wits invent,
That beauty is nought else but mixture made
Of colours fair, and goodly temp'rament
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
And pass away, like to a summer's shade;
Or that it is but comely composition
Of parts well measur'd, with meet disposition.
Hath white and red in it such wondrous power,
That it can pierce through th' eyes unto the heart,
And therein stir such rage and restless stour,
As nought but death can stint his dolour's smart?
Or can proportion of the outward part
Move such affection in the inward mind,
That it can rob both sense and reason blind?
Why do not then the blossoms of the field,
Which are array'd with much more orient hue,
And to the sense most dainty odours yield,
Work like impression in the looker's view?
Or why do not fair pictures like power shew,
In which oft-times we nature see of art
Excell'd, in perfect limning every part?
But ah, believe me, there is more than so,
That works such wonders in the minds of men;
I, that have often prov'd, too well it know,
And whoso list the like assays to ken,
Shall find by trial, and confess it then,
That beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,
An outward shew of things, that only seem.
For that same goodly hue of white and red,
With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay,
And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread
Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away
To that they were, even to corrupted clay;
That golden wire, those sparkling stars so bright,
Shall turn to dust; and lose their goodly light.
But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray
That light proceeds, which kindleth lovers' fire,
Shall never be extinguish'd nor decay;
But when the vital spirits do expire,
Unto her native planet shall retire;
For it is heavenly born and cannot die,
Being a parcel of the purest sky.
For when the soul, the which derived was,
At first, out of that great immortal Spright,
By whom all live to love, whilom did pass
10
Down from the top of purest heaven's height
To be embodied here, it then took light
And lively spirits from that fairest star,
Which lights the world forth from his fiery car.
Which power retaining still or more or less,
When she in fleshly seed is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impress,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit for herself, adorning it with spoil
Of th' heavenly riches which she robb'd erewhile.
Thereof it comes that these fair souls, which have
The most resemblance of that heavenly light,
Frame to themselves most beautiful and brave
Their fleshly bower, most fit for their delight,
And the gross matter by a sovereign might
Tempers so trim, that it may well be seen
A palace fit for such a virgin queen.
So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For of the soul the body form doth take:
For soul is form, and doth the body make.
Therefore wherever that thou dost behold
A comely corpse, with beauty fair endued,
Know this for certain, that the same doth hold
A beauteous soul, with fair conditions thewed,
Fit to receive the seed of virtue strewed.
For all that fair is, is by nature good;
That is a sign to know the gentle blood.
Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd,
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness in the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground,
11
That will not yield unto her form's direction,
But is deform'd with some foul imperfection.
And oft it falls, (ay me, the more to rue)
That goodly beauty, albe heavenly born,
Is foul abus'd, and that celestial hue,
Which doth the world with her delight adorn,
Made but the bait of sin, and sinners' scorn,
Whilst every one doth seek and sue to have it,
But every one doth seek but to deprave it.
Yet nathëmore is that fair beauty's blame,
But theirs that do abuse it unto ill:
Nothing so good, but that through guilty shame
May be corrupt, and wrested unto will:
Natheless the soul is fair and beauteous still,
However flesh{"e}s fault it filthy make;
For things immortal no corruption take.
But ye fair dames, the world's dear ornaments
And lively images of heaven's light,
Let not your beams with such disparagements
Be dimm'd, and your bright glory dark'ned quite;
But mindful still of your first country's sight,
Do still preserve your first informed grace,
Whose shadow yet shines in your beauteous face.
Loathe that foul blot, that hellish firebrand,
Disloyal lust, fair beauty's foulest blame,
That base affections, which your ears would bland,
Commend to you by love's abused name,
But is indeed the bondslave of defame;
Which will the garland of your glory mar,
And quench the light of your bright shining star.
But gentle Love, that loyal is and true,
Will more illumine your resplendent ray,
And add more brightness to your goodly hue,
From light of his pure fire; which, by like way
Kindled of yours, your likeness doth display;
Like as two mirrors, by oppos'd reflection,
Do both express the face's first impression.
12
Therefore, to make your beauty more appear,
It you behoves to love, and forth to lay
That heavenly riches which in you ye bear,
That men the more admire their fountain may;
For else what booteth that celestial ray,
If it in darkness be enshrined ever,
That it of loving eyes be viewed never?
But, in your choice of loves, this well advise,
That likest to yourselves ye them select,
The which your forms' first source may sympathize,
And with like beauty's parts be inly deckt;
For, if you loosely love without respect,
It is no love, but a discordant war,
Whose unlike parts amongst themselves do jar.
For love is a celestial harmony
Of likely hearts compos'd of stars' concent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,
To work each other's joy and true content,
Which they have harbour'd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here belov'd to be.
Then wrong it were that any other twain
Should in love's gentle band combined be
But those whom Heaven did at first ordain,
And made out of one mould the more t' agree;
For all that like the beauty which they see,
Straight do not love; for love is not so light
As straight to burn at first beholder's sight.
But they, which love indeed, look otherwise,
With pure regard and spotless true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes
A more refined form, which they present
Unto their mind, void of all blemishment;
Which it reducing to her first perfection,
Beholdeth free from flesh's frail infection.
And then conforming it unto the light,
13
Which in itself it hath remaining still,
Of that first Sun, yet sparkling in his sight,
Thereof he fashions in his higher skill
An heavenly beauty to his fancy's will;
And it embracing in his mind entire,
The mirror of his own thought doth admire.
Which seeing now so inly fair to be,
As outward it appeareth to the eye,
And with his spirit's proportion to agree,
He thereon fixeth all his fantasy,
And fully setteth his felicity;
Counting it fairer than it is indeed,
And yet indeed her fairness doth exceed.
For lovers' eyes more sharply sighted be
Than other men's, and in dear love's delight
See more than any other eyes can see,
Through mutual receipt of beam{"e}s bright,
Which carry privy message to the spright,
And to their eyes that inmost fair display,
As plain as light discovers dawning day.
Therein they see, through amorous eye-glances,
Armies of loves still flying to and fro,
Which dart at them their little fiery lances;
Whom having wounded, back again they go,
Carrying compassion to their lovely foe;
Who, seeing her fair eyes' so sharp effect,
Cures all their sorrows with one sweet aspect.
In which how many wonders do they rede
To their conceit, that others never see,
Now of her smiles, with which their souls they feed,
Like gods with nectar in their banquets free;
Now of her looks, which like to cordials be;
But when her words' embássade forth she sends,
Lord, how sweet music that unto them lends.
Sometimes upon her forehead they behold
A thousand graces masking in delight;
Sometimes within her eyelids they unfold
14
Ten thousand sweet belgards, which to their sight
Do seem like twinkling stars in frosty night;
But on her lips, like rosy buds in May,
So many millions of chaste pleasures play.
All those, O Cytherea, and thousands more
Thy handmaids be, which do on thee attend,
To deck thy beauty with their dainties' store,
That may it more to mortal eyes commend,
And make it more admir'd of foe and friend:
That in men's hearts thou may'st thy throne install,
And spread thy lovely kingdom over all.
Then Iö, triumph! O great Beauty's Queen,
Advance the banner of thy conquest high,
That all this world, the which thy vassals bene,
May draw to thee, and with due fealty
Adore the power of thy great majesty,
Singing this hymn in honour of thy name,
Compil'd by me, which thy poor liegeman am.
In lieu whereof grant, O great sovereign,
That she whose conquering beauty doth captive
My trembling heart in her eternal chain,
One drop of grace at length will to me give,
That I her bounden thrall by her may live,
And this same life, which first fro me she reaved,
May owe to her, of whom I it received.
And you, fair Venus' darling, my dear dread,
Fresh flower of grace, great goddess of my life,
When your fair eyes these fearful lines shall read,
Deign to let fall one drop of due relief,
That may recure my heart's long pining grief,
And shew what wondrous power your beauty hath,
That can restore a damned wight from death.
~ Edmund Spenser,
1500:An Hymn In Honour Of Beauty
AH whither, Love, wilt thou now carry me?
What wontless fury dost thou now inspire
Into my feeble breast, too full of thee?
Whilst seeking to aslake thy raging fire,
Thou in me kindlest much more great desire,
And up aloft above my strength dost raise
The wondrous matter of my fire to praise.
That as I erst in praise of thine own name,
So now in honour of thy mother dear,
An honourable hymn I eke should frame,
And with the brightness of her beauty clear,
The ravish'd hearts of gazeful men might rear
To admiration of that heavenly light,
From whence proceeds such soul-enchanting might.
Thereto do thou, great goddess, queen of beauty,
Mother of love, and of all world's delight,
Without whose sovereign grace and kindly duty
Nothing on earth seems fair to fleshly sight,
Do thou vouchsafe with thy love-kindling light
T' illuminate my dim and dulled eyne,
And beautify this sacred hymn of thine:
That both to thee, to whom I mean it most,
And eke to her, whose fair immortal beam
Hath darted fire into my feeble ghost,
That now it wasted is with woes extreme,
It may so please, that she at length will stream
Some dew of grace into my withered heart,
After long sorrow and consuming smart.
WHAT time this world's great Workmaster did cast
To make all things such as we now behold,
It seems that he before his eyes had plac'd
A goodly pattern, to whose perfect mould
He fashion'd them as comely as he could;
That now so fair and seemly they appear,
As nought may be amended anywhere.
35
That wondrous pattern, wheresoe'er it be,
Whether in earth laid up in secret store,
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see
With sinful eyes, for fear it to deflore,
Is perfect Beauty, which all men adore;
Whose face and feature doth so much excel
All mortal sense, that none the same may tell.
Thereof as every earthly thing partakes
Or more or less, by influence divine,
So it more fair accordingly it makes,
And the gross matter of this earthly mine,
Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refine,
Doing away the dross which dims the light
Of that fair beam which therein is empight.
For, through infusion of celestial power,
The duller earth it quick'neth with delight,
And lifeful spirits privily doth pour
Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight
They seem to please. That is thy sovereign might,
O Cyprian queen, which flowing from the beam
Of thy bright star, thou into them dost stream.
That is the thing which giveth pleasant grace
To all things fair, that kindleth lively fire,
Light of thy lamp, which, shining in the face,
Thence to the soul darts amorous desire,
And robs the hearts of those which it admire;
Therewith thou pointest thy son's poison'd arrow,
That wounds the life, and wastes the inmost marrow.
How vainly then do idle wits invent,
That beauty is nought else but mixture made
Of colours fair, and goodly temp'rament
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
And pass away, like to a summer's shade;
Or that it is but comely composition
Of parts well measur'd, with meet disposition.
Hath white and red in it such wondrous power,
36
That it can pierce through th' eyes unto the heart,
And therein stir such rage and restless stour,
As nought but death can stint his dolour's smart?
Or can proportion of the outward part
Move such affection in the inward mind,
That it can rob both sense and reason blind?
Why do not then the blossoms of the field,
Which are array'd with much more orient hue,
And to the sense most dainty odours yield,
Work like impression in the looker's view?
Or why do not fair pictures like power shew,
In which oft-times we nature see of art
Excell'd, in perfect limning every part?
But ah, believe me, there is more than so,
That works such wonders in the minds of men;
I, that have often prov'd, too well it know,
And whoso list the like assays to ken,
Shall find by trial, and confess it then,
That beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,
An outward shew of things, that only seem.
For that same goodly hue of white and red,
With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay,
And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread
Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away
To that they were, even to corrupted clay;
That golden wire, those sparkling stars so bright,
Shall turn to dust; and lose their goodly light.
But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray
That light proceeds, which kindleth lovers' fire,
Shall never be extinguish'd nor decay;
But when the vital spirits do expire,
Unto her native planet shall retire;
For it is heavenly born and cannot die,
Being a parcel of the purest sky.
For when the soul, the which derived was,
At first, out of that great immortal Spright,
By whom all live to love, whilom did pass
37
Down from the top of purest heaven's height
To be embodied here, it then took light
And lively spirits from that fairest star,
Which lights the world forth from his fiery car.
Which power retaining still or more or less,
When she in fleshly seed is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impress,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit for herself, adorning it with spoil
Of th' heavenly riches which she robb'd erewhile.
Thereof it comes that these fair souls, which have
The most resemblance of that heavenly light,
Frame to themselves most beautiful and brave
Their fleshly bower, most fit for their delight,
And the gross matter by a sovereign might
Tempers so trim, that it may well be seen
A palace fit for such a virgin queen.
So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For of the soul the body form doth take:
For soul is form, and doth the body make.
Therefore wherever that thou dost behold
A comely corpse, with beauty fair endued,
Know this for certain, that the same doth hold
A beauteous soul, with fair conditions thewed,
Fit to receive the seed of virtue strewed.
For all that fair is, is by nature good;
That is a sign to know the gentle blood.
Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd,
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness in the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground,
38
That will not yield unto her form's direction,
But is deform'd with some foul imperfection.
And oft it falls, (ay me, the more to rue)
That goodly beauty, albe heavenly born,
Is foul abus'd, and that celestial hue,
Which doth the world with her delight adorn,
Made but the bait of sin, and sinners' scorn,
Whilst every one doth seek and sue to have it,
But every one doth seek but to deprave it.
Yet nathëmore is that fair beauty's blame,
But theirs that do abuse it unto ill:
Nothing so good, but that through guilty shame
May be corrupt, and wrested unto will:
Natheless the soul is fair and beauteous still,
However flesh{"e}s fault it filthy make;
For things immortal no corruption take.
But ye fair dames, the world's dear ornaments
And lively images of heaven's light,
Let not your beams with such disparagements
Be dimm'd, and your bright glory dark'ned quite;
But mindful still of your first country's sight,
Do still preserve your first informed grace,
Whose shadow yet shines in your beauteous face.
Loathe that foul blot, that hellish firebrand,
Disloyal lust, fair beauty's foulest blame,
That base affections, which your ears would bland,
Commend to you by love's abused name,
But is indeed the bondslave of defame;
Which will the garland of your glory mar,
And quench the light of your bright shining star.
But gentle Love, that loyal is and true,
Will more illumine your resplendent ray,
And add more brightness to your goodly hue,
From light of his pure fire; which, by like way
Kindled of yours, your likeness doth display;
Like as two mirrors, by oppos'd reflection,
Do both express the face's first impression.
39
Therefore, to make your beauty more appear,
It you behoves to love, and forth to lay
That heavenly riches which in you ye bear,
That men the more admire their fountain may;
For else what booteth that celestial ray,
If it in darkness be enshrined ever,
That it of loving eyes be viewed never?
But, in your choice of loves, this well advise,
That likest to yourselves ye them select,
The which your forms' first source may sympathize,
And with like beauty's parts be inly deckt;
For, if you loosely love without respect,
It is no love, but a discordant war,
Whose unlike parts amongst themselves do jar.
For love is a celestial harmony
Of likely hearts compos'd of stars' concent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,
To work each other's joy and true content,
Which they have harbour'd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here belov'd to be.
Then wrong it were that any other twain
Should in love's gentle band combined be
But those whom Heaven did at first ordain,
And made out of one mould the more t' agree;
For all that like the beauty which they see,
Straight do not love; for love is not so light
As straight to burn at first beholder's sight.
But they, which love indeed, look otherwise,
With pure regard and spotless true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes
A more refined form, which they present
Unto their mind, void of all blemishment;
Which it reducing to her first perfection,
Beholdeth free from flesh's frail infection.
And then conforming it unto the light,
40
Which in itself it hath remaining still,
Of that first Sun, yet sparkling in his sight,
Thereof he fashions in his higher skill
An heavenly beauty to his fancy's will;
And it embracing in his mind entire,
The mirror of his own thought doth admire.
Which seeing now so inly fair to be,
As outward it appeareth to the eye,
And with his spirit's proportion to agree,
He thereon fixeth all his fantasy,
And fully setteth his felicity;
Counting it fairer than it is indeed,
And yet indeed her fairness doth exceed.
For lovers' eyes more sharply sighted be
Than other men's, and in dear love's delight
See more than any other eyes can see,
Through mutual receipt of beam{"e}s bright,
Which carry privy message to the spright,
And to their eyes that inmost fair display,
As plain as light discovers dawning day.
Therein they see, through amorous eye-glances,
Armies of loves still flying to and fro,
Which dart at them their little fiery lances;
Whom having wounded, back again they go,
Carrying compassion to their lovely foe;
Who, seeing her fair eyes' so sharp effect,
Cures all their sorrows with one sweet aspect.
In which how many wonders do they rede
To their conceit, that others never see,
Now of her smiles, with which their souls they feed,
Like gods with nectar in their banquets free;
Now of her looks, which like to cordials be;
But when her words' embássade forth she sends,
Lord, how sweet music that unto them lends.
Sometimes upon her forehead they behold
A thousand graces masking in delight;
Sometimes within her eyelids they unfold
41
Ten thousand sweet belgards, which to their sight
Do seem like twinkling stars in frosty night;
But on her lips, like rosy buds in May,
So many millions of chaste pleasures play.
All those, O Cytherea, and thousands more
Thy handmaids be, which do on thee attend,
To deck thy beauty with their dainties' store,
That may it more to mortal eyes commend,
And make it more admir'd of foe and friend:
That in men's hearts thou may'st thy throne install,
And spread thy lovely kingdom over all.
Then Iö, triumph! O great Beauty's Queen,
Advance the banner of thy conquest high,
That all this world, the which thy vassals bene,
May draw to thee, and with due fealty
Adore the power of thy great majesty,
Singing this hymn in honour of thy name,
Compil'd by me, which thy poor liegeman am.
In lieu whereof grant, O great sovereign,
That she whose conquering beauty doth captive
My trembling heart in her eternal chain,
One drop of grace at length will to me give,
That I her bounden thrall by her may live,
And this same life, which first fro me she reaved,
May owe to her, of whom I it received.
And you, fair Venus' darling, my dear dread,
Fresh flower of grace, great goddess of my life,
When your fair eyes these fearful lines shall read,
Deign to let fall one drop of due relief,
That may recure my heart's long pining grief,
And shew what wondrous power your beauty hath,
That can restore a damned wight from death.
~ Edmund Spenser,

IN CHAPTERS [300/332]



  153 Poetry
   39 Fiction
   34 Integral Yoga
   29 Occultism
   15 Mythology
   14 Yoga
   12 Philosophy
   11 Christianity
   7 Psychology
   7 Philsophy
   7 Mysticism
   3 Hinduism
   3 Baha i Faith
   2 Sufism
   2 Islam
   2 Buddhism
   1 Kabbalah
   1 Alchemy


   25 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   23 Sri Aurobindo
   17 The Mother
   16 Robert Browning
   16 James George Frazer
   16 H P Lovecraft
   14 William Wordsworth
   13 John Keats
   12 Sri Ramakrishna
   12 Li Bai
   11 Ovid
   10 Aleister Crowley
   9 Satprem
   9 Anonymous
   7 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   5 Walt Whitman
   5 Rabindranath Tagore
   5 Friedrich Schiller
   4 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   4 Joseph Campbell
   4 Jorge Luis Borges
   4 Aldous Huxley
   3 Vyasa
   3 Saint Teresa of Avila
   3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   3 Nirodbaran
   3 Mirabai
   3 Edgar Allan Poe
   3 Baha u llah
   2 William Butler Yeats
   2 Swami Krishnananda
   2 Solomon ibn Gabirol
   2 Saint John of Climacus
   2 Plotinus
   2 Muhammad
   2 Jorge Luis Borges
   2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   2 Jalaluddin Rumi
   2 Farid ud-Din Attar
   2 Carl Jung
   2 Bokar Rinpoche
   2 A B Purani


   25 Shelley - Poems
   16 The Golden Bough
   16 Lovecraft - Poems
   16 Browning - Poems
   14 Wordsworth - Poems
   13 Keats - Poems
   12 Li Bai - Poems
   11 Words Of Long Ago
   11 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   11 Metamorphoses
   8 Savitri
   7 Liber ABA
   7 Emerson - Poems
   6 The Bible
   6 Anonymous - Poems
   5 Whitman - Poems
   5 Schiller - Poems
   4 The Secret Doctrine
   4 The Perennial Philosophy
   4 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   4 Tagore - Poems
   4 Labyrinths
   4 Collected Poems
   4 5.1.01 - Ilion
   3 Vishnu Purana
   3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   3 Poe - Poems
   3 Magick Without Tears
   2 Yeats - Poems
   2 The Way of Perfection
   2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
   2 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
   2 The Book of Certitude
   2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
   2 Talks
   2 Selected Fictions
   2 Rumi - Poems
   2 Quran
   2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   2 Crowley - Poems
   2 Agenda Vol 06
   2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah


0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  playing: "Garuda", and the palace and river. What do
  they mean?
  The palace and river were the image of a moment from one of
  your past lives.

0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I had the last vision yesterday evening. You were much taller than you are now; you were wearing the orange robe, and you were backed up against a door of bronze, a bronze door like the door of a temple or a palace but at the same time it was symbolic (it was a fact, it actually took place like this, but at the same time it was symbolic). And unfortunately, it didnt last because I was disturbed. But it contained the key.
   I was VERY HAPPY with the vision, for there was a great POWER, though it was rather terrible. But it was magnificent. When I saw that, I This vision was given to me because I had concentrated with a will to find the solution, a true solution, an enduring and permanent solution that is, I had this spontaneous gratitude which goes out to the Grace when it brings some effective help. Only, what followed was interrupted by someone who came to call me and that cut it short, but it will return.

0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   No. Are you thinking of Buddha? (Ah, I thought of this two or three days ago; it came suddenly and I wondered why!) I remembered that before Buddha left his home, he passed through the rooms of the palace and saw his wife and parents sleeping and it felt to him as though they were dead. Thats where we hear of sleep being like death.
   But isnt it like death? When you are asleep, you arent in your body: everything else goes out just as it does at the time of death, doesnt it?

0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Almost all my memories of past lives came like that; the particular being reincarnated in me rises to the surface and begins acting as if it were all on its own! Once in Italy, when I was fifteen, it happened in an extraordinary way. But that time I did some research. I was in Venice with my mother and I researched in museums and archives, and I discovered my name, and the names of the other people involved. I had relived a scene in the Ducal palace, but relived it in such a such an absolutely intense way (laughinga scene where I was being strangled and thrown into a canal!) that my mother had to hurry me out of there as fast as she could! But that experience I wrote down, so the exact memory has been kept (I didnt write down the other experiences, so the details have all faded away, but this one was noted, although I didnt include any names). The next morning I did some research and uncovered the whole story. I told it all to Thon and Madame Thon, and he also had the memory of a past life there, during the same period. And as a matter of fact, I had seen a portrait there that was the spitting image of Thon! The portrait of one of the doges. It was absolutely (it was a Titian) absolutely Thon! HIS portrait, you know, as if it had just been done.5
   All those kinds of things came to me just like that, without my looking for them, wanting them, or understanding them, without doing any sort of discipline, nothingit was absolutely spontaneous. And they just kept on coming and coming and coming.
  --
   Mother later tried to recall the names again, without success: "Those sculptor brothers did a lot of work on the palace at Versailles.... And I am not sure if it wasn't Mme de Montespan. I don't remember any more. This kind of thing should not be talked about vaguely. At the time it was precise, exact: I knew all the names, all the details, all the words but I never wrote it down and now it's gone. And these things shouldn't be told approximately.
   I'll do some research on these sculptor brothers.

0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   They sent some papers to the Ashram, asking whether we had gold objects other than jewels! So, (laughing) I could just see a scene in the palaces of old: gold candelabra, the throne!
   So ridiculous!

0 1965-06-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I. in ancient Egypt. A temple or palace of ancient Egypt. Light-and fresh-colored paintings on the very high walls. Clear light. About the child, very bold, independent and playful, I hear the end of a sentence: Such is the will oftep. The entire name is uttered very clearly, but when I got up (too abruptly), only the syllable tep was retained by the memory of the waking consciousness. It was the tutor speaking to me about the child. I am the Pharaohs wife or the high priestess of the temple, with full authority.
   That was my first memory on waking up.
  --
   Its a note on Amenhotep: Amenhotep III is the builder of Thebes and Luxor. His palace, south of Thebes, was built with sun-dried bricks covered with painted stucco. His wife, Taia, seems to have come from a modest family, but was showered with honours by him and their son. The son succeeded his father under the name of Amenhotep IV. He was a religious reformer who replaced the cult of Ammon with that of Aton (the Sun). He took the name of Akhenaton. [Encyclopedia Britannica]
   Thats the one.

0 1965-06-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So in that park I had seen the Pavilion of Love (but I dont like to use that word because men have turned it into something ludicrous); I am referring to the principle of divine Love. But it has been changed: it will be the Pavilion of the Mother; but not this (Mother points to herself): the Mother, the true Mother, the principle of the Mother. (I say Mother because Sri Aurobindo used the word, otherwise I would have put something else I would have put creative principle or realizing principle or something of that sort.) And it will be a small building, not a big one, with just a meditation room downstairs, with columns and probably a circular shape (I say probably because I am leaving it for R. to decide). Upstairs, the top floor will be a room, and the roof will be a covered terrace. Do you know the old Indian Mogul miniatures with palaces in which there are terraces and small roofs supported by columns? Do you know those old miniatures? Ive had hundreds of them in my hands. But this pavilion is very, very lovely: a small pavilion like this, with a roof over a terrace, and low walls against which there will be divans where people can sit and meditate in the open air in the evening or at night. And downstairs, at the very bottom, on the ground floor, simply a meditation rooma place with nothing in it. There would probably be, at the far end, something that would be a living light (perhaps the symbol2 made of living light), a constant light. Otherwise, a very calm, very silent place.
   Adjoining it would be a small dwelling (well, a dwelling that would still have three floors), but not of large dimensions, and it would be the house of H., who would act as keepershe would be the keeper of the pavilion (she wrote me a very nice letter, but she didnt understand all this, of course).

0 1966-12-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The water was at head level. All the palaces and museums were flooded and they say they were full of grime. So the students are now working to scrape everything clean. Theyre trying to dry the manuscripts. But lots of things have been definitively lost.
   That was one of the prophecies of the beginning of the century that Italy and England would go underwater.

