tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88453785110149186422024-03-08T03:32:05.988-08:00dxsuperpremiumThe reading journal of David Xavier GentryDavid Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.comBlogger87125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-6226591625352927942023-07-11T18:19:00.004-07:002023-07-11T18:38:56.514-07:00<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghwlJHq36tiwp5E07IWemg0PVahp-jX-0URZW-8loIDGAwOnr4Nuh3erFTj7BXoAVp79wE11j1B0_WGPIMF_r5nDuQTKltT1zIArB5-nl6XyABx0h9vvh3w-nH6XXaJodQFiZdJ4a-8lds0Mec_69Eq9QmIAGevx1OgSehzyLrGJraoTuB5RtiAYH8uIzm" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img data-original-height="1727" data-original-width="3600" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghwlJHq36tiwp5E07IWemg0PVahp-jX-0URZW-8loIDGAwOnr4Nuh3erFTj7BXoAVp79wE11j1B0_WGPIMF_r5nDuQTKltT1zIArB5-nl6XyABx0h9vvh3w-nH6XXaJodQFiZdJ4a-8lds0Mec_69Eq9QmIAGevx1OgSehzyLrGJraoTuB5RtiAYH8uIzm=w640-h307" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">The Battle of Yashima in the Genpei War (1185) by Utagawa </span>Kunisada, 1838<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><blockquote><p>Men from such remote provinces, hardly care what leader's orders they follow, as long as he suppresses trouble and succeeds in imposing peace. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>- The Tale of the Heike, Book Eleven, tr. Royall Tyler</p></blockquote><p> </p>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-68617160463391027142021-10-30T11:30:00.003-07:002022-08-18T08:40:33.943-07:00When grief for fictions idle words <div>More real than human life appears,</div><div>Reflect that life itself's a dream</div><div>And do not mock the readers tears.</div><div><br /></div><div>- the last lines of "The Story of the Stone, Volume V: The Dreamer Wakes" by Cao Xueqin and Gao E, tr. John Minford.</div>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-37855978919726097692021-10-11T15:35:00.003-07:002021-10-24T09:49:23.741-07:00<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVqoKc6r9XY_PhqlFm3bi1ZoXxRa9EyoEJ2CWuFZ3n5-znIi3BdW9XCmpYYg8qgynBKl8JwGcEW48ZimYQbv94pz-V5-ZiQ9w1lVVyJEeBMD3NR6mu5-3CRD5FmNy0Ew_-l8n-pidiLkqu/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="1846" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVqoKc6r9XY_PhqlFm3bi1ZoXxRa9EyoEJ2CWuFZ3n5-znIi3BdW9XCmpYYg8qgynBKl8JwGcEW48ZimYQbv94pz-V5-ZiQ9w1lVVyJEeBMD3NR6mu5-3CRD5FmNy0Ew_-l8n-pidiLkqu/w640-h398/image.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="ACaslonPro-Regular, Cambria, Georgia, STKaiTi-TC, KaiTi, 楷体, STKaiti, 华文楷体, PingFang-TC-Light" style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-size: 12.8px;">Charms and Holy Water are Used to Exorcize Prospect Garden. Source: Sun Wen, </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: ACaslonPro-Regular, Cambria, Georgia, STKaiTi-TC, KaiTi, 楷体, STKaiti, 华文楷体, PingFang-TC-Light; font-size: 12.8px;">Illustrations for the Complete Dream of the Red Chamber.</em></td></tr></tbody></table><span face=""Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-size: 15px;"></span><p></p><p><br /></p><p>"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."</p>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-70109507884798275792021-10-11T15:32:00.009-07:002021-10-11T15:39:49.195-07:00<div data-block="true" data-editor="cqibk" data-offset-key="5q7iv-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5q7iv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Since</span><span data-offset-key="5q7iv-1-0"> at first there was no space,</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="cqibk" data-offset-key="efff5-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="efff5-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="efff5-0-0" style="font-family: georgia;">Things can have no proper place.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="cqibk" data-offset-key="94sus-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="94sus-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="94sus-0-0" style="font-family: georgia;">From Void all comes;</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="cqibk" data-offset-key="3bih2-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3bih2-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="3bih2-0-0" style="font-family: georgia;">To void must all return. </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="cqibk" data-offset-key="n6bj-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="n6bj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="n6bj-0-0" style="font-family: georgia;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="cqibk" data-offset-key="88pb3-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="position: relative; text-align: left;"><span data-offset-key="88pb3-0-0" style="font-family: georgia;">- from "The Story of the Stone, Volume IV: The Debt of Tears" by Cao Xueqin and Gao E, tr. John Minford.