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".

 

"You must not allow yourself to lose heart." He spoke shyly but with conviction. "Losing heart is a great sin. Although it seems to me that there are trials yet to come. Yes, to be sure, great trails," he spoke with gathering confidence. "Lately, you know, I have been spending all of my time over my books, in my specialty of course, theology mostly."

He lifted the book up so that the last light form the window fell on the page, and he read: "And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood."*

*Revelation 16:4 

End of the first chapter of "The White Guard" by Mikhail Bulgakov, tr. Marion Schwartz, Yale University Press, 2008. 

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