0 1970-02-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But the best part is that theres no smuggling! The thing is that ten years ago, he bought from the Nizam of Hyderabad a magnificent palace which was used by the Begum, a very beautiful palace. It aroused jealousies and they harassed him out of it, anyway a loathsome affair. So they heaped all kinds of accusations on him, and for ten years they prevented him from returning to India.
   Oh! They told me to beware, as if they were doing me a great favor!

02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    Neighbouring proud palaces of perverted Power,
    Inhuman quarters and demoniac wards.

02.09 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern French, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   To have the queen always by his side the king must close the doors and windows of the lower storey of his palace and climb the stairs upward.
   The king must shed all fear. There will be no palace to live in but a bare rock upon which he will find the queen lying down.
   The king will understand that the higher consciousness must come down and touch and kiss the bleak earth-consciousness. The spirit must embrace the cold bare earth. Then only the human soul, the king free of his ego, will attain peace and felicity.

04.03 - The Call to the Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The palace woke to its own emptiness;
  The sovereign of its daily joys was far;

04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  At rest in the slumbering palaces of kings.
  Hamlet and village saw the fate-wain pass,

05.03 - Satyavan and Savitri, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Free in her boundless palace I have dwelt
  Indulged by the warm mother of us all,

06.01 - The Word of Fate, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  King Aswapati's palace to the winds
  In Madra, flowering up in delicate stone.
  --
  Where leaving her palace and riches and a throne
  My Savitri will dwell and bring in heaven.

07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A sky-topped flower-hung palace of the gods
  And all its scenes a smile on rapture's lips

07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In its viewless palace of veridical dreams
  That are bright shadows of the thoughts of God.

09.02 - Meditation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Collective meditation, of which the most external form is collective prayer, has been practised since ancient times for different reasons, in different ways, and with different purposes. Groups of persons, whether belonging to the same Church or not, come together to express a common feeling; in certain cases, it is to sing together in praise of God, to chant a hymn of gratitude, expressing love, adoration, thankfulness. In other cases,there are many historical examples of thispeople gather together for a common invocation, to ask something from the Divine in the hope that a prayer done collectively will have more effect than an individual prayer. Thus, in Europe prophets announced that in the year one thousand of grace there would be the end of the world; everywhere crowds assembled to implore the divine protection and to pray that the catastrophe might be averted. More recently in modern times, when the king of England, George VI, had an attack of pneumonia and was almost on the point of death, the British people gathered not only in churches but even in the streets in front of the royal palace, to pray in common and to ask God to save their king. This is of course a most external form, I could say, a most worldly meditation in community. Besides, in all groups of Initiation, in all spiritual schools of ancient times and naturally in modern times also, meditation in community has always been practised; here the purpose is evidently very different. People gather together to make a collective progress, to open themselves to a force, a light and an influence; it is somewhat like that which we all try to do here. There are two ways to proceed, and both are excellent. For individual meditation, first of all, one must prepare to meditate, that is to say, after sitting down in a posture, at the same time comfortable enough not to be too cramped, and not too comfortable either lest you should fall asleep, one establishes the calm and the silence, not only externally but internally and then one gathers as far as possible one's consciousness which is generally dispersed in all kinds of thoughts and preoccupations. One brings back the consciousness as completely as one can, and concentrates it in the region of the heart, towards the solar plexus, so that all the active energies which are in the head, all which make the brain active are turned and concentrated on this point. This may be done in a few seconds, or in a few minutes. It depends upon each one; when you have prepared yourself in this way, you have the choice between two attitudes: active and passive.
   What I call an active attitude is to concentrate on the person who guides the meditation with the will to open yourself to receive what is being given to you or to the force with which you are put in contact. It is active, because here there is a will which acts and an active concentration to open yourself to someone or something.

10.04 - Lord of Time, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Create and destroy the palace with joy
  Laughter-mixed kindness then, let the poet see
  --
  Haas is always happy to break the car in the palace
  The intense joy of joy is in the abysmal heart

10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And, fissured houses, palace at once and jail,
  Rot while they reign and crumble before they crash;

1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
   how much greater, then, must be the detachment of Him Who holdeth so august a station! Forsake your palaces, and haste ye to gain admittance into His Kingdom. This, indeed, will profit you both in this world and in the next. To this testifieth the Lord of the realm on high, did ye but know it.
  How great the blessedness that awaiteth the king who will arise to aid My Cause in My kingdom, who will detach himself from all else but Me! Such a king is numbered with the companions of the Crimson Ark-the Ark which God hath prepared for the people of Baha. All must glorify his name, must reverence his station, and aid him to unlock the cities with the keys of My Name, the omnipotent Protector of all that inhabit the visible and invisible kingdoms. Such a king is the very eye of mankind, the luminous ornament on the brow of creation, the fountainhead of blessings unto the whole world. Offer up, O people of Baha, your substance, nay your very lives, for his assistance.
  --
  Say: O King of Berlin! Give ear unto the Voice calling from this manifest Temple: "Verily, there is none other God but Me, the Everlasting, the Peerless, the Ancient of Days." Take heed lest pride debar thee from recognizing the Dayspring of Divine Revelation, lest earthly desires shut thee out, as by a veil, from the Lord of the Throne above and of the earth below. Thus counselleth thee the Pen of the Most High. He, verily, is the Most Gracious, the All-Bountiful. Do thou remember the one (Napoleon III) whose power transcended thy power, and whose station excelled thy station. Where is he? Whither are gone the things he possessed? Take warning, and be not of them that are fast asleep. He it was who cast the Tablet of God behind him when We made known unto him what the hosts of tyranny had caused Us to suffer. Wherefore, disgrace assailed him from all sides, and he went down to dust in great loss. Think deeply, O King, concerning him, and concerning them who, like unto thee, have conquered cities and ruled over men. The All-Merciful brought them down from their palaces to their graves. Be warned, be of them who reflect.
  We have asked nothing from you. For the sake of God We, verily, exhort you, and will be patient as We have been patient in that which hath befallen Us at your hands, O concourse of kings!

1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Elaborate lives of each have been written by devotees, and there is one thing common to all threean omission. We hear nothing of Christ between the ages of twelve and thirty. Mohammed disappeared into a cave. Buddha left his palace, and went for a long while into the desert.
  Each of them, perfectly silent up to the time of the disappearance, came back and immediately began to preach a new law.

1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  try to break into Oriental palaces that our fathers never knew.
  Anyone who has lost the historical symbols and cannot be satis-

1.01 - BOOK THE FIRST, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  And, on the right and left, the palace bound;
  The commons where they can: the nobler sort
  --
  And with avenging flames, the palace burn'd.
  The tyrant in a fright, for shelter gains
  --
  And with perpetual urns his palace fill:
  To whom in brief, he thus imparts his will.
  --
  And wond'ring dolphins o'er the palace glide.
  On leaves, and masts of mighty oaks they brouze;
  --
  Wreath'd on the posts before his palace wait;
  And be the sacred guardian of the gate.
  --
  And saw the palace by the purple light.
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savages. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a
  _poor_ civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man, and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborers life, even if he is not encumbered with a family;estimating the pecuniary value of every mans labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before _his_ wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?
  It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.
  --
  Granted that the _majority_ are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And _if the civilized mans pursuits are no worthier than the savages, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?_
  But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found, that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and silent poor. The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich.
  To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which every where border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea

1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  Let us not even abhor or condemn the renunciation due merely to circumstances. I have seen men who had fled into exile meet the emperor by accident when he was on tour, and then join his company, enter his palace, and dine with him. I have seen seed casually fall on the earth and bear plenty of
  1 This means: If every baptized person is not saved, so the same can be said about monksnot all who have made the vow are real monks and will be saved. But I prefer to pass over this matter in silence.

1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  pearls of the fabled submarine palaces of the nixies, tritons, and
  water guardians; the jewels that give light to the demon cities of
  --
  of the royal vocationprovided his son with three palaces
  and forty thousand dancing girls to keep his mind attached to
  --
  in heart, he thereupon returned and ascended his palace.
  " 'Why has my son returned so quickly?' asked the king.
  --
  and ascended his palace.
  "And the king made the same inquiry and gave the same
  --
  and ascended his palace.
  "And the king made the same inquiry and gave the same or

1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose
  terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the

1.01 - Who is Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
  enchanted by the luxuries of palace life; instead, she vowed to show the way
  to liberation to millions of beings each day before eating breakfast, to millions more before eating lunch, and to even more before going to sleep at

1.024 - Affiliation With Larger Wholes, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The question may be asked, what is the higher real and what is the lower real? Here again, we have the analogy of the comparative reality between dream and waking. A beggar who has very little to eat in his waking state will not be sorry that he has missed his beautiful dinner in dream. Let us suppose a beggar was dreaming that he was an emperor, and a delicious meal was served to him in his dream palace, and suddenly he awakens to the discovery that he is a beggar on the street. Will he feel sorry and cry, "Oh, what has happened to me? I was an emperor. I was enjoying my life, but now I have become a beggar. It would be better to go back to that condition of emperorship." The beggar will not be grieved over his waking from dream. He will not think that he has lost something valuable, though it is true that he has lost a great thing that he has lost his kingdom, wealth and joys and is now sitting on the street like a beggar. From a certain viewpoint, it is a loss. But the beggar would rather be on the street with a crumb of bread in the waking condition than to be rejoicing in emperorship in dream. This is because a higher degree of reality is experienced by his consciousness during waking.
  What satisfies us is not dinner, or lunch, or a kingdom, but the degree of consciousness that is experienced. This is a very subtle point which we should not miss in our analysis. If a kingdom, retinue, army, dinner, lunch and what not can satisfy a person, then a dream kingdom would be much better than a waking state beggarship it would be better to go on sleeping and dreaming about emperorship than to live as a beggar in the waking state. But he would rather be a beggar in the waking state than be sleeping and dreaming of emperorship. The penury and hardship of the beggar in the waking condition does not in any way make that condition inferior to the dreaming state, notwithstanding the fact that in dream he had an imaginary kingdom to experience and enjoy.

1.025 - The Criterion, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  10. Blessed is He who, if He wills, can provide you with better than that—gardens beneath which rivers flow—and He will give you palaces.
  11. In fact, they have denied the Hour, and We have prepared for those who deny the Hour a Blaze.

1.027 - The Ant, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  44. It was said to her, “Go inside the palace.” And when she saw it, she thought it was a deep pond, and she bared her legs. He said, “It is a palace paved with glass.” She said, “My Lord, I have done wrong to myself, and I have submitted with Solomon, to God, Lord of the Worlds.”
  45. And We sent to Thamood their brother Saleh: “Worship God.” But they became two disputing factions.

1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  The Sun's bright palace, on high columns rais'd,
  With burnish'd gold and flaming jewels blaz'd;
  --
  To his suspected father's palace went,
  'Till pressing forward through the bright abode,

1.02 - Taras Tantra, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
  on the upper floor of the palace, the king and queen
  heard mysterious music coming from outside. The

1.02 - The Human Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  8.: Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it.
  9.: A soul which gives itself to prayer, either much or little, should on no account be kept within narrow bounds. Since God has given it such great dignity, permit it to wander at will through the rooms of the castle, from the lowest to the highest. Let it not force itself to remain for very long in the same mansion, even that of self-knowledge. Mark well, however, that self-knowledge is indispensable, even for those whom God takes to dwell in the same mansion with Himself. Nothing else, however elevated, perfects the soul which must never seek to forget its own nothingness. Let humility be always at work, like the bee at the honeycomb, or all will be lost. But, remember, the bee leaves its hive to fly in search of flowers and the soul should sometimes cease thinking of itself to rise in meditation on the grandeur and majesty of its God. It will learn its own baseness better thus than by self-contemplation, and will be freer from the reptiles which enter the first room where self-knowledge is acquired. The palmito here referred to is not a palm, but a shrub about four feet high and very dense with leaves, resembling palm leaves. The poorer classes and principally children dig it up by the roots, which they peel of its many layers until a sort of kernel is disclosed, which is eaten, not without relish, and is somewhat like a filbert in taste. See St. John of the Cross, Accent of Mount Carmel, bk. ii. ch, xiv, 3. Although it is a great grace from God to practise self-examination, yet 'too much is as bad as too little,' as they say; believe me, by God's help, we shall advance more by contemplating the Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves, poor creatures of earth that we are.
  --
  15 :You must notice that the light which comes from the King's palace hardly shines at all in these first mansions; although not as gloomy and black as the soul in mortal sin, yet they are in semi-darkness, and their inhabitants see scarcely anything. I cannot explain myself; I do not mean that this is the fault of the mansions themselves, but that the number of snakes, vipers, and venomous reptiles from outside the castle prevent souls entering them from seeing the light. They resemble a person entering a chamber full of brilliant sunshine, with eyes clogged and half closed with dust. Though the room itself is light, he cannot see because of his self-imposed impediment. In the same way, these fierce and wild beasts blind the eyes of the beginner, so that he sees nothing but them.
  16.: Such, it appears to me, is the soul which, though not in a state of mortal sin, is so worldly and preoccupied with earthly riches, honours, and affairs, that as I said, even if it sincerely wishes to enter into itself and enjoy the beauties of the castle, it is prevented by these distractions and seems unable to overcome so many obstacles. It is most important to withdraw from all unnecessary cares and business, as far as compatible with the duties of one's state of life, in order to enter the second mansion. This is so essential, that unless done immediately I think it impossible for any one ever to reach the principal room, or even to remain where he is without great risk of losing what is already gained; otherwise, although he is inside the castle, he will find it impossible to avoid being bitten some time or other by some of the very venomous creatures surrounding him.

1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  It was, however, a simple Darshan. One by one the sadhaks stood for a brief moment before the One-in-Two, and passed on quietly thrilled and exalted by their silent look and gracious smile. The feelings of the sadhaks can be imagined when they saw their beloved Master restored to his normal health! The Darshan was over within an hour, and when Sri Aurobindo was back in his room Dr. Rao remarked in his childlike manner, "Sir, you looked grand at the Darshan!" Sri Aurobindo smiled and we retorted, just to tease him, "At other times he doesn't?" Rao, nonplussed, replied, "No, no, I did not mean that." Truly, Rao had expressed the sentiments of hundreds of devotees who had a glimpse of him during the Darshan. What a grandeur and majesty in his simple silent pose! What a power, as if he held the whole world in the palm of his hand! If ever a human being could attain the stature of a god, he was there for all to see and be blessed by. Many have had a deep change after just one touch of his God-like magnificence. "A touch can alter the fixed front of Fate." Many had visions and boons they had long been seeking for, and for the sadhaks each Darshan was a step to a further milestone towards the Eternal. Sri Aurobindo had said: "Darshans are periods of great descents!" It was not for nothing that Hitler chose the 15th of August for his royal ascension in Buckingham palace and got the first heavy blow. Nor was it for nothing that India gained her independence on that immortal day.
  Now that Sri Aurobindo was physically all right, the Mother must find some work for him too! Most opportunely came a demand from the Arya Publishing House, Calcutta, for a book from Sri Aurobindo, preferably The Life Divine. The work had appeared long ago in the Arya and it could now be published in book form. The Mother caught hold of the idea and asked for his approval. Sri Aurobindo wanted to write one or two new chapters. So he set to work. A new writing table was made and placed in front of him across his bed, provided with three pens, two pencils and paper. For me it was a moment of great curiosity to see him at work. We had heard so much about the silent mind through which ideas, leaping down from above, passed directly into the pen, that I thought I could now put it to the test; as if one could see the silent mind as well as the invisible ideas descending one by one from above the ranges of the mind! At least I could see how he wrote. Was it at all like us, human beings, scrapping, stopping, thinking?

1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  Now when the king heard these words, the light became darkness in his sight and his heart burned for her as with a flame of fire, because he feared lest she should kill herself; and he was filled with perplexity concerning her affair and the kings her suitors. So he said to her: "If thou be determined not to marry and there be no help for it: abstain from going and coming in and out." Then he placed her in a house and shut her up in a chamber, appointing ten old women as duennas to guard her, and forbade her to go forth to the Seven palaces. Moreover, he made it appear that he was incensed against her, and sent letters to all the kings, giving them to know that she had been stricken with madness by the J i n n .
  With the hero and the heroine both following the negative way, and between them the continent of Asia, it will require a miracle to consummate the union of this eternally predestined pair. Whence can such a power come to break the life-negating spell and dissolve the wrath of the two childhood fathers?

1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  And this occurred in the wake of Petrus Hispanus (PetrusLucitanus), the later Pope John XXI (d. 1277), who had authored the first comprehensive European textbook on psychology (De anima), introducing via Islam and Spain the Aristotelian theory of the soul. Shortly thereafter, Duns Scotus (d. 1308) freed theology from the hieratic rigors of scholasticism by teaching the primacy of volition and emotion. And the blindness of antiquity to time inherent in its unperspectival, psychically-stressed world (which amounted to a virtual timelessness) gave way to the visualization of and openness to time with a quantifiable, spatial character. This was exemplified by the erection of the first public clock in the courtyard of Westminister palace in 1283,an event anticipated by Pope Sabinus, who in 604ordered the ringing of bells to announce the passing of the hours.
  We shall examine the question of time in detail later in our discussion; here we wish to point out that there is a forgotten but essential interconnection between time and the psyche. The closed horizons of antiquity's celestial cave-like vault express a soul not yet awakened to spatial time-consciousness and temporal quantification. The "heaven of the heart" mentioned by Origen was likewise a self-contained inner heaven first exteriorized into the heavenly landscapes of the frescoes by the brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti in the church of St. Francesco in Assisi (ca. 1327-28). One should note that these early renderings of landscape and sky, which include a realistic rather than symbolic astral-mythical moon, are not merely accidental pictures with nocturnal themes. In contrast to the earlier vaulted sky, the heaven of these frescoes is no longer an enclosure; it is now rendered from the vantage point of the artist and expresses the incipient perspectivity of a confrontation with space, rather than an unperspectival immersion or inherence in it. Man is henceforth not just in the world but begins to possess it; no longer possessed by heaven, he becomes a conscious possessor if not of the heavens, at least of the earth. This shift is, of course, a gain as well as a loss.

1.02 - The Virtues, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Once upon a time there was a splendid palace, in the heart of which lay a secret sanctuary, whose threshold no being had ever crossed. Furthermore, even its outermost galleries were almost inaccessible to mortals, for the palace stood on a very high cloud, and very few, in any age, could find the way to it.
  It was the palace of Truth.
  One day a festival was held there, not for men but for very different beings, gods and goddesses great and small, who on earth are honoured by the name of Virtues.
  The vestibule of the palace was a great hall, where the walls, the floor, the ceiling, luminous in themselves, were resplendent with a myriad glittering fires.
  It was the Hall of Intelligence. Near to the ground, the light was very soft and had a beautiful deep sapphire hue, but it became gradually clearer towards the ceiling, from which girandoles of diamonds hung like chandeliers, their myriad facets shooting dazzling rays.
  --
  Alas! I am not surprised that I appear to be a stranger in this palace, for I am so rarely invited anywhere.
  My name is Gratitude.

1.03 - A Sapphire Tale, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  At the time when our narrative begins, this remarkable ruler had reached a great age - he was more than two hundred years old - and although he still retained all his lucidity and was still full of energy and vigour, he was beginning to think of retirement, a little weary of the heavy responsibilities which he had borne for so many years. He called his young son Meotha to him. The prince was a young man of many and varied accomplishments. He was more handsome than men usually are, his charity was of such perfect equity that it achieved justice, his intelligence shone like a sun and his wisdom was beyond compare; for he had spent part of his youth among workmen and craftsmen to learn by personal experience the needs and requirements of their life, and he had spent the rest of his time alone, or with one of the philosophers as his tutor, in seclusion in the square tower of the palace, in study or contemplative repose.
  Meotha bowed respectfully before his father, who seated him at his side and spoke to him in these words:

1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
  night, be they palaces or carriages, forested parks or lakeside
  pavilions. Don't conceive any delight for such things. They're all

1.03 - Invocation of Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
  This practice gathers 13 deities in a celestial palace:
   in the center, Green Tara (the practitioner)
  --
   Outside the palace, the "four female guardians,"
  each guarding a gate of the palace facing the four
  directions. They stand up, lunging, their faces marked
  --
   In the center of the celestial palace, Samaya Tara,
  green, in union with the male deity Hayagriva
  --
   Outside the palace, there are the four female
  guardians of the four gates as previously described.

1.03 - Supernatural Aid, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  Seas and the Seven palaces.
  "There," said he, "I saw a daughter of his, than whom Allah
  --
  sures, and the Seven palaces, as well as the history of the daugh
  ter's refusal to wed. "And I," said he, "O my lady, go to her

1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Neschamos from the Divine palace, there abides the
  Shechinah, the spiritual Presence of Ain Soph as a heritage to mankind and an ever-present reminder of spiritual verities. That is why there is written " Keser is in Malkus, and Malkus is in Keser, though after another manner

1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Know not the palace, where grim Pluto reigns.
  They journey doubtful, nor the road can tell,
  --
  In vain to quit the palace they prepar'd,
  Tisiphone was there, and kept the ward.
  --
  As thro' his palace still he chac'd his queen;
  Then tore Learchus from her breast: the child
  --
  The palace opens wide in pompous state,
  And by his peers surrounded, Cepheus sate.

1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Fathers palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husbands chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you.
  You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world.
  Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning.
  Yet further, you never enjoyed the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it that you had rather suffer the flames of hell than willingly be guilty of their error.

1.04 - Narayana appearance, in the beginning of the Kalpa, as the Varaha (boar), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [6]: Varāha Avatāra. The description of the figure of the boar is much more particularly detailed in other Purāṇas. As in the Vāyu: "The boar was ten Yojanas in breadth, a thousand Yojanas high; of the colour of a dark cloud; and his roar was like thunder; his bulk was vast as a mountain; his tusks were white, sharp, and fearful; fire flashed from his eyes like lightning, and he was radiant as the sun; his shoulders were round, flit, and large; he strode along like a powerful lion; his haunches were fat, his loins were slender, and his body was smooth and beautiful." The Matsya P. describes the Varāha in the same words, with one or two unimportant varieties. The Bhāgavata indulges in that amplification which marks its more recent composition, and describes the Varāha as issuing from the nostrils of Brahmā, at first of the size of the thumb, or an inch long, and presently increasing to the stature of an elephant. That work also subjoins a legend of the death of the demon Hiranyākṣa, who in a preceding existence was one of Viṣṇu's doorkeepers, at his palace in Vaikuntha. Having refused admission to a party of Munis, they cursed him, and he was in consequence born as one of the sons of Diti. When the earth, oppressed by the weight of the mountains, sunk down into the waters, Viṣṇu was beheld in the subterrene regions, or Rasātala, by Hiranyākṣa in the act of carrying it off. The demon claimed the earth, and defied Viṣṇu to combat; and a conflict took place, in which Hiranyākṣa was slain. This legend has not been met with in any other Purāṇa, and certainly does not occur in the chief of them, any more than in our text. In the Mokṣa Dherma of the Mahābhārata, e.35, Viṣṇu destroys the demons in the form of the Varāha, but no particular individual is specified, nor does the elevation of the earth depend upon their discomfiture. The Kālikā Upapurāṇa has an absurd legend of a conflict between Śiva as a Sarabha, a fabulous animal, and Viṣṇu as the Varāha, in which the latter suffers himself and his offspring begotten upon earth to be slain.
  [7]: This, which is nothing more than the developement of the notion that the Varāha incarnation typifies the ritual of the Vedas, is repeated in most of the Purāṇas in the same or nearly the same words.

1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  When the prince's son sees himself in this condition, shame and mortification overwhelm him to such a degree, that he is upon the point of destroying himself. But still severer anguish lays hold of him, lest, when he should leave the place in this filthy state, he should be seen by some person. While he is asking himself what he should do, his father who knew nothing as to the place where his son had been, but who had left his palace with his friends and his suite in search of his son, meets him just at the moment he is coming out of that house in that state. Imagine now the shame of the sou and what must be his feelings. No doubt but that he would have given his life to any one who could have offered him a refuge and deliverance from his shame. You see that the torment here is spiritual and not material; for there is not an iota of pain here that affected the body.
  In like manner the men of this world when they go to their graves, will see that what they called pleasure was flesh and corruption which they had unlawfully taken into their mouths. They will see that that beloved object, dressed in rich clothing, obtained by illicit means and stained with pollution, is but the old hag the world, with her disgusting face and horrid smell and putrefied corruption, on account of whom so many drowned in illusions have become victims to shame and remorse. Still more bitter torment will that be, beloved, which will be the lot of man, when in the day of resurrection and assembly all these crimes and sins shall be laid open before all the angels and prophets. Our refuge is in God!

1.04 - The Qabalah The Best Training for Memory, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Nobody can do it for you. What is your own true Number? You must find it and prove it to be correct. In the course of a few years, you should have built yourself a palace of Ineffable Glory, a Garden of Indescribable Delight. Nor Time nor Fate can tame those tranquil towers, those Minarets of Music, or fade one blossom in those avenues of Perfume!
  Humph! Nasty of me: but it has just stuck me that it might be just as well if you made a Sepher Sephiroth of your own! What a positively beastly thing to suggest! However, I do suggest it.