</span></div></div>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-34608579376161832462021-08-19T11:03:00.002-07:002023-07-06T14:59:12.790-07:00Reversibility<span face="Verdana, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.14px;">Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And the vague terrors of the fearful night<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And makes herself the captain of our fate,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate ?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of health, did ever you know pain,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />The cold length of the white infirmary walls,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of health, did ever you know pain?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Know you the fear of age, the torment vile<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Of reading secret horror in the smile<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of happiness, and joy, and light,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Old David would have asked for youth afresh<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh;<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I but implore your prayers to aid my plight,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Angel of happiness, and joy, and light.</span><div><span face="Verdana, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.14px;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="Verdana, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.14px;">- Charles Baudelaire<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />translation by Arthur Symons</span><div><span face="Verdana, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.14px;"><br /></span></div><div><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.14px;"><br /></i></div></div>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-22873896224095410402021-08-16T17:28:00.069-07:002022-02-23T11:39:28.614-08:00The gates of hell are open night and day;<br />Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:<br />But to return, and view the cheerful skies,<br />In this the task and mighty labor lies.<br /><br />- Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI, tr. John DrydenDavid Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-25512366241558424042021-02-14T10:00:00.003-08:002022-02-23T11:40:33.240-08:00<i></i>I pray that it may for ever be my lot in life to sit opposite my dear one and hear close to me his sweet voice, to go out when he goes out and share every activity with him. And so a lover might well pray that his cherished one should journey to old age without any sorrow through a life free from stumbling or swerving, without having experienced at all any malicious spite of Fortune. But, if in accordance with the law governing the human body, illness should lay its hand on him, I shall ail with him when he is weak, and, when he puts out to sea through stormy waves, I shall sail with him. And, should a violent tyrant bind him in chains, I shall put the same fetters around myself. All who hate him will be my enemies and those well disposed to him shall I hold dear. Should I see bandits or foemen rushing upon him, I would arm myself even beyond my strength, and if he dies, I shall not bear to live. I shall give final instructions to those I love next best after him to pile up a common tomb for both of us, to unite my bones with his and not to keep even our dumb ashes apart from each other. <br />
<br />
<br />
Source:<br />
<a href="http://www.well.com/user/aquarius/lucian-amores.htm" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="http://www.well.com/user/aquarius/lucian-amores.htm" target="_blank">Affairs of the Heart, Pseudo-Lucian, tr. A.M. Harmon</a> <i></i>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-48829758271899084822021-01-23T11:43:00.000-08:002021-01-23T11:43:54.098-08:00The Old Men of the Twilight by William Butler Yeats<p> <span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">At the place, close to the Dead Man's Point, at the Rosses, where the disused pilot-house looks out to sea through two round windows like eyes, a mud cottage stood in the last century. It also was a watchhouse, for a certain old Michael Bruen, who had been a smuggler in his day, and was still the father and grandfather of smugglers, lived there, and when, after nightfall, a tall schooner crept over the bay from Roughley, it was his business to hang a horn lanthorn in the southern window, that the news might travel to Dorren's Island, and from thence, by another horn lanthorn, to the village of the Rosses. But for this glimmering of messages, he had little communion with mankind, for he was very old, and had no thought for anything but for the making of his soul, at the foot of the