Saint Sebastian, Antonello da Messina, 1476-77

Nonno's poem

How calmly does the olive branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch

Without a cry, without a prayer

With no betrayal of despair

Some time while light obscures the tree

The zenith of its life will be

Gone past forever

And from thence

A second history will commence

A chronicle no longer gold

A bargaining with mist and mold

And finally the broken stem

The plummeting to earth, and then

An intercourse not well designed

For beings of a golden kind

Whose native green must arch above

The earth's obscene corrupting love

And still the ripe fruit and the branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch

Without a cry, without a prayer

With no betrayal of despair

Oh courage! Could you not as well

Select a second place to dwell

Not only in that golden tree

But in the frightened heart of me?

- Tennessee Williams, from "The Night of the Iguana".

 

When grief for fictions idle words 

More real than human life appears,

Reflect that life itself's a dream

And do not mock the readers tears.

- the last lines of "The Story of the Stone, Volume V: The Dreamer Wakes" by Cao Xueqin and Gao E, tr. John Minford.

 

Charms and Holy Water are Used to Exorcize Prospect Garden. Source: Sun Wen, Illustrations for the Complete Dream of the Red Chamber.

"The menfolk of both Rong-guo and Ning-guo House had taken courage from the presence of the priests, and were gathered in the Garden to watch the demon-hunt."

Since at first there was no space,

Things can have no proper place.

From Void all comes;

To void must all return.

- from "The Story of the Stone, Volume IV: The Debt of Tears" by Cao Xueqin and Gao E, tr. John Minford.

The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.

- Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI, tr. John Dryden

 

Portrait of a Young Man, Bronzino, 1550- 1555