1.05 - BOOK THE FIFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Within the palace walls was heard aloud
  The roaring noise of some unruly crowd;

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  a thousand women and palaces, as Solomon did; they forget that for every man with a thousand wives
  there are a thousand men without wives, that for every palace there are a thousand men who built it by
  the sweat of their brows, and that the same chance that has made them a Solomon today might well

1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Apropos of this battle and its date, the editor of Mother India wrote, "...Hitler fixed in 1940 the 15th of August as the day on which he would complete his conquest of Western Europe by broadcasting from Buckingham palace the collapse of Britain... and on that day the largest toll so far was taken of the Luftwaffe... we will designate it as the turning point in the Battle of Britain."
  October 7, 1940
  --
  "Louis Mountbatten's spontaneous decision... on his own initiative was a bombshell. In the corridors of the House of Commons, Downing Street, Buckingham palace, no one had suspected Mountbatten was ready to ring the curtain down so precipitously on Britain's Indian adventure. In Delhi, the Viceroy's most intimate collaborators had no inkling of what Mountbatten was going to do. Not even the Indian leaders with whom he had spent so many hours had received a hint that he would act with such decisive haste."
  Now, people may argue, "There is no mystery here. Mountbatten selected it because, as he says, that date marked a glorious achievement in his life." "But why with such decisive haste?" one may ask. "Because he did not want to face any opposition. If he had disclosed it in advance, there was every possibility of its being rejected on one ground or another." Whatever may be the urge to commemorate his own victory, he was instrumental in linking it with an occasion whose light will grow into a sun with the rolling of the years, while his own victory will pale into a shade. Left to our countrymen, none would have even dreamt of this date, but One who sees and decides everything gave this date the importance it deserved. Those who have some insight can perceive His inscrutable hand behind this memorable identification.

1.06 - BOOK THE SIXTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  While Tereus to the palace takes his way;
  The king salutes, and ceremonies past,
  --
  Either the palace to surround with fire,
  And see the villain in the flames expire;

1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  to the hocuspocus; and when his palace was besieged by the usual
  unsavoury crowd, he ordered them to be turned away with a dole. On

1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Also heavy footsteps on the roof of his palace.
  He said to himself, Whose heavy feet are these?

1.06 - Yun Men's Every Day is a Good Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
  mer in the palace. Together with several other venerable ab
  bots, he was to receive the questions of the courtiers and ex
  --
  One of the palace functionaries wrote a verse and posted it in
  the Green Jade Hall:

1.07 - BOOK THE SEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  At last return'd before her palace gate,
  Quitting her chariot, on the ground she sate;
  --
  She sets both bride and palace in a flame.
  Nor could a rival's death her wrath asswage,
  --
  Conduct the heroe to their palace gate;
  Who entr'ring, seem'd the charming mein to wear,
  --
  Ev'n all that to your palace did resort,
  When first you entertain'd me at your court;
  --
  Expect, and meet 'em at the palace gate.
  The Story of Cephalus and Procris

1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  divinity, had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from
  the world, Badonsachen withdrew from his palace to an immense
  pagoda, the largest in the empire, which he had been engaged in
  --
  drove him back to his palace and his harem. The king of Siam "is
  venerated equally with a divinity. His subjects ought not to look

1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  The earliest extant draft of Savitri is in an exercise book that came from Madras to Pondicherry evidently in the early years of Sri Aurobindo's stay in Pondicherry, years in which his habit of writing the English e like the Greek persisted. This copy appears to have been made from some version already with him, which is lost to us. The draft exists in two sections. The first comprising Book I and a few pages of Book II are in ink which has become brown now. The second is in light greenish-blue ink. Some corrections in this ink occur in the first section. Both the sections have been revised in places in darker blue ink with a thicker nib. The revisions are clear in some places, but unclear and inconclusive in others. Book I is complete. Book II unfinished. The spelling of the three chief characters is: Savithri, Uswapathy, Suthyavan. In the first Book, after a short description of Night and Dawn, there is a very brief account of the Yoga done by Uswapathy, then Savithri is born, grows up and goes out, at Uswapathy's prompting, to find her mate. She finds Suthyavan. In the meantime Narad comes down to earth and visits Uswapathy's palace. There is a talk between the two; Savithri returns from her quest and discovery, and a talk takes place among the three. The opening lines of this earliest draft run:
  In a huge forest where the listening Night

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  They said to the messenger, 'Ask the king to come to see us.' After consultation, the king and his ministers arranged marriages for them. From then on the king didn't have to send for them. They would come to him of themselves and say: 'Your Majesty, we have come with our blessings. Here are the sacred flowers of the temple. Deign to accept them.' They came to the palace, for now they always wanted money for one thing or another: the building of a house, the rice-taking ceremony of their babies, or the rituals connected with the beginning of their children's education.
  Story of twelve hundred nedas

1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Wait a minute, he said presently, Id better just leave a record of some kind, in case I have trouble with Buddha. He plucked a hair and blew on it with magic breath, crying, Change! It changed at once into a writing brush charged with heavy ink, and at the base of the central pillar he wrote, The Great Sage Equal to Heaven reached this place. Then, to mark his disrespect, he relieved nature at the bottom of the first pillar, and somersaulted back to where he had come from. Standing on Buddhas palm, he said, Well, Ive gone and come back. You can go and tell the Jade Emperor to hand over the palaces of Heaven.
  You stinking ape, said Buddha, youve been on the palm of my hand all the time.

1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  " In the most mysterious and elevated part of the heaven there is a certain palace which is called the palace of
  Love, wherein are hidden profound mysteries, and the

1.08 - BOOK THE EIGHTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  A turret of the palace rais'd its head;
  And where the God his tuneful harp resign'd.
  --
  Adorn the palace with the spoils of war.
  Mean-while the monster of a human-beast,

1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  There is an anecdote which is not mentioned in the Yoga Sutras. Aurangzeb heard that Tulsidas had great powers, that he was a siddha. He wanted to see what powers Tulsidas had, so he ordered Tulsidas to come to his court. By some means they brought the saint to the court of Aurangzeb, and the emperor said, I want to see your powers. They say you are a person endowed with great occult forces. The saint said, I dont know what you are talking about. I have no powers. I myself have not seen any, and from where do these powers come? No, no, no, Aurangzeb said, I am not going to leave you like that. You must show me your powers. Tulsidas said, I do not have any powers. I have not exhibited any. Nor am I aware that I have any powers. So where comes this question of demonstrating before you? I myself do not know anything about them. Aurangzeb said, No! That is no good. I will not leave you. You must show them. If you are not going to show your powers, I will imprison you! And Aurangzeb put Tulsidas behind bars. Well, that is all; Tulsidas was in the prison of Aurangzeb. Then and there a miracle took place. They say huge, giant-like monkeys hundreds and thousands in number started demolishing the entire city of Aurangzeb. They threatened everybody, and they destroyed many. It was a ravaging experience. They started attacking the palace of Aurangzeb himself. The guards ran away; it was all confusion, and they did not know what had happened. Nobody could come out of the house. Everywhere were giant-like monkeys, showing their teeth and attacking.
  Aurangzeb did not know what was happening. People were crying and complaining about the ravage that had been effected in the whole city by unknown monsters coming as huge monkeys. Then someone told him, We have made a mistake in imprisoning Tulsidas. Release him. He is a devotee of Rama, and so Ramas army must have come. Then Aurangzeb said, Let him off. Let him off! Go, ask him to leave. What this anecdote shows is, when we oppose a man of power, his power is seen. Otherwise, we cannot see the power. Even a lions power cannot be seen unless we oppose it. The lion will be sitting or lying down, crouching on the ground as if it has no strength at all. If we want to see the strength of a lion, we must attack it, and then its power will be seen immediately. Similarly, often the powers of a yogin are not known, as they are hidden.

1.10 - BOOK THE TENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  As crimson veils in palaces display'd,
  To the white marble lend a blushing shade.

1.11 - BOOK THE ELEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  The palace moats, and o'er the pebbles creeps,
  And with soft murmurs calls the coming sleeps.

1.12 - BOOK THE TWELFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  The palace of loud Fame, her seat of pow'r,
  Plac'd on the summet of a lofty tow'r;

1.12 - The Left-Hand Path - The Black Brothers, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    And the Beatific Vision is no more, and the glory of the Most High is no more. There is no more knowledge. There is no more bliss. There is no more power. There is no more beauty. For this is the palace of Understanding; for thou art one with the Primeval things.
    Drink in the myrrh of my speech, that is bruised with the gall of the roc, and dissolved in the ink of the cuttle-fish, and perfumed with the deadly nightshade.

1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  But the very conditions of the uprooting of the old order may for a long time falsify the quest for the new order. And at first, this new order does not exist; it has to be made. A whole world has to be invented. And the aspiring superman or let us simply say the aspirant to something else must confront a primary reality: the law of freedom is a very demanding one, infinitely more demanding than all the laws imposed by the Machine. It is not a coasting into just anything, but a methodical uprooting from thousands of little slaveries; it does not mean abandoning everything, but, on the contrary, taking charge of everything, since we no longer want to depend on anybody or anything. It is a supreme apprenticeship of responsibility that of being oneself, which in the end is being all. It is not an escape, but a conquest; not a vacation from the Machine, but a great Adventure into man's unknown. And anything that may hamper this supreme freedom, at whatever level or under whatever appearance, must be fought as fiercely as the police or lawmakers of the old world. We are not leaving the slavery of the old order to fall into the worse slavery of ourselves the slavery of drugs, of a party, of one religion or another, one sect or another, a golden bubble or a white one. We want the one freedom of smiling at everything and being light everywhere, identical in destitution and pomp, in prison and palace, in emptiness and fullness and everything is full because we burn with the one little flame that possesses everything forever.
  What will they do, these wanderers, these transhumans of a new country that does not yet exist? In the first place, they will perhaps not move at all. They will perhaps have understood that the change has to be wrought inside and that, if nothing changes inside, nothing will ever change outside for centuries and centuries. They will perhaps stay right where they are, in this little street, this gray country, in a humble disguise, an old routine, but it will no longer be a routine because they will do everything with another look, in another way, with another attitude an inner way that changes all ways. And if they persevere, they will notice that this one little drop of true light they carry within themselves has the power to change everything about them surreptitiously. In their unpretentious little circle, they will have worked for the new world and precipitated a little more truth upon earth. But no circle is little when it has that center, since it is the center of everything. Or else, one day, perhaps they will feel impelled to join with their peers of the new world and with them build some living testimony of their common aspiration, as others built pyramids or cathedrals perhaps a city of the new world. And this is the beginning of a great enterprise, and a great danger.

1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  My palace, in the living rock, is made
  By Nature's hand; a spacious pleasing shade:

1.13 - The Kings of Rome and Alba, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  the Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace. But still, says
  an ancient historian, when the water is low and the surface
  unruffled by a breeze, you may see the ruins of the palace at the
  bottom of the clear lake. Taken along with the similar story of

1.16 - PRAYER, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  You tell me you do nothing in prayer. But what do you want to do in prayer except what you are doing, which is, presenting and representing your nothingness and misery to God? When beggars expose their ulcers and their necessities to our sight, that is the best appeal they can make. But from what you tell me, you sometimes do nothing of this, but lie there like a shadow or a statue. They put statues in palaces simply to please the princes eyes. Be content to be that in the presence of God: He will bring the statue to life when He pleases.
  St. Franois de Sales

1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Listen, Maitreya, to the story of the wise and magnanimous Prahlāda, whose adventures are ever interesting and instructive. Hiraṇyakaśipu, the son of Diti, had formerly brought the three worlds under his authority, confiding in a boon bestowed upon him by Brahmā[1]. He had usurped the sovereignty of Indra, and exercised of himself the functions of the sun, of air, of the lord of waters, of fire, and of the moon. He himself was the god of riches; he was the judge of the dead; and he appropriated to himself, without reserve, all that was offered in sacrifice to the gods. The deities therefore, flying from their seats in heaven, wandered, through fear of the Daitya, upon the earth, disguised in mortal shapes. Having conquered the three worlds, he was inflated with pride, and, eulogized by the Gandharvas, enjoyed whatever he desired. The Gandharvas, the Siddhas, and the snake-gods all attended upon the mighty Hiraṇyakaśipu, as he sat at the banquet. The Siddhas delighted stood before him, some playing on musical instruments, some singing songs in his praise, and others shouting cries of victory; whilst the nymphs of heaven danced gracefully in the crystal palace, where the Asura with pleasure quaffed the inebriating cup.
  The illustrious son of the Daitya king, Prahlāda, being yet a boy, resided in the dwelling of his preceptor, where he read such writings as are studied in early years. On one occasion he came, accompanied by his teacher, to the court of his father, and bowed before his feet as he was drinking. Hiraṇyakaśipu desired his prostrate son to rise, and said to him, "Repeat, boy, in substance, and agreeably, what during the period of your studies you have acquired." "Hear, sire," replied Prahlāda, "what in obedience to your commands I will repeat, the substance of all I have learned: listen attentively to that which wholly occupies my thoughts. I have learned to adore him who is without beginning, middle, or end, increase or diminution; the imperishable lord of the world, the universal cause of causes." On hearing these words, the sovereign of the Daityas, his eyes red with wrath, and lip swollen with indignation, turned to the preceptor of his son, and said, "Vile Brahman, what is this preposterous commendation of my foe, that, in disrespect to me, you have taught this boy to utter?" "King of the Daityas," replied the Guru, "it is not worthy of you to give way to passion: that which your son has uttered, he has not been taught by me." "By whom then," said Hiraṇyakaśipu to the lad, "by whom has this lesson, boy, been taught you? your teacher denies that it proceeds from him." "Viṣṇu, father," answered Prahlāda, "is the instructor of the whole world: what else should any one teach or learn, save him the supreme spirit?" "Blockhead," exclaimed the king, "who is this Viṣṇu, whose name you thus reiterate so impertinently before me, who am the sovereign of the three worlds?" "The glory of Viṣṇu," replied Prahlāda, "is to be meditated upon by the devout; it cannot be described: he is the supreme lord, who is all things, and from whom all things proceed." To this the king rejoined, "Are you desirous of death, fool, that you give the title of supreme lord to any one whilst I survive?" "Viṣṇu, who is Brahma," said Prahlāda, "is the creator and protector, not of me alone, but of all human beings, and even, father, of you: he is the supreme lord of all. Why should you, sire, be offended?" Hiraṇyakaśipu then exclaimed, "What evil spirit has entered into the breast of this silly boy, that thus, like one possessed, he utters such profanity?" "Not into my heart alone," said Prahlāda, "has Viṣṇu entered, but he pervades all the regions of the universe, and by his omnipresence influences the conduct of all beings, mine, fattier, and thine[2]." "Away with the wretch!" cried the king; "take him to his preceptor's mansion. By whom could he have been instigated to repeat the lying praises of my foe?"

1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Connaught might not conclude a treaty respecting his ancient palace
  of Cruachan after making peace on All-Hallows Day, nor go in a
  --
  puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces and occupied in a
  perpetual round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of
  --
  ceased to govern. While they lived secluded in their palaces, all
  real political power was wielded by the hereditary generals.

1.19 - Dialogue between Prahlada and his father, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Dialogue between Prahlāda and his father: he is cast from the top of the palace unhurt: baffles the incantations of Samvara: he is thrown fettered into the sea: he praises Viṣṇu.
  WHEN Hiraṇyakaśipu heard that the powerful incantations of his priests had been defeated, he sent for his son, and demanded of him the secret of his extraordinary might. "Prahlāda," he said, "thou art possessed of marvellous powers; whence are they derived? are they the result of magic rites? or have they accompanied thee from birth?" Prahlāda, thus interrogated, bowed down to his father's feet, and replied, "Whatever power I possess, father, is neither the result of magic rites, nor is it inseparable from my nature; it is no more than that which is possessed by all in whose hearts Achyuta abides. He who meditates not of wrong to others, but considers them as himself, is free from the effects of sin, inasmuch as the cause does not exist; but he who inflicts pain upon others, in act, thought, or speech, sows the seed of future birth, and the fruit that awaits him after birth is pain. I wish no evil to any, and do and speak no offence; for I behold Keśava in all beings, as in my own soul. Whence should corporeal or mental suffering or pain, inflicted by elements or the gods, affect me, whose heart is thoroughly purified by him? Love, then, for all creatures will be assiduously cerished by all those who are wise in the knowledge that Hari is all things."
  When he had thus spoken, the Daitya monarch, his face darkened with fury, commanded his attendants to cast his son from the summit of the palace where he was sitting, and which was many Yojanas in height, down upon the tops of the mountains, where his body should be dashed to pieces against the rocks. Accordingly the Daityas hurled the boy down, and he fell cerishing Hari in his heart, and Earth, the nurse of all creatures, received him gently on her lap, thus entirely devoted to Keśava, the protector of the world.
  Beholding him uninjured by the fall, and sound in every bone, Hiraṇyakaśipu addressed himself to Samvara, the mightiest of enchanters, and said to him, "This perverse boy is not to be destroyed by us: do you, who art potent in the arts of delusion, contrive some device for his destruction." Samvara replied, "I will destroy him: you shall behold, king of the Daityas, the power of delusion, the thousand and the myriad artifices that it can employ." Then the ignorant Asura Samvara practised subtile wiles for the extermination of the firm-minded Prahlāda: but he, with a tranquil heart, and void of malice towards Samvara, directed his thoughts uninterruptedly to the destroyer of Madhu; by whom the excellent discus, the flaming Sudarsana, was dispatched to defend the youth; and the thousand devices of the evil-destinied Samvara were every one foiled by this defender of the prince. The king of the Daityas then commanded the withering wind to breathe its blighting blast upon his son: and, thus commanded, the wind immediately penetrated into his frame, cold, cutting, drying, and insufferable. Knowing that the wind had entered into his body, the Daitya boy applied his whole heart to the mighty upholder of the earth; and Janārddana, seated in his heart, waxed wroth, and drank up the fearful wind, which had thus hastened to its own annihilation.

1.19 - Tabooed Acts, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  ever to leave their palaces; or, if they are allowed to do so, their
  subjects are forbidden to see them abroad. The fetish king of Benin,
  --
  his palace under pain of death or of giving up one or more slaves to
  be executed in his presence. As the wealth of the country is
  --
  mud wall of the palace. In dancing he carries a great weight,
  generally a sack of earth, on his back to prove that he is still
  --
  mostly kept shut up in their palaces. On the mountainous coast of
  Pontus there dwelt in antiquity a rude and warlike people named the
  --
  country of Arabia, were not allowed to go out of their palaces; if
  they did so, the mob stoned them to death. But at the top of the

1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  You realize that those articles of gold and the other things sent by maharajas are mere trash. That is a great gain in itself. When I used to go to Calcutta with Hriday, he would show me the Viceroy's palace and say: 'Look, uncle! There is the Viceroy's palace with the big columns.' The Mother revealed to me that they were merely clay bricks laid one on top of another.
  God and His splendour

1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  injured monarch to his palace. Formerly no one might touch the king
  of Corea; and if he deigned to touch a subject, the spot touched

1.21 - WALPURGIS-NIGHT, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
  His palace for this festal night?
  'Tis lucky thou hast seen the sight;
  --
  The evergreen palaces shaking!
  Boughs are groaning and breaking,

1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Radha's friend says: "I don't have to call Krishna. He Himself will come to me." But none the less, she follows the woman of Mathura and goes to Krishna's palace. In the street she weeps overcome with grief, and prays to Krishna: "O Hari, where are You? O Life of the gopis! O Enchanter of our hearts! O Beloved of Radha! O Hari, Remover of Your devotees' shame! Come to us once more! With great pride I said to the people of Mathura that You Yourself would come to me. Please do not humiliate me."
  In scorn says the woman of Mathura:

1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Crete, whose great palace has been unearthed in recent years, is
  said to have held office for periods of eight years together. At the

1.25 - Temporary Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  procession round the palace and through the streets of the capital.
  On the third day, after the usual procession, the temporary king
  --
  royal prerogatives, the real king remaining shut up in his palace.
  This temporary king sends his numerous satellites in all directions
  --
  furrows with the plough, followed by aged dames of the palace
  scattering the first seed of the season. As soon as the nine furrows

1.28 - Describes the nature of the Prayer of Recollection and sets down some of the means by which we can make it a habit., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  And now let us imagine that we have within us a palace of priceless worth, built entirely of
  gold and precious stones- a palace, in short, fit for so great a Lord. Imagine that it is partly your
  doing that this palace should be what it is- and this is really true, for there is no building so
  beautiful as a soul that is pure and full of virtues, and, the greater these virtues are, the more
  --
  brilliantly do the stones shine. Imagine that within the palace dwells this great King, Who has
  vouchsafed to become your Father and Who is seated upon a throne of supreme price-namely,
  --
  dwells within this little palace of my soul, I should not have left Him alone so often, but should
  have stayed with Him and never have allowed His dwelling-place to get so dirty. How wonderful
  --
  since He has power to make the whole of this palace great. The important point is that we should
  be absolutely resolved to give it to Him for His own and should empty it so that He may take out
  --
  do so, since He likes everything to be done in order. If we fill the palace with vulgar people and
  all kinds of junk, how can the Lord and His Court occupy it? When such a crowd is there it would

1.29 - Concerning heaven on earth, or godlike dispassion and perfection, and the resurrection of the soul before the general resurrection., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  14. Imagine dispassion as the celestial palace of the Heavenly King; and the many mansions3 as the abodes within this city, and the wall of this celestial Jerusalem as the forgiveness of sins. Let us run, brethren, let us run to enter the bridal hall of this palace. If we are prevented by anything, by some burden or old habit, or by time itself what a disaster! Let us at least occupy one of those mansions around the palace. But if we sink down and grow weak, let us make sure of being at least within the walls. For he who does not enter there before his end, or rather, does not scale the wall, will lie out in the desert of fiends and passions. That is why a certain man prayed, saying: Through my God I shall scale the wall.4 And another says as if in the person of God: Is it not your sins that separate you from Me?5 Friends, let us break through this wall of separation which we have erected to our own harm by disobedience; and let us receive the forgiveness of our sins, because in hell there is no one to pardon our debts. So then, brethren, let us devote ourselves to our task, for we are on the roll of the devout. There is no room for any excuse whether of a fall, or opportunity, or burden. For to all who have received the Lord by the baptism of regeneration He has given power to be come children of God,6 saying: Be still and know that I am God7 and am Dispassion. To Him be the glory for ever and ever! Amen.
  1 Galatians ii, 20.

1.29 - The Myth of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
    Her lament is for a palace, where length of life grows not."
  The tragical story and the melancholy rites of Adonis are better

1.31 - Continues the same subject. Explains what is meant by the Prayer of Quiet. Gives several counsels to those who experience it. This chapter is very noteworthy., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  by signs. They are in the palace, near to their King, and they see that He is already beginning to
  give them His Kingdom on earth. Sometimes tears come to their eyes, but they weep very gently

1.34 - Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. The Ascent., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
  It was not any palace corridor
  There where we were, but dungeon natural,

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  There was a king who treated his subjects well. One of his ministers gained his confidence and misused the influence. All the other ministers and officers were adversely affected and they hit upon a plan to get rid of him. They instructed the guards not to let the man enter the palace. The king noted his absence and enquired after him.
  He was informed that the man was taken ill and could not therefore come to the palace. The king deputed his physician to attend on the minister. False reports were conveyed to the king that the minister was sometimes improving and at other times collapsing. The king desired to see the patient. But the pandits said that such an action was against dharma. Later the minister was reported to have died.
  The king was very sorry when he heard the news.
  The arrogant minister was kept informed of all the happenings by spies of his own. He tried to foil the other ministers. He waited for the king to come out of the palace so that he might report himself to the king. On one occasion he climbed up a tree, hid himself among the branches and awaited the king. The king came out that night in the palanquin and the man in hiding jumped down in front of the palanquin and shouted his identity. The companion of the king was equally resourceful. He at once took out a handful of sacred ashes (vibhuti) from his pocket and scattered it in the air so that the king was obliged to close his eyes. The companion shouted victory (jai) to the king and ordered the band to play so that the other mans shout was drowned in the noise. He also ordered the palanquin-bearers to move fast and he himself sang incantations to keep off evil spirits. The king was thus left under the impression that the dead mans ghost was playing pranks with him.
  The disappointed man became desperate and retired into the forest for tapasya (austerities). After a long time the king happened to go hunting. He came across the former minister seated in deep contemplation. But he hastened away from the spot lest the ghost should molest him.
  --
  When the queen was sleeping one night he suddenly left the palace by stealth and retired into the forest. He was seeking some solitary spot where he could perform his tapas. When the queen woke up she did not find her husb and and immediately found out by her occult powers what had really happened. She rejoiced in her husbands determination. She called the ministers and said that the king had gone on some important business and that the administration should be carried on as efficiently as ever. She herself administered the state in the absence of the king.
  Eighteen years passed. She then knew that the king was fit for

1.51 - How to Recognise Masters, Angels, etc., and how they Work, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Let me briefly explain the grounds for this belief. I have already set forth, in connection with the Cairo Working, some of the safeguards which I habitually employ. Virakam's vision contained elements perfectly familiar to me. This was clear proof that the man in her vision, whom she called Ab-ul-Diz, was acquainted with my system of hieroglyphics, literal and numerical, and also with some incidents in my Magical Career. Virakam herself certainly knew nothing of any of these. Ab-ul-Diz told us to call him a week later, when he would give further information. We arrived at St. Moritz and engaged a suite in the palace Hotel.
  My first surprise was to find that I had brought with me exactly those Magical Weapons which were suitable for the work proposed, and no others. But a yet more startling circumstance was to come. For the purpose of the Cairo Working, Ouarda[106] and I had bought two abbai; one, scarlet, for me; one, blue, for her. I had brought mine to St. Moritz; the other was of course in the possession of Ouarda. Imagine my amazement when Virakam produced from her trunk a blue abbai so like Ouarda's that the only difference were minute details of the gold embroidery! The suggestion was that the Secret Chiefs, having chosen Ouarda as their messenger, could not use any one else until she had become irrevocably disqualified by insanity. Not till now could her place be taken by another; and that Virakam should possess a duplicate of her Magical Robe seemed a strong argument that she had been consecrated by Them to take the place of her unhappy predecessor.

1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  There was a king who treated his subjects well. One of his ministers gained his confidence and misused the influence. All the other ministers and officers were adversely affected and they hit upon a plan to get rid of him. They instructed the guards not to let the man enter the palace. The king noted his absence and enquired after him.
  He was informed that the man was taken ill and could not therefore come to the palace. The king deputed his physician to attend on the minister. False reports were conveyed to the king that the minister was sometimes improving and at other times collapsing. The king desired to see the patient. But the pandits said that such an action was against dharma. Later the minister was reported to have died.
  The king was very sorry when he heard the news.
  The arrogant minister was kept informed of all the happenings by spies of his own. He tried to foil the other ministers. He waited for the king to come out of the palace so that he might report himself to the king. On one occasion he climbed up a tree, hid himself among the branches and awaited the king. The king came out that night in the palanquin and the man in hiding jumped down in front of the palanquin and shouted his identity. The companion of the king was equally resourceful. He at once took out a handful of sacred ashes (vibhuti) from his pocket and scattered it in the air so that the king was obliged to close his eyes. The companion shouted victory ('jai') to the king and ordered the band to play so that the other man's shout was drowned in the noise. He also ordered the palanquin-bearers to move fast and he himself sang incantations to keep off evil spirits. The king was thus left under the impression that the dead man's ghost was playing pranks with him.
  The disappointed man became desperate and retired into the forest for tapasya (austerities). After a long time the king happened to go hunting. He came across the former minister seated in deep contemplation. But he hastened away from the spot lest the ghost should molest him.
  --
  When the queen was sleeping one night he suddenly left the palace by stealth and retired into the forest. He was seeking some solitary spot where he could perform his tapas. When the queen woke up she did not find her husb and and immediately found out by her occult powers what had really happened. She rejoiced in her husband's determination. She called the ministers and said that the king had gone on some important business and that the administration should be carried on as efficiently as ever. She herself administered the state in the absence of the king.
  Eighteen years passed. She then knew that the king was fit for

1.56 - The Public Expulsion of Evils, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  fired from the palace; it is answered from the next station, and so
  on from station to station, till the firing has reached the outer

1.57 - Public Scapegoats, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  gloom. On the last night of the year the palace of the Kings of
  Cambodia is purged of devils. Men painted as fiends are chased by
  elephants about the palace courts. When they have been expelled, a
  consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the palace to keep
  them out. In Munzerabad, a district of Mysore in Southern India,

1.59 - Killing the God in Mexico, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  destined victim. The king remained in his palace while the whole
  court went after the human god. Solemn banquets and dances followed

1.60 - Between Heaven and Earth, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  expiatory ceremony. Within his palace the king of Persia walked on
  carpets on which no one else might tread; outside of it he was never

1.63 - The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Year festival, the eunuchs of the palace swing burning torches,
  chanting invocations the while, and this is supposed to ensure

1.66 - The External Soul in Folk-Tales, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  parrot. He brought it to the door of the magician's palace, and
  began playing with it. Punchkin, the magician, saw him, and, coming
  --
  the courtyard of his father's palace, and said to his parents, "This
  tree is my life. When you see the tree green and fresh, then know
  --
  would become a gilded palace, and the lake green meadows." The hero
  finds the grain of sand and takes it to the top of the high rock in
  --
  out of the way. She lured the girl to the palace and tortured her
  cruelly; but Bidasari could not die, because her soul was not in
  --
  king returned to the palace, took the fish from the queen, and put
  it in water. Immediately Bidasari revived, and the king took her to
  --
  the gate of the palace. The king's life was so bound up with that of
  the bird that whoever should kill the bird would simultaneously kill

1956-07-18 - Unlived dreams - Radha-consciousness - Separation and identification - Ananda of identity and Ananda of union - Sincerity, meditation and prayer - Enemies of the Divine - The universe is progressive, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    In Indian mythology Prahlad is the son of King Hiranyakashipu, an ardent enemy of the god Vishnu. The king had banned the worship of Vishnu in his kingdom, and when he learnt that his son Prahlad was worshipping this god in his own palace, he delivered him to serpents, but they did not bite him. Then he had him thrown down from the top of a hill into the sea, but the child was miraculously carried by the waters. When the enraged king asked his son, "Who has saved you?", the child replied, "Vishnu is everywhere, in the serpents and in the sea." It is interesting to note that the king himself had been a soul temporarily driven out from the heaven of Vishnu due to the curse of some rishis who had given him the choice between three lives on earth as the enemy of Vishnu and ten lives on earth as the worshipper of Vishnu the king had chosen the shorter way back.
    Later, someone asked Mother: "What is this 'it'? the universe?" To which Mother replied, "I said 'it' deliberately, so as not to make it precise. I don't like the word 'creation'; it immediately gives the impression of a special creation as though it were made out of nothing but it is He Himself! And it is not the universe 'which begins': the universe 'is begun'. How to put it? It is not the universe which takes the initiative of the movement! And if one says that the Lord began the universe, it becomes false. All these are such fixed ideas! If I say: 'The Lord began the universe,' one sees at once a personal God deciding to begin the universeit is not that!

1957-02-07 - Individual and collective meditation, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  From the beginning of human history, it is known that certain groups of people would meet to express a certain common state of soul: some to sing together the praise of God, hymns, thanksgiving, to express adoration, thankfulness, gratitude, and to praise God; othersand there are historical examples of thisa certain number of people gathered together for a common invocation, for instance, to ask God for something, and this was done all together, united, in the hope that this invocation, this prayer, this asking would carry more weight. There have been some very famous instances. A very old one occurred in 1000 A.D. when some prophets had announced that it was the end of the world and everywhere people gathered together to offer common prayers and ask that the world may not come to an end (!) or anyway, for it to be protected. Much more recently, in modern times, when King George of England was dying of pneumonia, people assembled in England, not only in the churches but even in the streets in front of the royal palace, to offer prayers and ask God to cure him. It so happened that he recovered, and they believed that it was their prayers. That is, of course, the most external form, I could say the most worldly, of group meditation.
  In all initiatory groups, in all the spiritual schools of ancient times, group meditation was always practised and in that case the motive was quite different. They assembled for a collective progress, to open together to a force, a light, an influence, and this is more or less what we want to try to do.

1970 02 20, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   347The many strive after competence or riches, the few embrace poverty as a bride; but, for thyself, strive after and embrace God only. Let Him choose for thee a kings palace or the bowl of the beggar.
   348What is vice but an enslaving habit and virtue but a human opinion? See God and do His will; walk in whatever path He shall trace for thy goings.

1.ac - Adela, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Guarded by lightless sentinel palaces,
  We glide; the soft plash of the oar, that sways

1.ac - The Wizard Way, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Past the palace of desires;
  Where he will, whether he will or no,

1.ami - Selfhood can demolish the magic of this world (from Baal-i-Jibreel), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Naeem Siddiqui Original Language Urdu Selfhood can demolish the magic of this world; But our belief in The One is not comprehended by all. Have a seer's eye, and light will dawn on thee; As a river and its waves cannot remain apart. The light of God and knowledge are not in rivalry, But so the pulpit believes, afraid of Hallaj's rope. Contentment is the shield for the pure and the noble A shield in slavery, and a shield in power. In the East the soul looks in vain for light; In the West the light is a faded cloud of dust. The fakirs who could shatter the power and pelf of kings No longer tread this earth, in climes far or near. The spirit of this age is brimful with negations, And drained to the last drop is the power of faith. Muted is Europe's lament on its crumbling pageant, Muted by the delirious beats, the clangour of its music. A sleepy ripple awaits, to swell into a wave A wave that will swallow up monsters of the sea. What is slavery but a loss of the sense of beauty? What the free call beautiful, is beautiful indeed. The present belongs to him who explores, in their depths, The fathomless seas of time, to find the future's pearl. The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain; But I fear not; I am blessed with Moses' wand. The flame that can set afire a dark, sunless wood, Will not be throttled by a straw afloat in the wind. Love is self-awareness; love is self-knowledge; Love cares not for the palaces and the power of kings. I will not wonder if I reach even the moon and the stars, For I have hitched my wagon to the star of all stars. First among the wise, last of the Prophets, Who gave a speck of dust the brightness of the Mount. He is the first and last in the eyes of love; He is the Word of God. He is the Word of God. <
1.anon - If this were a world, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  wood fine enough for your palace!"
  Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:

1.anon - Less profitable, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  a palace that crushes down valiant warriors,
  an elephant who devours its own covering,
  --
  Gilgamesh said to the palace retainers:
  "Who is the bravest of the men)
  --
  Gilgamesh held a celebration in his palace.
  The Young Men dozed off, sleeping on the couches of the night.

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet III, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Gilgamesh and Enkidu walked to the Egalmah ("Great palace"),
  to Ninsun, the Great Queen.

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI The Story of the Flood, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  I gave the palace together with its contents.
  Just as dawn began to glow

1.anon - The Poem of Antar, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  and it was as though she were a high palace;
  in order that I might perform the wont of the lingerer.
  --
  The length of the journey left her a strong, well-built body, like a high palace,
  built with cement, and rising high; and feet like the supports of a firmly pitched tent.

1.anon - The Seven Evil Spirits, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  In the channel of the deep in a palace grew they up.
  Male they are not, female they are not.

1f.lovecraft - Beyond the Wall of Sleep, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   meadows, gardens, cities, and palaces of light; in a region unbounded
   and unknown to man. That there he was no peasant or degenerate, but a

1f.lovecraft - Memory, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly about broken columns and
   strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten

1f.lovecraft - Poetry and the Gods, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Muses, prepared to depart for the jewelled and column-raised palace of
   the Sun, where fretted the steeds already harnessed to the golden car

1f.lovecraft - Sweet Ermengarde, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   palace of frivolityespecially since she was offered only $3.00 per
   week with meals but no board. She tried to look up Jack Manly, her

1f.lovecraft - The Doom That Came to Sarnath, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   But more marvellous still were the palaces and the temples, and the
   gardens made by Zokkar the olden king. There were many palaces, the
   least of which were mightier than any in Thraa or Ilarnek or
  --
   the pillars of the palaces, all of tinted marble, and carven into
   designs of surpassing beauty. And in most of the palaces the floors
   were mosaics of beryl and lapis-lazuli and sardonyx and carbuncle and
  --
   arranged with cunning art. Outshining all others was the palace of the
   kings of Mnar and of the lands adjacent. On a pair of golden crouching
  --
   so vast a piece could have come. In that palace there were also many
   galleries, and many amphitheatres where lions and men and elephants
  --
   palaces; where gathered throngs in worship of Zo-Kalar and Tamash and
   Lobon, the chief gods of Sarnath, whose incense-enveloped shrines were
  --
   Whilst the king and his nobles feasted within the palace, and viewed
   the crowning dish as it awaited them on golden platters, others feasted

1f.lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   disembark, for in those tropic tangles sleep wondrous palaces of ivory,
   lone and unbroken, where once dwelt fabulous monarchs of a land whose
  --
   Carter did not at once seek out the temple or the palace or the
   citadel, but stayed by the seaward wall among traders and sailors. And
  --
   rose-crystal palace of the Seventy Delights at Celephas and in the
   turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian. It seems that he could
  --
   seek the terraced palace of rose-crystal but walked out the eastern
   gate and across the daisied fields toward a peaked gable which he
  --
   anointed lackey of the palace, but a small stubbly old man in a smock
   who spoke as best he could in the quaint tones of far Cornwall. And
  --
   Kings palace rises many-domed and marvellous.
   The ways to the onyx palace are steep and narrow, all but that broad
   curving one where the king and his companions ride on yaks or in
  --
   Veiled Kings palace is famous; and at length they passed under a great
   black arch and emerged in the gardens of the monarchs pleasure. There
  --
   magnificence of the palace ahead, and the fantastic silhouette of the
   distant impassable peaks on the right. And ever the small birds and the
  --
   onyx alley of steps, for the palace itself no visitor may enter; and it
   is not well to look too long and steadily at the great central dome,
  --
   marvellous city. All through its palaces of veined marble they revel by
   day, and when the sun sets they go out in the perfumed gardens and

1f.lovecraft - The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   comfort; for this room was finer than anything in the palace of Zeth,
   or even in the Temple of Oorn, upon which had been lavished unthinkable

1f.lovecraft - The Mound, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   gold-and-copper palace behind a gardened and fountained park, and was
   for some time subjected to close, friendly questioning in a vaulted
  --
   tribunal in the gold-and-copper palace behind the gardened and
   fountained park, and the Spaniard was given his liberty because of the

1f.lovecraft - The Nameless City, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   In and out amongst the shapeless foundations of houses and palaces I
   wandered, finding never a carving or inscription to tell of those men,

1f.lovecraft - The Quest of Iranon, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   And in the city were palaces of veined and tinted marble, with golden
   domes and painted walls, and green gardens with cerulean pools and
  --
   palaces, and sing to men who shall know whereof I sing, and laugh not
   nor turn away. For I am Iranon, who was a Prince in Aira.

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many terraces, with
   gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque brachiate

1f.lovecraft - The Silver Key, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns sleep lovely and unbroken
   under the moon.

1f.lovecraft - The White Ship, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Cathuria with its splendid groves and palaces, and would wonder what
   new delights there awaited me. Cathuria, I would say to myself, is
  --
   Cathuria are all palaces, each built over a fragrant canal bearing the
   waters of the sacred Narg. Of marble and porphyry are the houses, and
  --
   the distant peaks. Fairest of all is the palace of the great monarch
   Dorieb, whom some say to be a demigod and others a god. High is the
   palace of Dorieb, and many are the turrets of marble upon its walls. In
   its wide halls many multitudes assemble, and here hang the trophies of
  --
   And the floor of the palace is of glass, under which flow the cunningly
   lighted waters of the Narg, gay with gaudy fish not known beyond the

1f.lovecraft - Through the Gates of the Silver Key, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   beyond forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns that sleep lovely
   and unbroken under the moon. Now, intoxicated with wider visions, he

1.fs - Dithyramb, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
        In Jupiter's palace
       Brimmed bright with your nectar,

1.fs - Melancholy -- To Laura, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
  Under palace, under fame,
   Underneath the cloud-capped towers?

1.fs - The Assignation, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
  For her, a shadowy palace-hall aloof
   With holy night, thy boughs familiar weave.

1.fs - The Gods Of Greece, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
  A palace every shrine;
   Your sports heroic;yours the crown

1.fs - The Lay Of The Bell, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
   Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,
   And banded murder closes round!

1.fua - The moths and the flame, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis Original Language Persian/Farsi Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night To learn the truth about the candle light, And they decided one of them should go To gather news of the elusive glow. One flew till in the distance he discerned A palace window where a candle burned -- And went no nearer: back again he flew To tell the others what he thought he knew. The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim, Remarking: "He knows nothing of the flame." A moth more eager than the one before Set out and passed beyond the palace door. He hovered in the aura of the fire, A trembling blur of timorous desire, Then headed back to say how far he'd been, And how much he had undergone and seen. The mentor said: "You do not bear the signs Of one who's fathomed how the candle shines." Another moth flew out -- his dizzy flight Turned to an ardent wooing of the light; He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance Both self and fire were mingled by his dance -- The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head, His being glowed a fierce translucent red; And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze, The moth's form lost within the glowing rays, He said: "He knows, he knows the truth we seek, That hidden truth of which we cannot speak." To go beyond all knowledge is to find That comprehension which eludes the mind, And you can never gain the longed-for goal Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul; But should one part remain, a single hair Will drag you back and plunge you in despair -- No creature's self can be admitted here, Where all identity must disappear. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis <
1.fua - The peacocks excuse, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis Original Language Persian/Farsi Next came the peacock, splendidly arrayed In many-coloured pomp; this he displayed As if he were some proud, self-conscious bride Turning with haughty looks from side to side. 'The Painter of the world created me,' He shrieked, 'but this celestial wealth you see Should not excite your hearts to jealousy. I was a dweller once in paradise; There the insinuating snake's advice Deceived me -- I became his friend, disgrace Was swift and I was banished from that place. My dearest hope is that some blessed day A guide will come to indicate the way Back to my paradise. The king you praise Is too unknown a goal; my inward gaze Is fixed for ever on that lovely land -- There is the goal which I can understand. How could I seek the Simorgh out when I Remember paradise?' And in reply The hoopoe said: 'These thoughts have made you stray Further and further from the proper Way; You think your monarch's palace of more worth Than Him who fashioned it and all the earth. The home we seek is in eternity; The Truth we seek is like a shoreless sea, Of which your paradise is but a drop. This ocean can be yours; why should you stop Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew? The secrets of the sun are yours, but you Content yourself with motes trapped in its beams. Turn to what truly lives, reject what seems -- Which matters more, the body or the soul? Be whole: desire and journey to the Whole. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis <
1.hs - Naked in the Bee-House, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Coleman Barks Original Language Persian/Farsi Being humble is right for you now. Don't thrash around showing your strength. You're naked in the bee-house! It doesn't matter how powerful your arms and legs are. To God, that is more of a lie than your weakness is. In his doorway your prestige and your physical energy are just dust on your face. Be helpless and completely poor. And don't try to meet his eye! That's like signing a paper that honors yourself. If you can take care of things, do so! But when you're living at home with God, you neither sew the world together with desires nor tear it apart with disappointments. In that place existence itself is illusion. All that is, is one. Lost in that, your personal form becomes a vast, empty mosque. When you hold on to yourself, you're a fire-worshipping temple. Dissolve, and let everything get done. When you don't, you're an untrained colt, full of erratic loving and biting. Loyal sometimes, then treacherous. Be more like the servant who owns nothing and is neither hungry nor satisfied, who has no hopes for anything, and no fear of anyone. An owl living near the king's palace is considered a bird of misfortune, ragged and ominous. But off in the woods, sitting alone, its feathers grow splendid and sleek like the Phoenix restored. Musk should not be kept near water or heat. The dampness and the dryness spoil its fragrance. But when the musk is at home in the musk bladder, fire and wetness mean nothing. In God's doorway your guilt and your virtue don't count. Whether you're Muslim, or Christian, or fire-worshipper, the categories disappear. You're seeking, and God is what is sought, the essence beyond any cause. External theological learning moves like a moon and fades when the sun of experience rises. We are here for a week, or less. We arrive and leave almost simultaneously. To be is not to be. The Qur'an says, "They go hastening, with the Light running on before them." Clear the way! Muhammed says, "How fine!" A sigh goes out, and there is union. Forget how you came to this gate, your history. Let that be as if it had not been. Do you think the day plans its course by what the rooster says? God does not depend on any of his creatures. Your existence or non-existence is insignificant. Many like you have come here before. When the fountain of light is pouring, there's no need to urge it on! That's like a handful of straw trying to help the sun. "This way! Please, let this light through!" The sun doesn't need an announcer. The lamp you carry is your self-reliance. The sun is something else! Half a sneeze might extinguish your lantern, whereas all a winter's windiness cannot put That out. The road you must take has no particular name. It's the one composed of your own sighing and giving up. What you've been doing is not devotion. Your hoping and worrying are like donkeys wandering loose, sometimes docile, or suddenly mean. Your face looks wise at times, and ashamed at others. There is another way, a pure blankness where those are one expression. Omar once saw a group of boys on the road challenging each other to wrestle. They were all claiming to be champions, but when Omar, the fierce and accomplished warrior, came near, they scattered. All but one, Abdullah Zubair. Omar asked, "Why didn't you run?" "Why should I? You are not a tyrant, and I am not guilty." When someone knows his own inner value, he doesn't care about being accepted or rejected by anyone else. The prince here is strong and just. Stand wondering in his presence. There is nothing but That. [1841.jpg] -- from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks <
1.jk - Answer To A Sonnet By J.H.Reynolds, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Of Cynthia,the wide palace of the sun,
  The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,

1.jk - Endymion - Book I, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
   "O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
  From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
  --
  To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
  Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
  --
  With horses prancing o'er them, palaces
  And towers of amethyst,would I so tease

1.jk - Endymion - Book II, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Through caves, and palaces of mottled ore,
  Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquois floor,
  --
  Of his white palace in wild forest nook,
  And all the revels he had lorded there:

1.jk - Endymion - Book III, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  But hollow rocks,and they were palaces
  Of silent happiness, of slumberous ease:
  --
  "Behold! behold, the palace of his pride!
  God Neptune's palaces!" With noise increas'd,
  They shoulder'd on towards that brightening east.
  --
  Of one fair palace, that far far surpass'd,
  Even for common bulk, those olden three,
  --
  This palace floor breath-air,but for the amaze
  Of deep-seen wonders motionless,and blaze
  --
  Till Triton blew his horn. The palace rang;
  The Nereids danc'd; the Syrens faintly sang;
  --
  For clamour, when the golden palace door
  Opened again, and from without, in shone
  --
               The palace whirls
  Around giddy Endymion; seeing he

1.jk - Hyperion, A Vision - Attempted Reconstruction Of The Poem, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Make great Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
  Bastion'd with pyramids of shining gold,

1.jk - Hyperion. Book I, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,
  When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.
  --
  Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
  Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold,
  --
  Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope
  In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes,

1.jk - Lamia. Part I, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  My essence? What serener palaces,
  Where I may all my many senses please,
  --
  Throughout her palaces imperial,
  And all her populous streets and temples lewd,

1.jk - Lamia. Part II, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Love in a palace is perhaps at last
  More grievous torment than a hermits fast:
  --
  That purple-lined palace of sweet sin,
  His spirit passd beyond its golden bourn

1.jk - Otho The Great - Act I, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  And of my ducal palace not one stone
  Is bruised by the Hungarian petards.
  --
  What nerveless minions of safe palaces!
  When here, a monarch, whose proud foot is used

1.jk - Otho The Great - Act III, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  This earth, this palace, this room, Auranthe!
  Otho. This is a little painful; just too much.

1.jk - Song Of Four Faries, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  To my fragrant palaces,
  Where they ever floating are

1.jk - Sonnet. Written In Answer To A Sonnet By J. H. Reynolds, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Of Cynthia,--the wide palace of the sun,--
  The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,--

1.jk - The Cap And Bells; Or, The Jealousies - A Faery Tale .. Unfinished, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  (Of pastry he got store within the palace,)
  With hasty steps, wrapp'd cloak, and solemn looks,
  --
  Back to your palace. * * * * * * * * * *
  LIX.
  --
  "Counts of the palace, and the state purveyor
  Of moth's-down, to make soft the royal beds,

1.jlb - The Cyclical Night, #Borges - Poems, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  Once more in the endless dark of its rank palace.
  Every sleepless night will come back in minute
  --
  Are the vast patios of an empty palace,
  And the single-minded streets creating space

1.jr - Moving Water, #Rumi - Poems, #Jalaluddin Rumi, #Poetry
  There is a moving palace that floats in the air with balconies and clear water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained under a single tent.

1.jr - Who Is At My Door?, #Rumi - Poems, #Jalaluddin Rumi, #Poetry
  He said, "Why is the palace deserted?"
  I said, "They all fear the thief."

1.jwvg - Mahomets Song, #Goethe - Poems, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
  Marble palaces, the offspring
  Of his fullness, far behind.

1.kbr - Poem 5, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
  So high is my Lord's palace, my heart trembles to mount its stairs: yet I must not be shy, if I would enjoy His love.
  My heart must cleave to my Lover; I must withdraw my veil, and meet Him with all my body:

1.lb - Bringing in the Wine, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
   Prince Chen paid at a banquet in the palace of Perfection
  Ten thousand coins for a cask of wine, with many a laugh and quip.

1.lb - Chiang Chin Chiu, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  have left a name behind. When the prince of Ch'en gave a feast in the palace of P'ing-lo With twenty thousand gallons of wine
  he loosed mirth and play. The master of the feast must not cry that his money is all spent; Let him send to the tavern and fetch

1.lb - Climbing West of Lotus Flower Peak, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  as they rise to the palace of heaven,
  inviting me to go to the cloud stage

1.lb - Climbing West Of Lotus Flower Peak, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  as they rise to the palace of heaven,
  inviting me to go to the cloud stage

1.lb - Exile's Letter, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
       San palace,
  And if you ask how I regret that parting:

1.lb - His Dream Of Skyland, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  Sun and moon shining together on gold and silver palaces.
  Clad in rainbow and riding on the wind,

1.lb - On A Picture Screen, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  Those palaces of Yang-tai, hovering yonder
  Oh, the melancholy of it!

1.lb - On Climbing In Nan-King To The Terrace Of Phoenixes, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  The paths of Wu palace are crooked with weeds;
  The garments of Chin are ancient dust.

1.lb - On Kusu Terrace, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  the palace of the King of Wu, now
  only the moon over the

1.lb - Song Of The Jade Cup, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  but unfortunately jealousy within the palace
  led to her death.

1.lb - The River Song, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  King So's terraced palace
                     is now but barren hill,
  --
       palace.
  Vine-strings a hundred feet long hang down from

1.lb - The Roosting Crows, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
      The King of Wu in his palace drinks with Hsi Shih.
      Songs of Wu, Dances of Chu quicken their pleasure

1.lovecraft - Nemesis, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  I have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace,                    
   I have trod its untenanted hall,                      

1.lovecraft - The Outpost, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Zimbabwes palace flares ablaze
  For a great King who fears to dream.
  --
  Safe in the palace where he slept.
  None saw him leave, or come at dawn,
  --
  Zimbabwes palace flares ablaze,
  For a great King who fears to dream.

1.ltp - My heart is the clear water in the stony pond, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by T. C. Lai Original Language Chinese My heart is the clear water in the stony pond. Right now it is invaded by the peach-blossom shadows. As soon as I arrive at heaven's palaces I shall settle down with my seven-stringed lute.

1.mb - I have heard that today Hari will come, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by A. J. Alston I have heard that today Hari will come. O my companion, I will climb my high palace To see when my King will come Frogs, peacocks and papihas are calling. The koil is striking its plaintive note Indra is exulting, rain is falling everywhere. The lightning is dancing without shame The earth robes herself anew To greet Indra. Says Mira, O my Master, the courtly Giridhara Come quickly, my King [bk1sm.gif] -- from The Devotional Poems of Mirabai, by Mirabai / Translated by A. J. Alston <
1.mb - Mira is Steadfast, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by V. K. Sethi I will not be restrained now, O Rana, Despite all you do to block my path. I have torn off the veil of worldly shame; Only the company of Saints is dear to me. Merta, my parents' home, I have left for good. My surat and nirat, awakened, Now shine bright. My master has revealed to me The mirror within my own body; Now I'll sing and dance in ecstasy. Keep to your self your gems and jewelry; I have discarded them all, O Rana. My true Lord I have come to behold; None knows of this wealth within the body. I fancy not your forts and palaces Nor want silken robes wrought with gold. Mira, unadorned and unbedecked, Roams intoxicated in the Lord's love. [2594.jpg] -- from Mira: The Divine Lover (Mystics of the East Series), Translated by V. K. Sethi <
1.mb - No one knows my invisible life, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Willis Barnstone No one knows my invisible life. Pain and madness for Rama. Our wedding bed is high up in the gallows. Meet him? If the dark healer comes, we'll negotiate the hurt. I love the man who takes care of cows. The cowherd. Cowherd and dancer. My eyes are drunk, worn out from making love with him. We are one. I am now his dark color. People notice me, point fingers at me. They see my desire, since I'm walking about like a lunatic. I'm wiped out, gone. Yet no one knows I live with my prince, the cowherd. The palace can't contain me. I leave it behind. I couldn't care less about gossip or my royal name. I'll be with him in all his gardens. [1508.jpg] -- from To Touch the Sky: Poems of Mystical, Spiritual & Metaphysical Light, Translated by Willis Barnstone <
1.mdl - The Creation of Elohim, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Daniel Chanan Matt Original Language Aramaic In the Beginning When the King conceived ordaining He engraved engravings in the luster on high. A blinding spark flashed within the Concealed of the Concealed from the mystery of the Infinite, a cluster of vapor in formlessness, set in a ring, not white, not black, not red, not green, no color at all. When a band spanned, it yielded radiant colors. Deep within the spark gushed a flow imbuing colors below, concealed within the concealed of the mystery of the Infinite. The flow broke through and did not break through its aura. It was not known at all until, under the impact of breaking through, one high and hidden point shone. Beyond that point, nothing is known. So it is called Beginning, the first command of all. "The enlightened will shine like the zohar of the sky, and those who make the masses righteous will shine like the stars forever and ever" (Daniel 12:3) Zohar, Concealed of the Concealed, struck its aura. The aura touched and did not touch this point. Then this Beginning emanated and made itself a palace for its glory and its praise. There it sowed the seed of holiness to give birth for the benefit of the universe. The secret is: "Her stock is a holy seed" (Isaiah 6:13) Zohar, sowing a seed for its glory like the seed of fine purple silk. The silkworm wraps itself within and makes itself a palace. This palace is its praise and a benefit to all. With the Beginning the Concealed One who is not known created the palace. This palace is called Elohim. The secret is: "With Beginning, ____________ created Elohim" (Genesis 1:1). [bk1sm.gif] -- from Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment: (Classics of Western Spirituality), Translated by Daniel Chanan Matt

1.pbs - Charles The First, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  For the red plague kept state within that palace
  Where now that vanity reigns. In nine years more
  --
  Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the palace for this.
  Archy.
  When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest men who lie [pinched?] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them.
  Enter Secretary Lyttelton, with papers.
  --
  Lambeth palace look as dark as a rock before the other.
  Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other.
  --
  Through palaces and temples thunderproof.
  SCENE V

1.pbs - Chorus from Hellas, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  and social improvement." The action takes place in the palace of the Turkish
  king, where he receives reports on the progress of the war from messengers

1.pbs - Epipsychidion, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
  Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;

1.pbs - Ginevra, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Back to the palace,--and her maidens soon
  Changed her attire for the afternoon,

1.pbs - Julian and Maddalo - A Conversation, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Its temples and its palaces did seem
  Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.
  --
  The churches, ships and palaces were seen
  Huddled in gloom;into the purple sea
  --
  I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing,
  Long tangled locks flung wildly forth, and flowing,
  --
  In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit
  And subtle talk would cheer the winter night

1.pbs - Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Save where many a palace gate
  With green sea-flowers overgrown

1.pbs - Marenghi, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Inhabits its wrecked palaces;in thine
  A beast of subtler venom now doth make

1.pbs - Mariannes Dream, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Through the domes of those mighty palaces.
  18.

1.pbs - Ode To Liberty, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Of the Suns throne: palace and pyramid,
  Temple and prison, to many a swarming million
  --
  The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.
  XV.

1.pbs - Ode to the West Wind, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
  Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

1.pbs - Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot The Tyrant, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces
   Of golden Byzantium;
  --
  Over palaces, temples, and graves,
  We will rush as thy minister-slaves,

1.pbs - Peter Bell The Third, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
   In thrond state is ever dwelling.

1.pbs - Prometheus Unbound, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Of a fallen palace.
  Prometheus.
  --
  In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs
  Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,
  --
  Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
   From those skiey towers
  --
   palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,
  My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire;
  --
  Note from Mrs. Shelley: 'On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. .....Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world. ....And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gaed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, ''My Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.'''

1.pbs - Queen Mab - Part II., #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
   As Mab's ethereal palace could afford.
   Yet likest evening's vault, that fary Hall!
  --
   In a celestial palace, all resigned
   To pleasurable impulses, immured
  --
     'Palmyra's ruined palaces!
     Behold where grandeur frowned!
  --
    The yet more wretched palaces,
    Contrasted with those ancient fanes

1.pbs - Queen Mab - Part III., #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
   'Behold a gorgeous palace that amid
   Yon populous city rears its thousand towers
  --
   The palace I have built thee? Sacred Peace!
   Oh, visit me but once,but pitying shed
  --
   'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
   And Peace defileth not her snowy robes
  --
   On those who build their palaces and bring
   Their daily bread?From vice, black loathsome vice;

1.pbs - Queen Mab - Part IV., #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
   Their palaces, participate the crimes
   That force defends and from a nation's rage

1.pbs - Queen Mab - Part IX., #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
   The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked
   Famine's faint groan and penury's silent tear,
  --
    Around the Fairy's palace-gate
   Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared

1.pbs - Queen Mab - Part V., #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
   And in the precincts of the palace guides
   Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;

1.pbs - Scenes From The Faust Of Goethe, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  His palace for this festival?--it is
  A pleasure which you had not known before.
  --
  The columns of the evergreen palaces
  Are split and shattered;

1.pbs - The Cenci - A Tragedy In Five Acts, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  An Apartment in the Cenci palace.
  Enter Count Cenci, and Cardinal Camillo.
  --
  A Garden of the Cenci palace. EnterBeatrice and Orsino, as in conversation.
  Beatrice.
  --
  A Magnificent Hall in the Cenci palace. A Banquet. Enter Cenci, Lucretia, Beatrice, Orsino, Camillo, Nobles.
  Cenci.
  --
  An Apartment in the Cenci palace. Enter Lucretia and Bernardo.
  Lucretia.
  --
  An hundred servants, and six palaces,
  To that which nature doth indeed require?
  --
  My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold
  Has whispered silence to his Holiness:
  --
  An Apartment in the Cenci palace. Lucretia, to her enter Beatrice.
  Beatrice.
  --
  Why so it is. This is the Cenci palace;
  Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice.
  --
  An Apartment in Orsino's palace. Enter Orsino and Giacomo.
  Giacomo.

1.pbs - The Mask Of Anarchy, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  For he knew the palaces
  Of our Kings were rightly his;
  --
  'Lastly from the palaces
  Where the murmur of distress

1.pbs - The Revolt Of Islam - Canto I-XII, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
   And keep their state from palaces to graves,
    In all resorts of meninvisible,
  --
   'Yes, I will tread Pride's golden palaces,
    Through Penury's roofless huts and squalid cells
  --
    In squalid huts, and in its palaces
   Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne
  --
    Dungeons and palaces are transitory
   High temples fade like vapourMan alone
  --
   Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where the throng
  Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!
  --
   Famine had spared the palace of the king:
    He rioted in festival the while,

1.pbs - The Witch Of Atlas, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined
   With many a dark and subterranean street

1.pbs - To A Skylark, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
    In a palace tower,
  Soothing her love-laden

1.pbs - To Death, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  To sleep within the palace of the dead!
  Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne

1.poe - The City In The Sea, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
     There shrines and palaces and towers
     (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

1.poe - The City Of Sin, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  There shrines, and palaces, and towers
  Are not like any thing of ours

1.poe - The Haunted Palace, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.poe - The Haunted palace
  author class:Edgar Allan Poe
  --
     Once a fair and stately palace-
      Radiant palace- reared its head.
     In the monarch Thought's dominion-
  --
      Was the fair palace door,
     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

1.rb - Abt Vogler, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
     And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!
    Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
  --
   Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
    Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.
  --
   Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;
    Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;

1.rb - Andrea del Sarto, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,
  Too lifted up in heart because of it)

1.rb - Bishop Blougram's Apology, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
  To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
  --
  When set to happen by the palace-clock
  According to the clouds or dinner-time.

1.rb - Fra Lippo Lippi, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
   palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house,
   Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici
  --
  Medici, wishing him to execute a work in his own palace, shut
  him up, that he might not waste his time in running about\; but

1.rb - In A Gondola, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
   Why's the Pucci palace flaring
  Like a beacon to the blast?
  --
  Of midnight palace-pillars, on
  And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone

1.rb - Introduction: Pippa Passes, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Myself as, in the palace by the Dome,
  Monsignor?who to-night will bless the home

1.rb - Love Among The Ruins, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
   Up like fires

1.rb - Paracelsus - Part II - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt,
  Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces,
  --
  My palace? Branching palms the props shall be,
  Fruit glossy mingling; gems are for the East;

1.rb - Paracelsus - Part I - Paracelsus Aspires, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Some one of Learning's many palaces,
  After approved example?seeking there

1.rb - Paracelsus - Part V - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Those palaces are dwelt in by mankind;
  Higher provision is for him you seek

1.rb - Pippa Passes - Part III - Evening, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Arriving at the palace on my errand!
  No, no! I have a handsome dress packed up
  --
   Before his palace, in the sun,
   He sat to see his people pass,
  --
  And ortolans? Giovita, of the palace,
  Engaged (but there's no trusting him) to slice me

1.rb - Pippa Passes - Part IV - Night, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Scene.Inside the palace by the Duomo. Monsignor, dismissing his Attendants.
  Monsignor

1.rb - Sordello - Book the First, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  "The pair of goodly palaces are burned,
  "The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, drunk
  --
  And while within his palace these debate
  Concerning Richard and Ferrara's fate,

1.rb - Sordello - Book the Fourth, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  "On his own palace, so adroitly razed
  "He knew it not; a sort of Guelf folk gazed
  --
  San Pietro palace stops us.
                 Such the state
  --
  Of Salinguerra's palaces,a breach
  Might yawn else, not so readily to shut,

1.rb - Sordello - Book the Sixth, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  "To palacebe it so! shall I assume
  "My foot the courtly gait, my tongue the trope,

1.rb - Sordello - Book the Third, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
         I' the palace, each by each,
  Sordello sat and Palma: little speech
  --
  "His palace up in Padua like a threat,
  "Their noblest spied a grace, unnoticed yet
  --
  I muse this on a ruined palace-step
  At Venice: why should I break off, nor sit

1.rt - (101) Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs (from Gitanjali), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Rabindranath Tagore Original Language Bengali Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. It was they who led me from door to door, and with them have I felt about me, searching and touching my world. It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; they showed me secret paths, they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart. They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, and, at last, to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening at the end of my journey? [1884.jpg] -- from Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore <
1.rt - Fairyland, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
  If people came to know where my king's palace is, it would vanish
  into the air.
  --
    The queen lives in a palace with seven courtyards, and she
  wears a jewel that cost all the wealth of seven kingdoms.

1.rt - Gitanjali, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
  They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, and, at last, to what palace gate have the brought me in the evening at the end of my journey?
  102.

1.rt - The Gardener IV - Ah Me, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
  at the palace gate.
    I know not why they leave their

1.rt - The Land Of The Exile, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
  search of the princess who lies imprisoned in the giant's palace
  across that unknown water.

1.rwe - Alphonso Of Castile, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  In my palace of Castile,
  I, a king, for kings can feel;

1.rwe - Boston, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  Old Europe groans with palaces,
  Has lords enough and more;

1.rwe - Dmonic Love, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  Shiver the palaces of glass,
  Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls

1.rwe - Initial Love, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
  And told the truant by his marks,

1.rwe - May-Day, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  In palaces and market squares
  Entreated, she is dumb;

1.rwe - Quatrains, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  Quit the hut, frequent the palace,
  Reck not what the people say;

1.rwe - Woodnotes, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  Who liveth in the palace hall
  Waneth fast and spendeth all.

1.sig - Who can do as Thy deeds, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Bernard Lewis Original Language Hebrew Who can do as Thy deeds, when under the throne of Thy glory Thou madest a place for the spirits of Thy saints? There is the abode of the pure souls, that are bound in the bundle of life. Those who are tired and weary, there will they restore their strength. There shall the weary be at rest, for they are deserving of repose. In it there is delight without end or limitation, for that is the world-to-come. There are stations and visions for the souls that stand by the mirrors assembled, to see the face of the Lord and to be seen, Dwelling in the royal palaces, standing by the royal table, Delighting in the sweetness of the fruit of the Intelligence, which yields royal dainties. This is the repose and the inheritance, whose good and beauty are without limit, and "surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it." [1568.jpg] -- from The Heart and the Fountain: An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experiences, by Joseph Dan <
1.sig - Who could accomplish what youve accomplished, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Peter Cole Original Language Hebrew Who could accomplish what you've accomplished in establishing under the Throne of Glory a level for all who were righteous in spirit? This is the range of pure soul gathered in the bond of all that's vital. For those who've worked to exhaustion -- this is the place of their strength's renewal, where the weary will find repose; these are the children of calm, of pleasure that knows no bound in the mind: this is the World to Come, a place of position and vision for souls that gaze into the mirrors of the palace's servants, before the Lord to see and be seen. They dwell in the halls of the king, and stand alongside his table taking delight in the sweetness of intellect's fruit which offers them majesty's savor. This is the rest and inheritance that knows no bounds in its goodness and beauty, flowing with milk and honey; this is its fruit and deliverance. [2610.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition, Edited by Peter Cole <
1.wby - The Three Beggars, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
  The palace-yard and river-side
  And there to three old beggars said,
  --
  From river-side and palace-yard
  And left them to their argument.

1.wby - The Two Kings, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
  Our sudden palaces in the still air
  pleasure itself can bring no weariness.

1.whitman - Salut Au Monde, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
       palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the
      surface;

1.whitman - Song Of The Exposition, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Around a palace,
   Loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
  --
   A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser palaces shall cluster.
   Somewhere within the walls of all,              

1.whitman - Spain 1873-74, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Ruin'd cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests,
  Lo! Freedom's features, fresh, undimm'd, look forththe same

1.whitman - Unnamed Lands, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,
      libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.

1.whitman - Year Of Meteors, 1859 60, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  And find in his palace the youth I love, and drop these lines at his
      feet

1.ww - A Whirl-Blast From Behind The Hill, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
    Entering her palace gate:
  Rejoiced to bid the world farewell,

1.ww - Book Eighth- Retrospect--Love Of Nature Leading To Love Of Man, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Or palace built by fairies of the rock;
  Nor could I have been bribed to disenchant

1.ww - Book Ninth [Residence in France], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The Arcades I traversed, in the palace huge
  Of Orleans; coasted round and round the line

1.ww - Book Seventh [Residence in London], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Of airy palaces, and gardens built
  By Genii of romance; or hath in grave
  --
  The King, and the King's palace, and, not last,
  Nor least, Heaven bless him! the renowned Lord Mayor.  

1.ww - Book Tenth {Residence in France continued], #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  In bondage; and the palace, lately stormed
  With roar of cannon by a furious host.
  --
   With early morning towards the palace-walk
  Of Orleans eagerly I turned: as yet

1.ww - Hart-Leap Well, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The finest palace of a hundred realms!
  "The arbour does its own condition tell;

1.ww - Laodamia, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   This is our palace,yonder is thy throne;
   Speak, and the floor thou tread'st on will rejoice.
  --
   And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse She lay.
   Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved,

1.ww - Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland- 1803, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  A palace of the proudest show,
   Or melt it into air:                

1.ww - Ode on Intimations of Immortality, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  And that imperial palace whence he came.
  Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

1.ww - Picture of Daniel in the Lion's Den at Hamilton Palace, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.ww - Picture of Daniel in the Lion's Den at Hamilton palace
  author class:William Wordsworth
  --
  The Ducal Owner, in his palace-home
  To naturalise this tawny Lion brood;

1.ww - The Excursion- IV- Book Third- Despondency, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise,
  The appointed seat of equitable law

1.ww - The Excursion- X- Book Ninth- Discourse of the Wanderer, and an Evening Visit to the Lake, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  As from the haughtiest palace. He, whose soul
  Ponders this true equality, may walk

1.ww - Troilus And Cresida, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  We must the palace see of Cresida;
  For since we yet may have no other feast,
  Let us behold her palace at the least!
  And therewithal to cover his intent
  --
  And they right forth to Cresid's palace went;      
  But, Lord, this simple Troilus was woe,
  --
  Then said he thus,--O palace desolate!
   house of houses, once so richly dight!
  O palace empty and disconsolate!
  Thou lamp of which extinguished is the light;
  O palace whilom day that now art night,
  Thou ought'st to fall and I to die; since she

20.04 - Act II: The Play on Earth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   into her grottoes, her palaces,
   her fields of wheat, her fields of war.

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   About Swami Hamsa I don't remember his name. It was in the Gaekwad's palace that he gave two or three lectures. I was invited. But it is not true that I went and saw him. At that time I was not interested in Yoga. I did not ask him about Pranayama. I learnt about Pranayama from the engineer Devdhar who was a disciple of Brahmananda.
   I do not remember any yogic cure by Brahmananda; at any rate, I did not take any servant with me.
  --
   It is stated that Sri Aurobindo's patriotism got the religious colour by his contact with one Swami Hamsa. Swami Hamsa had nothing to do with his nationalism. He was a Hathayogi and Sri Aurobindo attended his lecture in the palace on invitation. He did not meet him at his place.
   Mohanpuri did not give him daivi upsan introduction to spiritual life. It was for a purely political purpose that Sri Aurobindo took a Shakti Mantra from him. He performed a certain Yajna for the same purpose. But it was not Yoga.

2.02 - THE DURGA PUJA FESTIVAL, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  They climb up, and they can also come down. They climb to the roof, and they can come down again by the stairs and move about on a lower floor. It is a case of negation and affirmation. There is, for instance, the seven-storey palace of a king. Strangers have access only to the lower apartments; but the prince, who knows the palace to be his own, can move up and down from floor to floor. There is a kind of rocket that throws out sparks in one pattern and then seems to go out. After a moment it makes another pattern, and then still another. There is no end to the patterns it can make. But there is another kind of rocket that, when it is lighted, makes only a dull sound, throws out a few sparks, and then goes out altogether. Like this second kind, an ordinary jiva, after much spiritual effort, can go to a higher plane; but he cannot come down to tell others his experiences. After much effort he may go into samdhi; but he cannot climb down from that state or tell others what he has seen there.
  Nature of the everperfect

2.05 - Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  Tortoise." She dwells in a palace on the K'un-lun Mountain,
  which is surrounded by fragrant flowers, battlements of jewels,

2.05 - The Tale of the Vampires Kingdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  In this nocturnal setting we can imagine a King who advances, puzzled, accompanied by his jester or court dwarf (we have the cards of the King of Swords and the Fool, which fill the bill perfectly), and we can guess a dialogue between them, which the gravedigger overhears. What is the King looking for at this hour? The card of the Queen of Cups suggests he is on his wife's trail; the jester has seen her leave the palace stealthily, and, half-joking, half in earnest, he has convinced the sovereign to follow her. Mischief-maker that he is, the dwarf suspects a Love intrigue; but the King is sure that anything his wife does can bear the light of the Sun: it is her charity work with abandoned children that keeps her constantly on the go.
  The King is an optimist by vocation: in his realm everything proceeds for the best, Coins circulate and are well invested, Cups of abundance are offered to the festive thirst of a prodigal custom, the Wheel of the great mechanism turns by its own power day and night, and there is a Justice stern and rational like that seen in its card with the set expression of a clerk behind her window. The city he has constructed is many-faceted like a crystal, or like the Ace of Cups, pierced by the cheese grater of the skyscrapers' windows, the pulleys of the elevators, auto-coronated by the superhighways, with lots of parking space, burrowed by the luminous anthill of the underground lines, a city whose spires dominate the clouds and whose miasmas' dark wings are buried in the bowels of the earth so as not to dull the view of the great panes of glass and the chromed metals.

2.06 - WITH VARIOUS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "A man wanted to see the king. The king lived in the inner court of the palace, beyond seven gates. No sooner did the man pass the first gate than he exclaimed, 'Oh, where is the king?' But there were seven gates, and he must pass them one after another before he could see the king."
  MAHIMACHARAN: "By what kind of work can one realize God?"
  --
  "Once a fakir went to the Emperor Akbar to ask for money. The Emperor was saying his prayers. He prayed, 'O Lord, give me money; give me wealth.' The fakir started to leave the palace, but the Emperor motioned to him to wait. After finishing his prayers, Akbar came to the holy man and said, 'Why were you going away?' The fakir replied, 'You yourself were begging for money and wealth; so I thought that if I must beg, I would beg of God and not of a beggar.'"
  VIJAY: "I saw a sdhu at Gaya. He did not take the initiative in anything. One day he wanted to feed some devotees. Suddenly we found that butter, flour, fruits, and other foodstuff had arrived from no one knew where."

2.07 - The Cup, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  93:The Master of the Temple has crossed the Abyss, has entered the palace of the King's Daughter; he has only to utter one word, and all is dissolved. But, instead of that, he is found hidden in the earth, tending a garden.
  94:This mystery is all too complex to be elucidated in these fragments of impure thought; it is a suitable subject for meditation.

2.07 - The Triangle of Love, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  The king then wanted the sage to oblige him by receiving a present from him. The sage refused to do so, saying, The fruits of the forest are enough food for me; the pure streams of water flowing down from the mountains give enough of drink for me; the barks of the trees supply me with enough of covering; and the caves of the mountains form my home. Why Should I take any present from you or from anybody? The king said, Just to benefit me, sir, please take something from my hands, and please come with me to the city and to my palace. After much persuasion, the sage at last consented to do as the king desired and went with him to his palace. Before offering the gift to the sage the king repeated his prayers, saying, Lord, give me more children; Lord, give me more wealth; Lord, give me more territory ; Lord, keep my body in better health, and so on. Before the king finished saying his prayer, the sage had got up and walked away from the room quietly. At this the king became perplexed and began to follow him, crying aloud, Sir, you are going away, you have not received my gifts. The sage turned round to him and said, I do not beg of beggars. You are yourself nothing but a beggar; and how can you give me anything? I am no fool to think of taking anything from a beggar like you. Go away, do not follow me. There is well brought out the distinction between mere beggars and the real lovers of God.
  Begging is not the language of love. To worship God even for the sake of salvation or any other reward is equally degenerate.

2.08 - AT THE STAR THEATRE (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "I understand why you don't say anything; perhaps you are afraid of committing a transgression. You are right. Jaya and Vijaya were gate-keepers for Narayana. They refused Sanaka, Santana, and other rishis' admission into His palace.
  For this transgression, Jaya and Vijaya had to be born three times on earth.

2.08 - The Sword, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Its function it to keep off the enemy or to force a passage through them-and though it must be wielded to gain admission to the palace, it cannot be worn at the marriage feast.
  One might say that the Pantacle is the bread of life, and the Sword the knife which cuts it up. One must have ideas, but one must criticize them.

2.08 - Three Tales of Madness and Destruction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Now that we have seen these greasy pieces of cardboard become a museum of old masters, a theater of tragedy, a library of poems and novels, the silent brooding over down-to-earth words bound to come up along the way, following the arcane pictures, can attempt to soar higher, to peal forth winged words, perhaps heard in some theater balcony, where their resonance transforms moth-eaten sets on a creaking stage into palaces and battlefields.
  In fact, the three who now started quarreling did so with solemn gestures as if declaiming, and while all three pointed to the same card, with their free hand and with evocative grimaces they exerted themselves to convey that those figures were to be interpreted this way and not that. Now in the card whose name varies according to custom and language-The Tower, The House of God, The House of the Devil-a young man carrying a sword, you would say for the purpose of scratching his flowing blond hair (now white), recognizes the platform before Elsinore castle when the night's blackness is rent by an apparition which freezes the sentinels in fear: the majestic march of a ghost whose grizzled beard and shining helmet and breastplate cause him to resemble both the tarots' Emperor and the late king of Denmark, who has returned to demand Justice. In such questionable shape, the cards lend themselves to the young man's silent interrogation: "Why the sepulchre hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws that thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, revisit'st thus the glimpses of The Moon?"
  --
  But an old man's trembling finger is now pointed at the Arcanum of the Tower and the Thunderbolt. In his other hand he holds up the figure of the King of Cups, surely to make us recognize him, since no royal attributes remain on his derelict person: nothing in the world has been left him by his unnatural daughters (this is what he seems to say, pointing to two portraits of cruel, crowned ladies and then at the squalid landscape of the Moon), and now others want to usurp even this card from him, the proof of how he was driven from his palace, emptied from the walls like a can of rubbish, abandoned to the fury of the elements. Now he inhabits the storm and the rain and the wind as if he could have no other home, as if the world were allowed to contain only hail and thunder and tempest, just as his mind now houses only wind and thunderbolts and madness. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's molds, all chromosomes spill at once that make ungrateful man! We read this hurricane of thoughts in the eyes of the old sovereign seated in our midst, his bent shoulders huddled no longer in his ermine mantle but in a Hermit's habit, as if he were still wandering by lantern light over the heath without shelter, the Fool his only support and mirror of his madness.
  Instead, for the young man ahead of him the Fool is merely the role he has set himself to play, the better to work out a revenge plot and to conceal his spirit, distraught by the revelation of the guilty deeds of his mother, Gertrude, and his uncle. If this is neurosis, there is a method in it, and in every method, neurosis. (We know this well, glued to our game of tarots.) It was the story of relations between the young and the old that he, Hamlet, had come to tell us: the more fragile youth feels itself in the face of age's authority, the more it is driven to form an extreme and absolute idea of itself, and the more it remains dominated by looming parental phantoms. The young arouse similar uneasiness in the old: they loom like ghosts, they wander around hanging their heads, digging up remorses the old had buried, scorning what the old believe their finest possession: experience. So let Hamlet play the fool, with his stockings ungartered and a book open under his nose: the ages of transition are subject to mental ailments. For that matter, his mother has surprised him (The Lover!) raving for Ophelia: the diagnosis is quickly made, we shall call it love-madness and thus all is explained. If anything, Ophelia, poor angel, will be the one who pays: the Arcanum that defines her is Temperance and already foretells her watery death.
  --
  For all three tragedies the advance of a victorious king's Chariot of war marks the fall of the curtain. Fortinbras of Norway lands on the pale Baltic island, the palace is silent, the warrior enters among the marble walls: why, it is a morgue! There lying dead is the entire royal family of Denmark! O proud, snobbish Death! What feast is toward in thine eternal cell that thou so many princes at a shot so bloodily hast struck, leafing through the Almanach de Gotha with thy scythe-paper-knife?
  No, it is not Fortinbras: it is the King of France, Cordelia's husband, who has crossed the channel to support Lear and is closely besieging the army of Gloucester's Bastard, contended by the two rival and perverse queens, but he will not be in time to free the mad king and his daughter from their cage, shut up there to sing like birds and laugh at gilded butterflies. For the first time there is a bit of peace in the family: if the murderer would delay only a few minutes. But instead he is punctual, hangs Cordelia, and is killed by Lear, who cries: Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life and thou no breath at all? And Kent, faithful Kent, can only wish for him: Break, heart, I prithee, break!

2.10 - THE MASTER AND NARENDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  But how could he do so without money? So he decided to go to the Emperor for help, for the gate of Akbar's palace was always open to holy men. The hermit entered the palace while the Emperor was at his daily devotions and took a seat in a corner of the room. He heard the Emperor conclude his worship with the prayer, 'O God, give me money; give me riches', and so on and so forth. When the hermit heard this he was about to leave the prayer hall; but the Emperor signed to him to wait. When the prayer was over, Akbar said to him, 'You came to see me; how is it that you were about to leave without saying anything to me?' 'Your Majesty need not trouble yourself about it', answered the hermit.
  'I must leave now.' When the Emperor insisted, the hermit said, 'Many people visit my hut, and so I came here to ask you for some money.' 'Then', said Akbar, 'why were you going away without speaking to me?' The hermit replied: 'I found that you too were a beggar; you too prayed to God for money and riches. Thereupon I said to myself, "Why should I beg of a beggar? If I must beg, let me beg of God." ' "

2.12 - THE MASTERS REMINISCENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The Isvarakoti is like the king's son. He has the keys to all the rooms of the seven-storey palace; he can climb to all the seven floors and come down at will. A jivakoti is like a petty officer. He can enter some of the rooms of the palace; that is his limit.
  "Janaka was a Jnni. He attained Knowledge by means of his sdhan. But Sukadeva was Knowledge itself."

2.13 - THE MASTER AT THE HOUSES OF BALARM AND GIRISH, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Koar Singh also asked me that question. You see, there is a vast difference between the jiva and Isvara. Through worship and austerity, a jiva can at the utmost attain samdhi; but he cannot come down from that state. On the other hand, an Incarnation of God can come down from samdhi. A jiva is like an officer of the king; he can go as far as the outer court of the seven-storey palace. But the king's son has access to all the seven floors; he can also go outside. Everybody says that no one can return from the plane of samdhi. In that case, how do you account for sages like Sankara and Ramanuja? They retained the 'ego of Knowledge'."
  MAHIMA: "That is true, indeed. Otherwise, how could they write books?"

2.16 - VISIT TO NANDA BOSES HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Nanda's house was like a palace. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "Jadu hasn't such a big house. I told him so the other day."
  NANDA :"He has built a new house at Jorashanko."

2.17 - THE MASTER ON HIMSELF AND HIS EXPERIENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The king dwells in the inmost room of the palace, which has seven gates. The visitor comes to the first gate. There he sees a lordly person with a large retinue, surrounded on all sides by pomp and grandeur. The visitor asks his companion, 'Is he the king?' 'No', says his friend with a smile.
  "At the second and the other gates he repeats the same question to his friend. He finds that the nearer he comes to the inmost part of the palace, the greater is the glory, pomp, and grandeur. When he passes the seventh gate he does not ask his companion whether it is the king; he stands speechless at the king's immeasurable glory. He realizes that he is face to face with the king. He hasn't the slightest doubt about it."
  PUNDIT: "One sees God beyond the realm of my."

2.19 - Feb-May 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Jaysingh Rao was dull. Shivaji Rao was intelligent. I taught him French; he was a good student. Dhairyashil showed signs of premature development of lust. It was due to the servants of the palace. Indira was more interesting and there was something sturdy in her. She had the most of her father, Sayaji Rao, in her.
   Disciple: There is a criticism of Pujalal's poetry by the Gujarati poet critic Khabardar. He says, it is not "rooted in the soil", too Sanskritised and not written for the masses. English poetry, hesays, is founded on the Anglo-Saxon language.

2.2.3 - Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is incorrect to say that the wrong key with which you were trying to open the faery palace has been taken away from you and you are left with none at all. The true key has been given to you in the right kind or condition of meditationa state of inner rest, not of straining, of quiet opening, not of eager or desperate pulling, a harmonious giving of oneself to the Divine Force for its working, and in that quietude a sense of the Force working and a restful confidence allowing it to act without any unquiet interference. Now that condition is the beginning of the psychic opening; there is of course much more that afterwards comes to complete it but this is the fundamental condition into which all the rest can most easily come. In this condition there may and will be call, prayer, aspiration. Intensity, concentration will come of themselves, not by a hard effort or tense strain on the nature. Rejection of wrong movements, frank confession of defects are not only not incompatible, but helpful to it; but this attitude makes the rejection, the confession easy, spontaneous, entirely complete and sincere and effective. That is the experience of all who have consented to take this attitude.
  Now as to the tension and stiffness. I may say in passing that consciousness and receptivity are not the same thing; one may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. But for such an external unconsciousness there must be a reason, and in you it was the stiffness created by a tension and a straining which made the consciousness thus rigid and closed it up. Not that it closed you to the Force or that it took away the inner receptivity, but it did close you to the surface consciousness of what is being done. When that happens, the Force works, as I have repeatedly written, behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little, until there is so much pressure that it breaks through somehow and forces open the external nature. There lies the difference between a mental and vital straining and pulling and a spontaneous psychic openness, and it is not at all the first time that we have spoken of the difference. It is not really a question of the right or the wrong key, but of putting the key in the lock in the right or the wrong way, whether because of some difficulty you try to force the lock turning the key this way and that with violence or confidently and quietly give it the right turn and the door opens.
  --
  The remedy we propose, the key we offer to you ought not to be so difficult to apply as you imagine. After all, it is only applying in meditation the way that has been so successful with you in your creative work. There is a way of creation by strain and tension, by beating of the brain, by hard and painful labouroften the passage clogged and nothing coming or else coming only in return for a sort of intellectual tapasya. There is the other way in which one remains quiet and opens oneself to a power that is there behind and waits for inspiration; the force pours in and with it the inspiration, the illumination, the Ananda,all is done by an inner Power. The flood passes, but one remains quiet for the next flood and at its time surely it comes. Here too all is not perfect at once; but progress comes by ever new waves of the same Power. Not then a strain of mental activity, but a restful opening to the Force that is there all the time above and around you, so that it may flow freely and do its work in peace and illumination and Ananda. The way has been shown to you, you yourself have had from time to time the true condition; only you must learn how to continue in it or recover it and you must allow the Force to do its work in its own way. It may take some time to take entire hold of it, get the other habit out and make this normal; but you must not start by deciding that it is impossible! It is eminently possible and it is the door of definitive entrance. The difficulty, the struggle were only the period of preparation necessary to get rid of or to exhaust the obstruction in the consciousness which was a thorn-hedge round the faery palace.
  ***

2.29 - The Worlds of Creation, Formation and Action, #General Principles of Kabbalah, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
  to their palaces. Thus each palace has an individual
  Nefesh. Next to that there is one Kuah (the next higher
  degree of Spirit) for all its palaces and each single Kuah
  lodging there, unites with all the others to become
  --
  Kuah then travels until it reaches the palace specifically
  designed for it, and once there, rules all the other entities
  --
  In that palace which is designated "the Holy of
  Holies (the first three Sefirot in the world of "Crea
  --
  in the palace of the Holy of Holies. Thereafter all rise
  to the world of Emanation, where they receive energy

2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What am I to do? It seems to me that before I was trying to fit the wrong key into the lock of the faery palace, but now
  I have been left with no key at all.
  --
  It is therefore quite incorrect to say that the Mother took away the wrong key with which you were trying to open the faery palace and left you with none at all. For she not only showed you the true key but gave it to you. It was not a mere vague exhortation to cheerfulness she gave you, but she described exactly the condition felt in the right kind of meditation
  - a state of inner rest, not of straining, of quiet opening, not of eager or desperate pulling, a harmonious giving of oneself to the Divine Force for its working, and in that quietude a sense

31.10 - East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The East in its natural bent has aspired for the Divine, the Infinite, the Eternal. She has sought for and found the Supreme which is unity in diversity and which maintains its identity in the midst of multitudinous variables. The dynamic West has understood well, too well, the restless movements of life, its conflicts, its hustle-bustle, its hurly-burly, its diversity and it always runs after something new, ever new. The East wants the Truth beyond the senses, direct realisation and spiritual vision. The West wants Reason, Intellect, the analytic and discursive faculty. Both seem to be wholly taken up - almost eaten up - with their own ideals. Therefore they have secured benefit as well as incurred loss. The East realised the Self, hence she is great and supreme in that way. But at the same time, she lacks in a rich earthly mind that makes for richness, opulence, success in life. The aspirant of the East has endeavoured to acquire mastery over himself, but has failed to see that the mastery over the world is the true fulfilment of one's own self-mastery. The West is particularly concerned with the body. So she has come by the vast material prospect of an infinite variety. But for want of the firm basis of the Self behind the body all her acquisitions are but temporary, and have ended in an external glamour. No doubt, she has created the joy of life, but in the absence of the conscious knowledge of the Self, this joy has not culminated in the bliss divine. The West seeks to dominate the world by force and violence and by exercising her power through external means. She has not the patience or the wisdom to realise that the achievement of unity within one's self is the first necessity and absolute condition, that alone can give a total fulfilment in a perfect contentment. The East has discovered the foundation of Truth. She has not thought it necessary to build a broad-based outward edifice of delight on it, while the West has always tried to build a vast earthly palace, but where? On the shifting sands. The West has become prosperous in life, accepting outward forms without number, but she lacks in the intimate high seriousness. The East is profound with her realisation, but in life she is or has become a destitute.
   In this new epoch our aspiration should be for the self-realisation of the East and for this we have first to realise the basic reality of all things and constantly live therein, but not by severing ourselves from the world and its objects. We shall not remain satisfied with the realisation of the Formless alone, because each and every manifestation of the formless Self can yield some special kind of delight and fulfilment. This truth we need must be learnt from the West. Also we have to learn that this limited delight too does not really belong to the finite, it is derived from the Infinite and has its final fulfilment in the Infinite. We are not going to merge everything into the indeterminate Eternal, but we shall enrich the delight we experience in the Formless Divine by the perception of the same and equal Divinity in all the diverse forms and objects in the manifestation. We do not propose to lose the earthly joy in the bliss of the indeterminate Absolute. We shall give full importance to every one of the infinite activities of life, but like the West we shall not consider any of them, in their present make-up, as the one thing needful. We shall see the supreme Being surrounded with all His powers and beauties. The ten-armed Goddess Durga will spread out her ten arms in ten different directions.

3.16.2 - Of the Charge of the Spirit, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  reigneth above him in His palaces as the Balance of Righteousness
  and Truth1 by the Names used in that evocation.
  --
  adopted Davids wives and concubines on the roof of the palace, in
  order to signify that he had succeeded in breaking his fathers

3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  opens the gates of the most exalted palaces of initiation is equally
  effective when employed to advise one in the ordinary business of

31 Hymns to the Star Goddess, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  It hath been written how the Old King dreamed of his banished peacock, entombed in a palace of ice, who cried: The Icicles of Isis are falling on my head.
  Thus it is with those who are banished to the palace of the Moon for the Word of Sin is Restriction.
  Oh! Lady of the Starry Heavens, let me not become frozen at the touch of the cold Veil of Isis. For the Moon is but the dead reflector of the Sun, and He but the youngest of Thy Children of Light.

3.21 - Of Black Magic, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  reigneth above you in your palaces as the Balance of Righteousness and Truth2 is your duty to your Holy Guardian Angel, and
  the duty of the demon world to you.

4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  God only. Let Him choose for thee a king's palace or the bowl of the beggar.
  347. What is vice but an enslaving habit and virtue but a human opinion? See God and do His will; walk in whatever path He shall trace for thy goings.

4.41 - Chapter One, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    I,51: There are four gates to one palace; the floor of that palace is of silver and gold; lapis lazuli & jasper are there; and all rare scents; jasmine & rose, and the emblems of death. Let him enter in turn or at once the four gates; let him stand on the floor of the palace. Will he not sink? Amn. Ho! warrior, if thy servant sink? But there are means and means. Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your will and fill of love as ye will, when, where, and with whom ye will! But always unto me.
    I,52: If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit!

5.01 - The Dakini, Salgye Du Dalma, #The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, #Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #Buddhism
  a palace, which would you choose? The palace, most likely.
  We are told that when Lord Mohammed visited Paradise,
  he saw great palaces built on a height overlooking the entire
  countryside.
  "O Gabriel," said Mohammed to the angel who was showing him all these things, "for whom are these palaces?" The
  angel replied:

5.1.01.1 - The Book of the Herald, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Over the brow he mounted and saw the palace of Priam,
  Home of the gods of the earth, Laomedons marvellous vision
  --
  Speak in the palace of Priam the word of the Phthian Achilles.
  Freely and not as his vassal who leads, Agamemnon, the Argive,
  --
  Not in the palace of Priam and not in the halls of the mighty
  Whispered councils prevail and the few dispose of the millions;
  --
  So for his hour he abode in earths palace of lordliest beauty,
  But in its caverns his heart was weary and, hurt by the splendours,

5.1.01.2 - The Book of the Statesman, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Thrice and were still. From garden and highway, from palace and temple
  Turned like a steed to the trumpet, rejoicing in war and ambition,

5.1.01.4 - The Book of Partings, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Halamus answered him: I will go forth to the palace of Priam,
  There where Troy yet lives and far from the halls of my fathers;
  --
  Mounting the steep incline that climbed to the palace of Priam
  White in her proud and armed citadel. Silent, ascending
  --
  I too for counsel of battle have come to the palace of Priam.
  Burdened with thought they mounted slowly the road of their fathers
  --
  But in the palace of Priam coming and going of house-thralls
  Filled all the corridors; smoke from the kitchens curled in its plenty
  --
  Ran in relief on those walls of pride in the palace of Priam
  Mingled with Dryads who tempted and fled and Satyrs who followed,
  --
  Cherished in sandalwood triumphed and teemed in the palace of Priam;
  Doors that were carven and fragrant sheltered the joys of its princes.
  --
  Over the palace of Priam and over the armd nation
  Marching resolved to the war in the pride of its centuries conquered,
  --
  Burning with Troy in their palace, nor could thy country persuade thee,
  Nor dost thou care for thy sisters happiness pierced by thy arrows.
  --
  Meanwhile armed in the palace of Priam Penthesilea.
  Near her her captains silent and mighty stood, from the Orient
  --
  Not that remoteness to see have I come to the palace of Priam
  Leaving the house of my fathers, but for the spear and the breastpiece.
  --
  All Troy streamed from her streets and her palaces armed for the combat.
  Then to the voice of Deiphobus clanging high oer the rumour

5.1.01.8 - The Book of the Gods, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Zeus has his palace high and there he has stabled his war-car.
  Thence he descends to our mortal realms; where the heights of our mountains

5.4.01 - Notes on Root-Sounds, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    (i.a. of palace)
  
  --
   garland, etc; a jasmine; linseed; daughter; palace; a bird; intoxicating drink.
   wreathed; engirt.

5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  an official visit to the palace of the archbishop and bestowed
  the episcopal blessing from one of the windows. The same thing

7.02 - Courage, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Ravana had stolen lady Sita away from her husb and and carried her off in his chariot to his palace on the island of Lanka.
  Sumptuous was the palace and delightful the garden in which he imprisoned the princess Sita. Yet she was unhappy and every day she would shed tears, not knowing whether she would ever see her Lord Rama again.
  Glorious Rama learnt from Hanuman the monkey-king where his wife Sita was held captive. He set out with noble

7.04 - Self-Reliance, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  He dared not forbid his daughter to marry him, but as soon as they were married he drove them out of his palace. So they went to live in the heart of the forest and built their hut not far from a river.
  Gushtasp was a great hunter. Each day he would cross the river by boat, catch an elk or a wild ass, give half to the boatman and take the rest home to his wife.
  --
  In fairy-tales, one has only to utter a word or rub a lamp or wave a wand for genies to appear and carry people through the air, build palaces in the twinkling of an eye and cause armies of elephants and horsemen to spring from the ground.
  But personal effort brings about still greater marvels: it covers the soil with rich harvests, tames wild beasts, tunnels through mountains, erects dykes and bridges, builds cities, launches ships on the ocean and flying machines in the air; in short it gives more well-being and security to all.

7.06 - The Simple Life, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The desert tent is lovelier to dwell in than the grand chambers of a palace.
  The young colts that run about the Arab camp are lovelier than the mules weighed down by their rich trappings.
  The voice of the watch-dog who barks at an approaching stranger sounds sweeter than the ivory horn of the palace-guard.
  Her song was heard by the Caliph and he banished her from his court. So the poetess returned to her tribe, happy to see no more of the rich dwelling that made her sad.
  --
  In the reign of the famous Akbar, there lived at Agra a Jain saint named Banarasi Das. The Emperor summoned the saint to his palace and told him:
  Ask of me what you will, and because of your holy life, your wish shall be satisfied.
  --
  Then, Sire, I would ask that you do not call me again to your palace, for I want to devote my time to the divine work.
  Let it be so, said Akbar. But I in my turn have a favour to ask you.
  --
  But it so happened that the very day on which the saint visited the Emperor was a fast-day. And therefore Akbar would only have his meal several hours after midnight. The palace cooks had prepared the dishes in the evening and had placed them in plates of gold and silver, until the time of fasting should be over.
  It was still dark when Akbar had them brought before him. Despite his haste to take some nourishment, he suddenly remembered the words of Banarasi Das: Take care over your meat and drink. So he examined the plate before him carefully and found that the food was covered with brown ants. In spite of all precautions, these ants had crept in and spoiled the Emperors meal.

7.08 - Sincerity, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Throughout the sittings of the Council, a multitude of great birds would appear at a word from the king and spread their wings to shade the people in the six hundred seats. And at his command, each morning and evening, a powerful wind would arise, lifting up the whole palace and instantaneously transporting it a months journey away. In this way, the king was at hand to govern the distant lands that belonged to him.
  Besides, Solomon made the most marvellous throne one could ever dream of. And this throne was designed in such a way that no one would dare to utter an untruth in the presence of the king.
  --
  The Emperor stepped down from his throne and got into a sedan chair which was used to carry him through his vast palace.
  Just at that moment the young man hurried in.
  --
  The tables in Duryodhanas palace were laid with an extremely rich display of vessels of gold and silver, ornamented with rubies and emeralds and diamonds sparkling with many colours. Lord Krishna was invited to the feast but did not go. Instead he went that night to the house of a poor Sudra, who had also invited him. The meal was simple, the dishes were plain. And yet Krishna chose this one in preference to the other, for the feast which the Sudra offered him was full of sincere love, whereas the sumptuous banquet of King Duryodhana had been given only for show.
  It is also said that the glorious Rama once sat at the table of a very humble woman, whose husb and was a fowler. All she could put before the famous hero was a few fruits, for she had nothing else. But she gave the best she had with such a good heart that Rama was touched and wished that the memory of this gift from a sincere soul should not be forgotten, and that is why it is still spoken of after so many centuries.
  --
  Struck by this strange occurrence, the king assembled the wise men in his palace and asked them what such a thing might mean.
  It means, they replied, that on the spot where you lost sight of the tiger, you should build a new city. For tigers only flee from places where men come to live in great numbers.

7.11 - Building and Destroying, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The builder draws up plans, digs foundations, and the toiling hands of men build a farmhouse for the peasant or a palace for a prince.
  It is better to build than to destroy, and yet destroying is sometimes necessary.

7.12 - The Giver, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The five sons of Pandu, the five noble Pandavas, were staying in a palace which at first sight seemed beautiful and comfortable.
  But it had been built by an enemy, Purochana, and he had made
  --
  One day a very skilful miner came to the palace. He said secretly to the princes:
  "One of your friends sends me here to serve you. I am a miner. Tell me how I can help you. I know for sure that your enemy, Purochana himself, will try to burn you all alive in this house."
  --
  In the floor at the very centre of the palace the miner began to dig. The Pandavas kept planks ready to place over the hole and covered the planks with carpets whenever Purochana came near. So the deceiver was deceived.
  At last the five princes were informed that the passage was ready. It led from the house to a lovely spot in the forest.
  One night the princes set fire to the palace and then with their mother Kunti, they made their escape through the underground passage. It was dark but safe. When strong Bhima noticed that his companions were not fleeing fast enough, he put his mother on his shoulders, took two of his brothers on his hips and the other two under his arms, and with this burden ran like a wind that cannot be stopped, away from the deadly fire.
  Purochana's trick had been foiled by the good miner's skill.

7.14 - Modesty, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  A king of Persia named Kai Kaus had waged many wars and won many battles. He was so rich with the spoils of his enemies that he built two palaces in the Elburz mountains; and the gold and silver in the chambers were so plentiful that the brightness of the polished metal rivalled the light of day.
  Kai Kaus was filled with presumptuous pride; he thought that he was the greatest king on earth.
  Iblis, the evil spirit, observing the high opinion the king had of himself, resolved to trick him. He sent a demon disguised as a servant to the palace, with a bunch of flowers to present to the king.
  The servant kissed the ground before Kai Kaus and said:
  --
  The four eagles tried to catch hold of the meat and in order to do so flew upwards, at the same time lifting up the frame, which rose into the air to the amazement of the crowd. The eagles went up and up, nearer and nearer to the moon, until, wearied by their flight, they stopped beating their wings. Then the frame, the throne, the king, the wine-jar and all fell with a crash into the wilderness of China. The king lay all alone, bruised, hungry and wretched, until messengers came and took him back to the palace.
  The king himself now saw how stupid and vain he had been.
  --
  He was very rich. He had a magnificent throne, his plates were of gold, and in his palace silver was as common as stones in the city of Jerusalem. Merchants were constantly bringing him gold, silver, ivory, peacocks, monkeys, beautiful clothes, armour,
  257

7.15 - The Family, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The family is something very precious to mankind. It is the true home. For neither wood nor stone nor the cloth of a tent nor the marble of a palace make a home, but the love that unites young and old in the family just as the hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
  * *

Aeneid, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  until you reach the palace of the queen.
  515
  --
  into the royal palace and announces
  her offerings in the temples of the gods.
  --
  glad gift of wine. Within the palace gleam
  the furnishings of royal luxury;
  --
  it swells through all the palace; voices roll
  across the ample halls; the lamps are kindled
  --
  The spacious palace of Deiphobus
  has fallen, victim of the towering Vulcan.
  --
  The clamor calls us on to Priam's palace.
  "And here the fight is deadly, just as if
  --
  our spirits rush relief to Priam's palace,
  help to our men, and fresh force to the beaten.
  --
  a postern at the palace rear; and there,
  while Troy still stood, the sad Andromache
  --
  the youths of Scyros now assault the palace;
  they fling their firebrands up toward the roof.
  --
  "But deep within, confusion takes the palace,
  anguish and sad commotion; and the vaulted
  --
  they meet; their soldiers stream across the palace
  less furious than these, the foaming river
  --
  the center of the palace, stood a giant
  shrine; at its side an ancient laurel leaned
  --
  And more: inside her palace she had built
  a marble temple to her former husband
  --
  across the inner courtyards of her palace.
  She mounts in madness that high pyre, unshea thes
  --
  the wiles and mazes of the palace; with
  a thread he guided Theseus' blinded footsteps.
  --
  her Menelaeus to my palace, hoping
  her lover surely will be grateful for
  --
  The raging groans of lions fill her palace
  they roar at midnight, restless in their chains
  --
  For in the inner courtyard of the palace
  there stood a laurel tree with sacred leaves,
  --
  I see them reach the palace, see them ruling
  in our high citadel." More, while the virgin
  --
  her flames throughout the palace. This indeed
  was taken as a sign of fear and wonder:
  --
  invited to the palace. At its center
  he sat on his ancestral chair of state.
  --
  the city; once the palace of Laurentian
  Picus, an awesome place both for its forests
  --
  welcomed the Teucrians into his palace;
  when they had entered, he spoke gentle words:
  --
  homeland and starry heaven's golden palace
  enthrones him now; his altars join the gods'."
  --
  makes first for Latium and the high palace
  of the Laurentian chieftain. There she sits
  --
  his palace, the grim goddess flies at once
  on her dark wings to daring Turnus' walls:
  --
  with Latin, that he is banished from the palace.
  And then the kinsmen of those women who,
  --
  they press around the palace of Latinus.
  He, like a steady rock amid the sea,
  --
  the palace, let the reins of rule fall slack.
  Within Hesperian Latium there was
  --
  So, rough, he stalks into the royal palace,
  his shoulders in the clothes of Hercules.
  --
  The den of Cacus, his enormous palace,
  lay bare and, deep inside, his shadowed caverns
  --
  they butcher his companions, burn the palace.
  Yet he, amid that slaughter, slipped away
  --
  of the high Capitol; the new-carved palace
  was shaggy with the straw of Romulus.
  --
  Evander's palace. Nor is that enough;
  he has made his way into the farthest towns
  --
  cries: "This is not Amata's dowry palace;
  this is not Ardea, your native place.
  --
  eanwhile the palace of Olympus opens;
  the father of the gods and king of men
  --
  knew what was flight. The gods inside Jove's palace
  take pity on both armies' pointless anger;
  --
  of chiefs, who are to meet in his high palace.
  And there they all converge through crowded streets.
  --
  or you are set upon a dowry palace,
  then dare and, in your confidence, commit
  --
  now clatters through the royal palace, setting
  the city in alarm, announcing troops
  --
  of words and quickly left the high-roofed palace.
  "You, Volusus," he calls out, "you command
  --
  This said, he hurries back into the palace,
  calls for his horses, and on seeing them
  --
  from her high palace roof the enemy
  approaching, charging at the walls, the
  --
  the wailing fills the palace's wide halls.
  The sad report goes out across the city.
  --
  Cnos'sus capital of Crete, and site of the palace of Minos and the
  Labyrinth, in, 155.

Book 1 - The Council of the Gods, #The Odyssey, #Homer, #Mythology
    The suitors; they before the palace gate
    With iv'ry cubes sported, on num'rous hides
  --
    From all his palace that imperious herd,
    To his own honour lord of his own home.
  --
    In the superior palace; down she came,
    By all the num'rous steps of her abode;
  --
    Then echoed through the palace dark-bedimm'd
    With evening shades the suitors boist'rous roar,         460

BOOK II. - A review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption and vice, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are nowise concerned that the republic be less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its victories, or still better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us? This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let the[Pg 73] rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their pride. Let the people applaud not those who protect their interests, but those who provide them with pleasure. Let no severe duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden. Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures; not with a hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to another man's property, than of that done to one's own person. If a man be a nuisance to his neighbour, or injure his property, family, or person, let him be actionable; but in his own affairs let every one with impunity do what he will in company with his own family, and with those who willingly join him. Let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for every one who wishes to use them, but specially for those who are too poor to keep one for their private use. Let there be erected houses of the largest and most ornate description: in these let there be provided the most sumptuous banquets, where every one who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit,[108] dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it, let him be silenced, banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who procure for the people this condition of things, and preserve it when once possessed. Let them be worshipped as they wish; let them demand whatever games they please, from or with their own worshippers; only let them secure that such felicity be not imperilled by foe, plague, or disaster of any kind. What sane man would compare a republic such as this, I will not say to the Roman empire, but to the palace of Sardanapalus, the ancient king who was so abandoned to pleasures, that he caused it to be inscribed on his tomb, that now that he was[Pg 74] dead, he possessed only those things which he had swallowed and consumed by his appetites while alive? If these men had such a king as this, who, while self-indulgent, should lay no severe restraint on them, they would more enthusiastically consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient Romans did to Romulus.
  21. Cicero's opinion of the Roman republic.

BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  description of whose magnificent palace and city dovetail with those of the Persian tales; though they
  were unknown to all pagan travellers, even to Herodotus.
  --
  Krishna; that King who resided in the palace "which was an ocean shell, and whose subjects lived in
  shells also," says Wilford.

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  the palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not in existence, and the bold navigators of
  Tyre and Sidon, who at a later date were to undertake their perilous voyages along the
  --
  its light; the palace of heaven falling to decay shall produce at once both life and death, and some kind
  of dissolution shall equally seize upon all deities, who thus shall return into their original chaos"

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the basso-relievos of the palace of Palenque, on the
  west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure,

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  window cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior
  work.
  --
  seven columns," or palaces, of the seven creative Angels operating in the spheres of the seven planets
  on our Globe. As Adam Kadmon is a collective name, so also is the name of the man Adam. Says

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  and palaces of virtuous emperors as a visible token of celestial favour. The male (Feng), which had three legs, lived in
  the sun. The female is the Huang; together they are the
  --
  and palaces of the serpents, who revealed it centuries later
  to the monk Nagarjuna.
  --
  hovels are palaces. So that Peer Gynt would not witness the
  sordidness of his surroundings and the ugliness of the princess he is about to marry, the Trolls offer to put out his
  --
  and carries it off to the palace of kings. One of Pisanellos
  medals and many famous tapestries illustrate this victory

Chapter II - WHICH TREATS OF THE FIRST SALLY THE INGENIOUS DON QUIXOTE MADE FROM HOME, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  welcome as a star guiding him to the portals, if not the palaces, of his redemption; and quickening his pace he
  reached it just as night was setting in. At the door were standing two young women, girls of the district as they

Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  That great peace is there, behind. I have the feeling of a transparent milieu. I wonder whether this is not the experience the Christian mystics describe as the glassy sea and the Japanese as the Crystal palace?
  THERE are two principal forms under which one becomes aware of it: one is analogous to the sensation of a transparent stirless sea and the other of an ethereal expanse.

COSA - BOOK VIII, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  lingering on the earth, went away to the palace. But the other two,
  fixing their heart on heaven, remained in the cottage. And both had

COSA - BOOK X, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  unto Him Who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of
  my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into

Diamond Sutra 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Shakyamuni to leave home was that of an ascetic wearing such a robe. Also, the night of his flight from the palace, he is said to have met a hunter trying to deceive deer by wearing a similar robe, for which Shakyamuni gladly exchanged his princely garments.
  Bowl: The bowl, or patra, was called the vessel of humility, and the Vinaya, or rules of the Buddhist order, established limits as to its size, material, and color. In the Buddhas day, most bowls were made of iron in order to withstand being banged about during the constant wandering of the monks. However, bowls of clay and stone were also used, and the Buddhas own bowl was made of purple stone. It was said to have been the bowl used by Vipashyin, the first buddha of the present kalpa, and was given to Shakyamuni by the Guardians of the Four Quarters following his

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun palace

The noun palace has 4 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                    
1. (3) palace, castle ::: (a large and stately mansion)
2. (2) palace ::: (the governing group of a kingdom; "the palace issued an order binding on all subjects")
3. palace ::: (a large ornate exhibition hall)
4. palace ::: (official residence of an exalted person (as a sovereign))


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun palace

4 senses of palace                          

Sense 1
palace, castle
   => mansion, mansion house, manse, hall, residence
     => house
       => dwelling, home, domicile, abode, habitation, dwelling house
         => housing, lodging, living accommodations
           => structure, construction
             => artifact, artefact
               => whole, unit
                 => object, physical object
                   => physical entity
                     => entity
       => building, edifice
         => structure, construction
           => artifact, artefact
             => whole, unit
               => object, physical object
                 => physical entity
                   => entity

Sense 2
palace
   => government, authorities, regime
     => polity
       => organization, organisation
         => social group
           => group, grouping
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity

Sense 3
palace
   => exhibition hall, exhibition area
     => hall
       => room
         => area
           => structure, construction
             => artifact, artefact
               => whole, unit
                 => object, physical object
                   => physical entity
                     => entity

Sense 4
palace
   => residence
     => house
       => dwelling, home, domicile, abode, habitation, dwelling house
         => housing, lodging, living accommodations
           => structure, construction
             => artifact, artefact
               => whole, unit
                 => object, physical object
                   => physical entity
                     => entity
       => building, edifice
         => structure, construction
           => artifact, artefact
             => whole, unit
               => object, physical object
                 => physical entity
                   => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun palace

2 of 4 senses of palace                        

Sense 1
palace, castle
   HAS INSTANCE=> Buckingham Palace

Sense 4
palace
   => alcazar
   HAS INSTANCE=> Alhambra
   HAS INSTANCE=> Lateran Palace
   HAS INSTANCE=> Tuileries, Tuileries Palace
   HAS INSTANCE=> Versailles, Palace of Versailles


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun palace

4 senses of palace                          

Sense 1
palace, castle
   => mansion, mansion house, manse, hall, residence

Sense 2
palace
   => government, authorities, regime

Sense 3
palace
   => exhibition hall, exhibition area

Sense 4
palace
   => residence




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun palace

4 senses of palace                          

Sense 1
palace, castle
  -> mansion, mansion house, manse, hall, residence
   => manor, manor house
   => palace, castle
   => stately home

Sense 2
palace
  -> government, authorities, regime
   => authoritarian state, authoritarian regime
   => bureaucracy
   => ancien regime
   => court, royal court
   => Downing Street
   => empire
   => federal government
   => government-in-exile
   => local government
   => military government, stratocracy
   => palace
   => papacy, pontificate
   => puppet government, puppet state, pupet regime
   => state
   => state government
   => totalitarian state, totalitation regime

Sense 3
palace
  -> exhibition hall, exhibition area
   => palace

Sense 4
palace
  -> residence
   => court
   => deanery
   => manse
   => palace
   => parsonage, vicarage, rectory
   => religious residence, cloister
   HAS INSTANCE=> Vatican, Vatican Palace
   HAS INSTANCE=> White House
   HAS INSTANCE=> Mount Vernon




--- Grep of noun palace
buckingham palace
dance palace
lateran palace
palace
palace car
palace of versailles
picture palace
tuileries palace
vatican palace



IN WEBGEN [10000/2384]

Wikipedia - 1909 Crystal Palace Scout Rally -- Historic Scout gathering in London
Wikipedia - 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing -- Aerial attack in Saigon
Wikipedia - 1972 Qatari coup d'etat -- Palace overthrow of Ahmad bin Ali Al Thani
Wikipedia - 1978 Palace of Versailles bombing -- Terrorist bombing in which one person was injured
Wikipedia - 1995 Qatari coup d'etat -- Palace overthrow of Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani
Wikipedia - 1 Palace Green -- House on Palace Green, Kensington, London
Wikipedia - 2015 Park Palace guesthouse attack -- 2015 armed attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, on international civilians
Wikipedia - Achilleion (Corfu) -- Palace in Greece
Wikipedia - Addington Palace -- Mansion in Addington in Greater London, England
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Wikipedia - A. J. Balaban -- Pioneer Luxury Motion Picture Palaces
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Wikipedia - Alcazar of Seville -- Royal palace in Seville, Spain
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Wikipedia - Alexander Palace (Faberge egg) -- 1908 Imperial Faberge egg
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/618007.Tuxedo_Park_A_Wall_Street_Tycoon_and_the_Secret_Palace_of_Science_That_Changed_the_Course_of_World_War_II
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https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Buckingham_Palace
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/File:Buck.palace.soldiers.arp.jpg
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster.jpg
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster,_London_-_Feb_2007.jpg
https://greekmythology.wikia.org/wiki/File:Hercules-statue-vienna-austria-outside-hofburg-palace-showing-how-fulfills-legendary-labors-48341794.jpg
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/2013_Afghan_presidential_palace_attack
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/2015_Park_Palace_guesthouse_attack
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Apostolic_Palace
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:LambethPalacebyLambethBridge.jpg
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dedroidify.blogspot - underground-lsd-palace-mini-documentary
Dharmapedia - File:Old_narayanhiti_palace.jpg
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/KingOfThePalace
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/BrokedownPalace
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_at_sunset.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_-_July_2008.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Palace
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Golden_Palace
The Golden Palace (1992 - 1993) - Spin off of The Golden Girls, featuring Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, following Bea Arthur's departure in 1992 (Bea made an appearance on the Golden Palace in 1992). Only one season was made.
The Hollywood Palace (1962 - 1970) - ABC TV Network Saturday Nights 1962-1970. A variety show featuring well known performers and top variety acts..taped before a live audience at the former El Capitan TV Theater. Hosted by a guest performer.
Palace Guard (1991 - 1992) - After three years in prison, legendary jewel thief Tommy Logan (played by D.W. Moffett) is released on parole and hired, because of his criminal expertise, as a security expert by Arturo Taft (Tony LoBianco), owner of the world wide ultra luxurious Palace Hotel chain.
Sagwa: The Chinese Siamese Cat (2001 - 2002) - Sagwa resides in the palace of a magistrate in China of pre-colonial Hong Kong (possibly during the Qing, as shown by the characters' clothes), part of a royal family of cats who have the ability to write with their tails. She and her siblings, along with various other cats and Fu-Fu the bat partake...
Aladdin(1992) - Aladdin is a street-urchin who lives in Agrabah, a large and busy town with his faithful monkey friend Abu. When Princess Jasmine gets tired of being forced to remain in the palace that overlooks the city, she sneaks out to the marketplace, where she accidentally meets Aladdin. Under the orders of t...
The Return of Jafar(1994) - Aladdin is adjusting to his new life as part of the upper crust. He and Princess Jasmine may not be married yet, but the pressures of palace society have already begun. On top of that, Iago (the parrot pet of Sultan's ex-vizir turned genie, Jafar) appears asking for help and no one is happy to see h...
Coraline(2009) - Coraline Jones moves with her mother and father from her comfortable life in Pontiac, Michigan to the Pink Palace, a dilapidated three-bedroom apartment building in Ashland, Oregon, which is also occupied by retired actresses Misses Spink and Forcible, and eccentric Russian acrobat Mr. Bobinsky. Wit...
White Palace(1990) - A wealthy 27 year old advertising executive(James Spader)has a passionate affair with a 40 something fast food waitress(Susan Sarandon).The couples differences in age and differences in class backgrounds eventually causes problems.
Phil Collins: Live At Perkins Palace(1983) - Phil Collins plays at Perkins Palace on his 1982 "Hello, I Must Be Going" tour, his first solo tour. His backup band features Genesis band mates Daryl Steurmer and Chester Thompson, and the famous Earth, Wind, & Fire horns.
Brokedown Palace(1999) - Two women are arrested for smuggling while vacationing in Thailand.
Stripteaser II(1997) - Out among the flesh peddlers and the vice palaces of the Sunset Strip, street-tough cabdriver Rick is looking for his kid sister. A few weeks back she vanished into the neon lit world of LA's steamiest strip clubs. His search for his sister becomes more desperate as he discovers a dark world of powe...
Stripteaser(1995) - As Zipper's Clown Palace (a strip bar) closes, Neil wanders in and decides to hold the dancers, bartender, and remaining customers hostage. He torments them with little tasks he wants performed, playing on their weaknesses and relying on his gun for intimidation. Eventually the hostages begin formul...
The Haunted Palace(1963) - Charles Dexter Ward arrives at a small village to visit the house he inherited from his ancestor who died there 100 years ago.
Pokmon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew(2005) - In the legendary past, an aura-guiding hero Pokemon named Lucario sansed the presence of two armies who were about to fight at Cameron Palace in Kanto. Lucario's master Sir Aaron runs away from the kingdom while it's people fight the war and go to the Tree of Beginning. Abandoning the queen, Sir Aar...
Princess of the Nile(1954) - Debra Paget is Princess Shalimar who is also known outside the palace as the popular dancer Taura. She struggles to help her people against the forces of Rama Khan and his army. Only with the help of Prince Haidi (Jeffery Hunter) and some allies can the war be ended.
Barry Manilow: The Concert At Blenheim Palace(1984) - This special documents a British concert by singer/songwriter Barry Manilow.
Ice Palace(1960) - After WW1, Zeb and Thor start a cannery business in Alaska but eventually they drift apart with Zeb becoming unscrupulous and Thor becoming involved in Alaskan politics.
Cinderella (2015)(2015) - After her father unexpectedly dies, young Ella (Lily James) finds herself at the mercy of her cruel stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and stepsisters, who reduce her to scullery maid. Despite her circumstances, she refuses to despair. An invitation to a palace ball gives Ella hope that she might reunite w...
Aladdin (2019)(2019) - Aladdin is a lovable street urchin who meets Princess Jasmine, the beautiful daughter of the sultan of Agrabah. While visiting her exotic palace, Aladdin stumbles upon a magic oil lamp that unleashes a powerful, wisecracking, larger-than-life genie. As Aladdin and the genie start to become friends,...
Rags(2012) - Charlie Prince is an orphan living in his late mother's old karaoke bar, The Palace, which she willed to his acerbic and unloving stepfather Arthur. Arthur makes Charlie do most of the work cleaning the bar; the other employees, couple Diego and Martha, love Charlie like their own son while his step...
Hotel Mumbai(2018) - Terror strikes in the heart of Mumbai, India, as members of Lashkar-e-Taiba storm the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in a series of coordinated attacks throughout the city. Amid the gunfire and mayhem, a brave chef and kitchen worker decide to risk their own lives to try and protect the frightened guests. A...
https://myanimelist.net/manga/23768/Scarlet_Palace
https://myanimelist.net/manga/63531/Palace_Meidi
A Little Chaos (2014) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 52min | Drama, Romance | 26 June 2015 (USA) -- Two talented landscape artists become romantically entangled while building a garden in King Louis XIV's palace at Versailles. Director: Alan Rickman Writers: Jeremy Brock (screenplay), Alison Deegan | 1 more credit
Bordertown ::: Sorjonen (original tit ::: TV-MA | 1h | Crime, Drama, Mystery | TV Series (20162020) -- Quirky police detective, in Finland, delves into his mind palace to solve despicable crimes all the while trying to keep his family together. If Sherlock was based in Finland this would be it. Creator:
Brokedown Palace (1999) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 40min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller | 13 August 1999 (USA) -- Two women are arrested for smuggling while vacationing in Thailand. Director: Jonathan Kaplan Writers: Adam Fields (story), David Arata (story) | 1 more credit
Hara-Kiri (1962) ::: 8.6/10 -- Seppuku (original title) -- Hara-Kiri Poster When a ronin requesting seppuku at a feudal lord's palace is told of the brutal suicide of another ronin who previously visited, he reveals how their pasts are intertwined - and in doing so challenges the clan's integrity. Director: Masaki Kobayashi Writers: Yasuhiko Takiguchi (novel), Shinobu Hashimoto (screenplay)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) ::: 7.6/10 -- PG | 1h 58min | Action, Adventure | 23 May 1984 (USA) -- In 1935, Indiana Jones arrives in India, still part of the British Empire, and is asked to find a mystical stone. He then stumbles upon a secret cult committing enslavement and human sacrifices in the catacombs of an ancient palace. Director: Steven Spielberg Writers:
Phantom of the Paradise (1974) ::: 7.4/10 -- PG | 1h 31min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy | 1 November 1974 (USA) -- A disfigured composer sells his soul for the woman he loves so that she will perform his music. However, an evil record tycoon betrays him and steals his music to open his rock palace, The Paradise. Director: Brian De Palma Writer:
The Egyptian (1954) ::: 6.6/10 -- Approved | 2h 19min | Biography, Drama, History | 17 December 1954 -- The Egyptian Poster In ancient Egypt, a poor orphan becomes a genial physician and is eventually appointed at the Pharaoh's court where he witnesses palace intrigues and learns dangerous royal secrets. Director: Michael Curtiz Writers: Philip Dunne (screen play), Casey Robinson (screen play) | 1 more credit
The Emperor's Club (2002) ::: 6.9/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 49min | Drama | 22 November 2002 (USA) -- An idealistic prep school teacher attempts to redeem an incorrigible student. Director: Michael Hoffman Writers: Ethan Canin (short story "The Palace Thief"), Neil Tolkin (screenplay)
The Haunted Palace (1963) ::: 6.8/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 27min | Horror | 18 March 1965 (Italy) -- Charles Dexter Ward arrives at a small village to visit the house he inherited from his ancestor who died there 100 years ago. Director: Roger Corman Writers: Charles Beaumont (screenplay by), Edgar Allan Poe (from the poem by) (as Edgar Allen Poe) | 1 more credit Stars:
The King (2019) ::: 7.2/10 -- R | 2h 20min | Biography, Drama, History | 1 November 2019 (USA) -- Hal, wayward prince and heir to the English throne, is crowned King Henry V after his tyrannical father dies. Now the young king must navigate palace politics, the war his father left behind, and the emotional strings of his past life. Director: David Michd Writers:
Versailles ::: TV-MA | 52min | Biography, Drama, History | TV Series (2015-2018) Episode Guide 30 episodes Versailles Poster -- In 1667, 28-year-old all-powerful king of France, Louis XIV, decides to build the greatest palace in the world - Versailles. But drained budget, affairs and political intrigues complicate things. Creators:
Versailles ::: TV-MA | 52min | Biography, Drama, History | TV Series (20152018) -- In 1667, 28-year-old all-powerful king of France, Louis XIV, decides to build the greatest palace in the world - Versailles. But drained budget, affairs and political intrigues complicate things. Creators:
White Palace (1990) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 43min | Drama, Romance | 26 October 1990 (USA) -- Lust turns to love for a 40-ish working-class woman and a 20-ish yuppie adman with little in common. Director: Luis Mandoki Writers: Glenn Savan (novel), Ted Tally (screenplay) | 1 more credit
https://12kingdoms.fandom.com/wiki/Chizu_Palace
https://12kingdoms.fandom.com/wiki/Genei_Palace
https://12kingdoms.fandom.com/wiki/Hakkei_Palace
https://12kingdoms.fandom.com/wiki/Hoto_Palace
https://12kingdoms.fandom.com/wiki/Houro_Palace
https://12kingdoms.fandom.com/wiki/Kinpa_Palace
https://actraiser.fandom.com/wiki/Sky_Palace
https://akagaminoshirayukihime.fandom.com/wiki/Wistal_Palace
https://allods.fandom.com/wiki/Quest:Escaping_the_Palace
https://allthetropes.fandom.com/wiki/Ice_Palace
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Ghost_Palace
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Cetriss
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Yun_Rau
https://aquaman.fandom.com/wiki/Atlantean_Royal_Palace
https://aquaman.fandom.com/wiki/Atlantean_Royal_Palace/Gallery
https://a-thousand-years-ninetails.fandom.com/wiki/Choeum_Palace
https://banjokazooie.fandom.com/wiki/King_Jingaling's_Bingo_Palace
https://bristolrovers.fandom.com/wiki/Crystal_Palace
https://citiesxl.fandom.com/wiki/Buckingham_Palace
https://citiesxl.fandom.com/wiki/Copacabana_Palace_Hotel
https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Crystal_Palace
https://darkcloud.fandom.com/wiki/Moon_Flower_Palace
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Atlantean_Royal_Palace
https://demonssouls.fandom.com/wiki/Boletarian_Palace
https://devilmaycry.fandom.com/wiki/Bloody_Palace
https://devo.fandom.com/wiki/Now_It_Can_Be_Told:_DEVO_at_the_Palace
https://devo.fandom.com/wiki/Now_It_Can_Be_Told:_DEVO_at_the_Palace_12/9/88
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Basement
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_Cellar
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_(Lut_Gholein)
https://dinerdash.fandom.com/wiki/Flo's_Tiki_Palace
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Tiana's_Palace
https://domo.fandom.com/wiki/Seizer's_Palace
https://dothack.fandom.com/wiki/Demon_Palace
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Palace_of_Horudika
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Kat_Palace
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/PalaceGuardAddict_/_Goanimate_Two
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Our_Farician_Supreme_Leader
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_(Sakarian_Drama)
https://eastenders.fandom.com/wiki/The_B&B_-_Kim's_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Alinor_Royal_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_on_the_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Palace_(Online)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Palace_(Skyrim)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Grandmaster's_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Headman_Bhosek's_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Hubalajad_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_City_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace_(Arena)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace_Cuirass
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/New_Sheoth_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Break-In?
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Guard
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Kings
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_the_Kings
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Vivec
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Vivec_(Morrowind)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Princely_Dawnlight_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Rihad_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Senchal_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Sentinel_Palace
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Yokudan_Palace
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/An_Appetite_for_Palace_Knights
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Kerrath_Palace
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Maldura:_Palace_Foray_(Event_Heroic)
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Maldura:_Unveiled_Palace
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_the_Ancient_One
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_the_Ancient_One_(tradeskill)
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_the_Awakened
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Path_of_the_Past_-_Poet's_Palace
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Poet's_Palace
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Palace_of_Erudin
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_of_Ferzhul
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_of_Roehn_Theer
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Poets_Palace
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Poets_Palace:_Return
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Buckingham_Palace
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Heiress_Of_The_White_Moon_Kingdom_&_The_God_Of_Time-_Sailor_Moon_Infinity_Galaxy_Star_X-Storm:_A_New_Age_Of_Peace_&_Freedom,_Rising_Of_The_Millennium_Palace_&_Dawn_Of_A_New_Kingdom_In_The_Universe
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Life_in_the_Palace
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Palace_of_Hu'Xzoi
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ve'Lugannon_Palace
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Bloom_Palace
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Fall_of_the_Palace
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Macarath
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Pleasure_Palace
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ageless_Palace
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_of_Evil
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Al-Azid%27s_Ghostly_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Al-Azid's_Ghostly_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Argent_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Bahamut's_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Bleak_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Charcoal_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cloud_palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Ducal_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Moonstone_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Loss
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Many_Spires
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Poison_Tears
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_the_Enlightened_Throne
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Puzzle_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Speaker's_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_Palace
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Palace
https://frozen.fandom.com/wiki/Elsa's_ice_palace
https://giantkilling.fandom.com/wiki/Nagoya_Grand_Palace
https://guildopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Savaltory_palace
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Beauxbatons
https://ikariam.fandom.com/wiki/Building:Palace
https://indyfanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Mutt_Jones_and_the_Palace_of_Kings
https://kidicarus.fandom.com/wiki/Chapter_7:_The_Seafloor_Palace
https://knackpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Viktor's_Palace
https://k-project.fandom.com/wiki/Timeless_Palace
https://kungfupanda.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_the_Jade_Palace
https://kungfupanda.fandom.com/wiki/Jade_Palace
https://legendofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Valflame_Palace
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Crystal_Palace
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Cinemas
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_Network
https://lordofultima.fandom.com/wiki/Palaces
https://lunia.fandom.com/wiki/Ice_Palace
https://magi.fandom.com/wiki/Sacred_Palace
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/RKP_Palace
https://mazerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Crank_Palace_(book)
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Futaba's_Palace
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Kamoshida's_Palace
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Kaneshiro's_Palace
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Madarame's_Palace
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Niijima's_Palace
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Okumura's_Palace
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Palace
https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Shido's_Palace
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Palace
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Fine_Arts
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Theater
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Fine_Arts
https://miaandme.fandom.com/wiki/Elf_Palace
https://narcos.fandom.com/wiki/The_Palace_in_Flames
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/Chen's_Palace
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Palace
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/Shintaro_Palace
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/Shintaro_Palace_Gardens
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Mendel_Palace
https://objectshowfanonpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_For_Gold_Palace
https://objectshowfanonpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_For_Space_Palace
https://ogrebattlesaga.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_the_Dead
https://onceuponatime.fandom.com/wiki/Evil_Queen's_Palace
https://refund-high-school.fandom.com/wiki/Queen_Yemma's_Palace
https://riseoftheguardians.fandom.com/wiki/Tooth's_Palace
https://rugrats.fandom.com/wiki/Toy_Palace
https://samuraipizzacats.fandom.com/wiki/The_Big_Cheese's_Palace
https://shadowhearts.fandom.com/wiki/Mirror_Palace
https://shadowhearts.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Palace
https://simpsonstappedout.fandom.com/wiki/Jake's_Unisex_Hair_Palace
https://smfa.fandom.com/wiki/Colonel_Monster's_Monster_Time_Pizza_Palace
https://sot.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_the_Prophets
https://sot.fandom.com/wiki/People's_Palace
https://starfox.fandom.com/wiki/Krazoa_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Administrator's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Administrator's_Palace/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/A_Free_Quarren_in_the_Palace:_Tessek's_Tale
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Aldera_Royal_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_on_a_Hutt's_palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_on_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bakuush's_palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bombing_of_Fountain_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Boorka's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Caserta_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dac_City_palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Destruction_of_Xizor's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ducal_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Emperor's_throne_room_(Imperial_Palace)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Enhanced_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Escape_from_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Honeymoon_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace_audience_chamber
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jabba's_Palace/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jabba's_Palace_Limited
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jabba's_Palace_Sealed_Deck
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Junn's_palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/"Lapti_Nek"_The_Music_Video_from_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/"Lapti_Nek":_The_Music_Video_from_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mission_to_Jabba's_Palace_(Clone_Wars)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mission_to_Jabba's_Palace_(Clone_Wars)/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Naboo_Palace_Guard
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Courtyard
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Courtyard/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Guard_(Naboo)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Grakkus_the_Hutt
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Plaza
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Plaza/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pijali_palace_treasury
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Raid_on_Ziro's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rescue_from_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Robbery_at_the_Sun_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Palace_of_Alderaan
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Palace_of_Zygerria
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Siege_of_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Skirmish_at_the_Snow_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Skirmish_near_the_Sun_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sundari_Royal_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_from_Jabba's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Theed_Palace_Limited
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Theed_Royal_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Theed_Royal_Palace/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Throne_room_(Theed_Royal_Palace)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Throne_room_(Theed_Royal_Palace)/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_EG-6_power_droid_(Jabba's_Palace)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_Hutt's_palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_Theed_Palace_librarian
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wookieepedia:Comprehensive_article_nominations/Ducal_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ziro's_Palace
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ziro's_Palace/Legends
https://super400.fandom.com/wiki/October_15_2005_-_Albany,_NY_-_Palace_Theatre
https://symphogear.fandom.com/wiki/Undersea_Dragon's_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Alexandra_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Buckingham_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Crystal_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Leisure_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Liao_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_Theatre
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Sonning_Palace
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace_(comic_story)
https://the-crown.fandom.com/wiki/Buckingham_Palace
https://the-crown.fandom.com/wiki/Lambeth_Palace
https://the-legendary-moonlight-sculptor.fandom.com/wiki/Arpen_royal_palace
https://the-legendary-moonlight-sculptor.fandom.com/wiki/Haven_royal_palace
https://toarumajutsunoindex.fandom.com/wiki/Buckingham_Palace
https://toarumajutsunoindex.fandom.com/wiki/Stephanie_Gorgeouspalace
https://trinityblood.fandom.com/wiki/Lateran_Palace
https://twelvenights.fandom.com/wiki/Jin_Hee_Palace
https://who-made-me-a-princess.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace
https://wingsoffire.fandom.com/wiki/IceWing_palace
https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Beauclair_Palace
https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Palace_(Vizima)
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Azshara's_Eternal_Palace
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Eternal_Palace
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Gallywix_Pleasure_Palace
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Lordaeron_palace_gardens
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Mogu'Shan_Palace
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Mogu'shan_Palace
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Suramar_Palace
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/The_Eternal_Palace
Akagami no Shirayuki-hime 2nd Season -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Drama Romance Fantasy Shoujo -- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime 2nd Season Akagami no Shirayuki-hime 2nd Season -- Shirayuki and Zen Wistalia have finally confirmed their romantic feelings for each other, and everyone has resumed their daily lives. Shirayuki remains an apprentice court herbalist at the royal palace of Clarines, and Zen continues his duties alongside his aides. -- -- However, their daily routines are disrupted when Crown Prince Izana, Zen’s older brother, receives an invitation from Raji Shenazard, the prince of Tanbarun. The herbalist finds herself ordered to go to Tanbarun for seven days, to build a new friendship with the formerly selfish and haughty ruler who once ordered Shirayuki to become his concubine. Along the way, Shirayuki is bound to run into trouble once again, as she is sought by a mysterious boy named Kazuki, someone she has never met. -- -- 263,914 7.99
Akagami no Shirayuki-hime 2nd Season -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Drama Romance Fantasy Shoujo -- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime 2nd Season Akagami no Shirayuki-hime 2nd Season -- Shirayuki and Zen Wistalia have finally confirmed their romantic feelings for each other, and everyone has resumed their daily lives. Shirayuki remains an apprentice court herbalist at the royal palace of Clarines, and Zen continues his duties alongside his aides. -- -- However, their daily routines are disrupted when Crown Prince Izana, Zen’s older brother, receives an invitation from Raji Shenazard, the prince of Tanbarun. The herbalist finds herself ordered to go to Tanbarun for seven days, to build a new friendship with the formerly selfish and haughty ruler who once ordered Shirayuki to become his concubine. Along the way, Shirayuki is bound to run into trouble once again, as she is sought by a mysterious boy named Kazuki, someone she has never met. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 263,914 7.99
Akagami no Shirayuki-hime -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Fantasy Romance Drama Shoujo -- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime Akagami no Shirayuki-hime -- Although her name means "snow white," Shirayuki is a cheerful, red-haired girl living in the country of Tanbarun who works diligently as an apothecary at her herbal shop. Her life changes drastically when she is noticed by the silly prince of Tanbarun, Prince Raji, who then tries to force her to become his concubine. Unwilling to give up her freedom, Shirayuki cuts her long red hair and escapes into the forest, where she is rescued from Raji by Zen Wistalia, the second prince of a neighboring country, and his two aides. Hoping to repay her debt to the trio someday, Shirayuki sets her sights on pursuing a career as the court herbalist in Zen's country, Clarines. -- -- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime depicts Shirayuki's journey toward a new life at the royal palace of Clarines, as well as Zen's endeavor to become a prince worthy of his title. As loyal friendships are forged and deadly enemies formed, Shirayuki and Zen slowly learn to support each other as they walk their own paths. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 485,510 7.78
Aragne no Mushikago -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Fantasy Horror Mystery -- Aragne no Mushikago Aragne no Mushikago -- Life could be better for shy, anxious university student Rin. The apartment she has rented is hardly the sunny palace the rental listings suggested. The housing complex is rundown, grim and haunted by troubled souls lurking in dark corners. Ghastly crimes are occurring in the vicinity. And a grinning stranger makes his unsettling presence known. -- -- Beyond all this, Rin is coming to realize that something even more sinister is manifesting itself, something at the cursed crossroads of mythology, monstrosity and medical science. Determined to find out more, Rin visits the library, where she meets a sympathetic young staffer. But what she learns does not begin to put her mind at ease. -- -- (Source: Fantasia) -- Movie - Aug 18, 2018 -- 2,910 5.13
Egao no Daika -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 12 eps -- Original -- Military Slice of Life Drama Fantasy Mecha -- Egao no Daika Egao no Daika -- On a planet far from Earth, there is a kingdom full of smiling faces. Princess Yuuki is 12 years old, and about to enter a sensitive age in a person's life. Everyday, she cries, laughs, and sometimes, her heart throbs with excitement. All the while, she lives merrily in the royal palace. -- -- Filling her days are her loyal vassals: her tutor Reira, Izana who assists in political affairs, the leader of the chivalry Harold … and then there is her childhood friend and aide Joshua. -- -- "Yuuki! If you have spirit and guts, you can do anything!" -- -- "…No, not this again! Joshua, be nobler!" -- -- Stella is 17 years old and a capable, reserved soldier. However, she is always smiling ... for smiling is essential to living. -- -- This is a story of two girls born on distant planets. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 31,621 6.06
Free! (Movie) -- -- Kyoto Animation -- 1 ep -- Original -- Slice of Life Sports Drama School -- Free! (Movie) Free! (Movie) -- At the end of final episode of Free! Dive to the Future, the movie was announced to premiere in Summer 2020. It has now been postponed to 2021. -- Movie - ??? ??, 2021 -- 33,274 N/AUzumaki -- -- Drive -- 4 eps -- Manga -- Dementia Horror Psychological Supernatural Drama Romance Seinen -- Uzumaki Uzumaki -- In the town of Kurouzu-cho, Kirie Goshima lives a fairly normal life with her family. As she walks to the train station one day to meet her boyfriend, Shuuichi Saito, she sees his father staring at a snail shell in an alley. Thinking nothing of it, she mentions the incident to Shuuichi, who says that his father has been acting weird lately. Shuuichi reveals his rising desire to leave the town with Kirie, saying that the town is infected with spirals. -- -- But his father's obsession with the shape soon proves deadly, beginning a chain of horrific and unexplainable events that causes the residents of Kurouzu-cho to spiral into madness. -- -- TV - ??? ??, 2021 -- 33,169 N/ALost Song -- -- Dwango, LIDENFILMS -- 12 eps -- Original -- Drama Fantasy -- Lost Song Lost Song -- Lost Song tells the stories of the cheerful Rin and the reserved Finis, two songstresses who are capable of performing magical songs. Rin grew up in a remote village with her family and was taught to keep her power secret, while Finis lives and performs in the royal palace. -- -- Rin's happy and peaceful life is shattered after she saves an injured knight named Henry Leobort with her song of healing. She was seen by soldiers who proceeded to attack her village in hopes of capturing her. With nowhere else to go, she and her inventor brother Al begin a journey to the capital. -- -- Finis finds herself falling in love with Henry and, knowing that the greedy and spiteful Prince Lood Bernstein IV desires her, must hide their relationship. She wants to help people with her songs, but with war on the horizon, she worries that Lood will order her to cast her magic in the battlefield. Only time will tell how her destiny and Rin's will intersect, as the two of them struggle to find their paths. -- -- 33,037 6.99
Guin Saga -- -- Satelight -- 26 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Fantasy -- Guin Saga Guin Saga -- The ancient kingdom of Parros has been invaded by the armies of Mongaul, and its king and queen have been slain. But the "twin pearls of Parros," the princess Rinda and the prince Remus, escape using a strange device hidden in the palace. Lost in Roodwood, they are rescued from Mongaul soldiers by a strange leopard-headed man, who has no memories except for the words "Aurra" and "Guin," which he believes to be his name. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 38,640 7.19
Kingdom 2nd Season -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 39 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Historical Seinen -- Kingdom 2nd Season Kingdom 2nd Season -- A year after the devastating battle against the formidable Zhao, the State of Qin has returned its focus to pursuing King Ying Zheng's ambition of conquering the other six states and unifying China. Their next target is Wei, a smaller state which stands as a geographic stepping stone for the sake of conquest. -- -- Li Xin, now a three hundred man commander of the swiftly rising Fei Xin Unit, continues to seek out lofty achievements in order to garner recognition for himself and his soldiers, motivated by those previously lost in battle. In the preliminary battles ahead of Qin's invasion of Wei, Xin finds competition in other young commanders who are of a higher social status than him. Back in Qin, the royal palace faces turmoil as opposing factions begin to make their move against Ying Zheng's regime. -- -- With their hands full both abroad and at home, Zheng and Xin must lead the way in this era of unending war, resolved to etch their names in history by creating a unified China. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 82,402 8.38
Kingdom -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 38 eps -- Manga -- Action Historical Military Seinen -- Kingdom Kingdom -- China’s Warring States period, a raging dragon that would raze the land for 500 years, saw many kingdoms rise and fall, making way for the next generation of kings and generals to fight for supremacy. Eventually, seven powerful states emerged from the endless cycle of warfare. -- -- In the kingdom of Qin, Li Xin, a war-orphaned slave, trains vigorously with fellow slave and best friend, Piao, who shares his proud dream of one day becoming a Great General of the Heavens. However, the two are suddenly forced to part ways when Piao is recruited to work in the royal palace by a retainer of the King. -- -- After a fierce coup d'état unfolds, Piao returns to Xin, half dead, with a mission that will lead him to a meeting with China's young King, Ying Zheng, who bears a striking resemblance to Piao. Kingdom follows Xin as he takes his first steps into the great blood-soaked pages of China's history. He must carve his own path to glory on his long quest to become a Great General of the historic Seven Warring States. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 140,915 8.03
Kyattou Ninden Teyandee -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 54 eps -- Original -- Action Comedy Mecha Super Power Sci-Fi Shounen -- Kyattou Ninden Teyandee Kyattou Ninden Teyandee -- Kyattou Ninden Teyande takes place in the city of Little Tokyo, a meld of feudal and modern Japanese culture, whose citizens are walking, talking animals. -- -- When the head palace guard catches wind that the corrupt prime minister Seymour Cheese decides to become emperor and take over Little Tokyo, he knows that only one group can save Little Tokyo: the owners of a local pizza joint, the Pizza Cats! Serving delicious pizza by day, this trio's true occupation is meowvelous warriors of justice! The Samurai Pizza Cats will do whatever it takes to protect Little Tokyo! -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media, Saban Entertainment -- 11,066 7.04
Lost Song -- -- Dwango, LIDENFILMS -- 12 eps -- Original -- Drama Fantasy -- Lost Song Lost Song -- Lost Song tells the stories of the cheerful Rin and the reserved Finis, two songstresses who are capable of performing magical songs. Rin grew up in a remote village with her family and was taught to keep her power secret, while Finis lives and performs in the royal palace. -- -- Rin's happy and peaceful life is shattered after she saves an injured knight named Henry Leobort with her song of healing. She was seen by soldiers who proceeded to attack her village in hopes of capturing her. With nowhere else to go, she and her inventor brother Al begin a journey to the capital. -- -- Finis finds herself falling in love with Henry and, knowing that the greedy and spiteful Prince Lood Bernstein IV desires her, must hide their relationship. She wants to help people with her songs, but with war on the horizon, she worries that Lood will order her to cast her magic in the battlefield. Only time will tell how her destiny and Rin's will intersect, as the two of them struggle to find their paths. -- -- 33,037 6.99
Oushitsu Kyoushi Heine Movie -- -- Tear Studio -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy Historical Seinen Slice of Life -- Oushitsu Kyoushi Heine Movie Oushitsu Kyoushi Heine Movie -- The four princes of Grannzreich—Kai, Bruno, Leonhard, and Licht— continue to compete for the right to their kingdom's throne under the guidance of their beloved royal tutor, the competent yet childlike Heine Wittgenstein. -- -- One day, during a political visit to Grannzreich, the king of the neighboring Romano Kingdom arrives at the royal palace with his twin sons, Ivan and Eugene. In the hopes of befriending the twins, Heine and the four princes meet their visitors, but their efforts are thwarted instantly when the two twin princes declare that they refuse to address those who will never reach the throne. Dispersing the tension between the boys, Heine reveals that he, upon their father King Victor von Grannzreich's request, will be tutoring the Romano princes alongside the Grannzreichs for the duration of their stay, in hopes of strengthening the future relations between the two kingdoms. -- -- Movie - Feb 16, 2019 -- 16,223 7.30
Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- -- OLM -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Adventure Kids Drama Fantasy -- Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- A long time ago, the people of Camaron Palace found themselves on the brink of destruction. Fortunately, they escaped it when Sir Aaron, the True Guardian of Aura, saved them. He sacrificed himself to stop a war between kingdoms. From that day on, a tournament is held every year to commemorate his noble deed. -- -- Satoshi, a budding Pokemon trainer from Kanto, manages to win the latest tournament and is allowed to wield a staff said to have belonged to Sir Aaron himself. Lucario, the Aura Pokemon—who is also the servant of the True Guardian—emerges from the staff. However, remembering his last memory of his master abandoning him, Lucario runs away in confusion. -- -- Meanwhile, Pikachu, Satoshi's companion, is abruptly taken by a Pokemon named Mew to the legendary Tree of Beginning. Only Lucario knows the way there, but he is unwilling to trust humans after his master's betrayal. Even so, to save his partner, Satoshi and his companions must acquire all the help they need and travel to the Tree of Beginning, unfolding hidden truths from centuries ago. -- -- -- Licensor: -- 4Kids Entertainment, VIZ Media -- Movie - Jul 16, 2005 -- 91,291 7.30
Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- -- OLM -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Adventure Kids Drama Fantasy -- Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- A long time ago, the people of Camaron Palace found themselves on the brink of destruction. Fortunately, they escaped it when Sir Aaron, the True Guardian of Aura, saved them. He sacrificed himself to stop a war between kingdoms. From that day on, a tournament is held every year to commemorate his noble deed. -- -- Satoshi, a budding Pokemon trainer from Kanto, manages to win the latest tournament and is allowed to wield a staff said to have belonged to Sir Aaron himself. Lucario, the Aura Pokemon—who is also the servant of the True Guardian—emerges from the staff. However, remembering his last memory of his master abandoning him, Lucario runs away in confusion. -- -- Meanwhile, Pikachu, Satoshi's companion, is abruptly taken by a Pokemon named Mew to the legendary Tree of Beginning. Only Lucario knows the way there, but he is unwilling to trust humans after his master's betrayal. Even so, to save his partner, Satoshi and his companions must acquire all the help they need and travel to the Tree of Beginning, unfolding hidden truths from centuries ago. -- -- Movie - Jul 16, 2005 -- 91,291 7.30
Saiunkoku Monogatari -- -- Madhouse -- 39 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Historical Romance -- Saiunkoku Monogatari Saiunkoku Monogatari -- Shuurei Kou, the daughter of a noble yet impoverished family, is a clever young lady who dreams of becoming a government official and contributing toward her country. However, her dream is out of her reach as such a position is forbidden to women. While her father works a low wage job as an archivist at the palace, Shuurei has to juggle odd jobs to make ends meet. Then, one day, an unexpected visit changes her life. -- -- Shuurei is called to assist Ryuuki Shi, the new emperor who is known for slacking on his duties and preferring the company of men. Tempted by the generous compensation, she readily accepts the chance to become the young emperor's consort for six months. Luckily, she is not alone as Seiran Shi, her trusty friend, joins her as Ryuuki's bodyguard. While tasked with transforming the new emperor into a responsible ruler, court life and politics prove troublesome as Shuurei faces the challenges of her new life. -- -- Set in a fictional country, Saiunkoku Monogatari centers on the idea of meaningful leadership, its adversities and the rewards that come alongside a prospering nation. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Geneon Entertainment USA -- TV - Apr 8, 2006 -- 81,169 7.93
Saiunkoku Monogatari -- -- Madhouse -- 39 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Historical Romance -- Saiunkoku Monogatari Saiunkoku Monogatari -- Shuurei Kou, the daughter of a noble yet impoverished family, is a clever young lady who dreams of becoming a government official and contributing toward her country. However, her dream is out of her reach as such a position is forbidden to women. While her father works a low wage job as an archivist at the palace, Shuurei has to juggle odd jobs to make ends meet. Then, one day, an unexpected visit changes her life. -- -- Shuurei is called to assist Ryuuki Shi, the new emperor who is known for slacking on his duties and preferring the company of men. Tempted by the generous compensation, she readily accepts the chance to become the young emperor's consort for six months. Luckily, she is not alone as Seiran Shi, her trusty friend, joins her as Ryuuki's bodyguard. While tasked with transforming the new emperor into a responsible ruler, court life and politics prove troublesome as Shuurei faces the challenges of her new life. -- -- Set in a fictional country, Saiunkoku Monogatari centers on the idea of meaningful leadership, its adversities and the rewards that come alongside a prospering nation. -- -- TV - Apr 8, 2006 -- 81,169 7.93
Seijo no Maryoku wa Bannou Desu -- -- Diomedéa -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Slice of Life Magic Romance Fantasy -- Seijo no Maryoku wa Bannou Desu Seijo no Maryoku wa Bannou Desu -- Sei, a 20-year-old office worker, is whisked away to a whole new world. Unfortunately for Sei, the ritual that summoned her—meant to produce a "Saint" who would banish the dark magic—brought two people over instead of one. And everyone prefers the second girl over Sei?! But this is just fine by Sei, who leaves the royal palace to set up shop making potions and cosmetics with her newfound magic. Business is booming, and this might not be such a bad life, after all...as long as her supposed Sainthood doesn't come back to haunt her. -- -- (Source: Seven Seas Entertainment) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 50,376 7.16
Tong Ling Fei -- -- Haoliners Animation League -- 16 eps -- Web manga -- Comedy Historical Drama Romance -- Tong Ling Fei Tong Ling Fei -- When Qian Yunshang's marriage to Ye Youming is arranged by the emperor, she is terrified that the bad blood between their families will lead to her being treated miserably in the Ye household. Torn between duty and concern for his daughter, Qian Aotian devises a reckless plan. He summons his firstborn daughter—her existence unknown to all but his own family—to be the stand-in for her younger sister. -- -- Due to her unusual powers, Qian Yun Xi was exiled by her family when she was a child. Deprived of filial affection, she made a life of her own amid the wilderness on Mt. Ling Yun. However, everything begins to change when she marries Ye Youming in her sister's stead. -- -- Harboring immense contempt for the family of Qian, Ye Youming refuses to acknowledge Qian Yun Xi as his wife and treats her coldly, going so far as to banish her from his palace grounds. But he can only resist her childlike charm and boldness for so long... -- -- ONA - Nov 30, 2018 -- 20,014 7.71
Uchuu Senkan Yamato: Kanketsu-hen -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Military Sci-Fi Adventure Space Drama -- Uchuu Senkan Yamato: Kanketsu-hen Uchuu Senkan Yamato: Kanketsu-hen -- The year is 2203, not long after the Bolar Federation was defeated by Desslok's Galman-Gamilon Empire. A subspace dimensional dislocation has caused a distant Red Galaxy to be relocated in a collision course with the Milky Way. Stars and planets collide, making a wreck of the Galman-Gamilon homeworld. The Star Force is dispatched to investigate. They reach Galmania to find Desslok's palace in ruins. -- -- As they pay their respects, tossing white roses down to the surface of the planet, a huge red planet crashes into Galmania, forcing to StarForce to escape with an immediate and uncalculated warp. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- Movie - Mar 19, 1983 -- 3,236 6.90
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1903 ball in the Winter Palace
1909 Crystal Palace Scout Rally
1924 Palace Law of Succession
1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing
1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix
1982 Caesars Palace Grand Prix
2008 occupation of Iolani Palace
2009 auction of Old Summer Palace bronze heads
2015 Park Palace guesthouse attack
Abbot's Palace (Oliwa)
Abdeen Palace
Abdeen Palace incident of 1942
Abramaviiai Palace
Academy Palace
Addington Palace
Adile Sultan Palace
Administrative Palace, Satu Mare
Aega (mayor of the palace)
Ahmed Bey Palace
Akasaka Palace
Ak Orda Presidential Palace
Akzholtay Sports Palace
Albrechtsberg Palace (Dresden)
Alcaraz Palace
Alexander Hall of the Winter Palace
Alexander Palace
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Alexandra Palace
Alexis Palace
Al-Faw Palace
Al-Gawhara Palace
Al-Qudaibiya Palace
Al-Sakhir Palace
Amar Mahal Palace
Amir Alin Aq Palace
Amir Taz Palace
Amusement Palace
Anand Bagh Palace
Andafiavaratra Palace
Ankara Ice Skating Palace
A Palace for Sale
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Arbob Cultural Palace, Khujand
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Archbishop's Palace of Lima
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Archbishop's Palace, Uppsala
Archbishop's Palace, York
Archiepiscopal Palace of Alcal de Henares
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Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace
Art Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Artuklu Palace
Asllan Rusi Sports Palace
Asman Garh Palace
As-Salam Palace
As the Palaces Burn
Astoria Palace Hotel
Athenee Palace Hilton Bucharest
Augustenborg Palace
Augustusburg and Falkenlust Palaces, Brhl
Aul Palace
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Babelsberg Palace
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Basilica organ of Mafra Palace
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Beni Suef Cultural Palace fire
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Blooded Palace: The War of Flowers
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Bolgrad palace bombing
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Jazeera Palace Hotel bombing
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Lady of the Palace (film)
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Laurier Palace Theatre fire
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Le Louvre: The Palace & Its Paintings
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List of castles and palaces in Denmark
List of castles and palaces in Jelenia Gra valley
List of castles and palaces in Lower Saxony
List of castles and palaces in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
List of castles and palaces in Saarland
List of castles and palaces in Sweden
List of Crystal Palace F.C. managers
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List of films shot at the Palace of Versailles
List of most visited palaces and monuments
List of palaces
List of palaces and manor houses in Estonia
List of palaces and mansions in Hungary
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List of palaces in Egypt
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List of palaces in Rajasthan
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Livadia Palace
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