Spanish crucifix of carved oak that hung by his chimney, or bent double over the rosary of stone beads brought to him a cargo of silks and laces out of France. One night he had watched hour after hour, because a gentle and favourable wind was blowing, and</span><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">La Mere de Misericorde</i><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">was much overdue; and he was about to lie down upon his heap of straw, seeing that the dawn was whitening the east, and that the schooner would not dare to round Roughley and come to an anchor after daybreak; when he saw a long line of herons flying slowly from Dorren's Island and towards the pools which lie, half choked with reeds, behind what is called the Second Rosses. He had never before seen herons flying over the sea, for they are shore-keeping birds, and partly because this had startled him out of his drowsiness, and more because the long delay of the schooner kept his cupboard empty, he took down his rusty shot-gun, of which the barrel was tied on with a piece of string, and followed them towards the pools.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">When he came close enough to hear the sighing of the rushes in the outermost pool, the morning was grey over the world, so that the tall rushes, the still waters, the vague clouds, the thin mists lying among the sand-heaps, seemed carved out of an enormous pearl. In a little he came upon the herons, of whom there were a great number, standing with lifted legs in the shallow water; and crouching down behind a bank of rushes, looked to the priming of his gun, and bent for a moment over his rosary to murmur: 'Patron Patrick, let me shoot a heron; made into a pie it will support me for nearly four days, for I no longer eat as in my youth. If you keep me from missing I will say a rosary to you every night until the pie is eaten.' Then he lay down, and, resting his gun upon a large stone, turned towards a heron which stood upon a bank of smooth grass over a little stream that flowed into the pool; for he feared to take the rheumatism by wading, as he would have to do if he shot one of those which stood in the water. But when he looked along the barrel the heron was gone, and, to his wonder and terror, a man of infinitely great age and infirmity stood in its place. He lowered the gun, and the heron stood there with bent head and motionless feathers, as though it had slept from the beginning of the world. He raised the gun, and no sooner did he look along the iron than that enemy of all enchantment brought the old man again before him, only to vanish when he lowered the gun for the second time. He laid the gun down, and crossed himself three times, and said a <i>Paternoster</i> and an <i>Ave Maria</i>, and muttered half aloud: 'Some enemy of God and of my patron is standing upon the smooth place and fishing in the blessed water,' and then aimed very carefully and slowly. He fired, and when the smoke had gone saw an old man, huddled upon the grass and a long line of herons flying with clamour towards the sea. He went round a bend of the pool, and coming to the little stream looked down on a figure wrapped in faded clothes of black and green of an ancient pattern and spotted with blood. He shook his head at the sight of so great a wickedness. Suddenly the clothes moved and an arm was stretched upwards towards the rosary which hung about his neck, and long wasted fingers almost touched the cross. He started back, crying: 'Wizard, I will let no wicked thing touch my blessed beads'; and the sense of a The Old great danger just escaped made him tremble.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">'If you listen to me,' replied a voice so faint that it was like a sigh, 'you will know that I am not a wizard, and you will let me kiss the cross before I die.'</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">'I will listen to you,' he answered, 'but I will not let you touch my blessed beads,' and sitting on the grass a little way from the dying man, he reloaded his gun and laid it across his knees and composed himself to listen.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">'I know not how many generations ago we, who are now herons, were the men of learning of the King Leaghaire; we neither hunted, nor went to battle, nor listened to the Druids preaching, and even love, if it came to us at all, was but a passing fire. The Druids and the poets told us, many and many a time, of a new Druid Patrick; and most among them were fierce against him, while a few thought his doctrine merely the doctrine of the gods set out in new symbols, and were for giving him welcome; but we yawned in the midst of their tale. At last they came crying that he was coming to the king's house, and fell to their dispute, but we would listen to neither party, for we were busy with a dispute about the merits of the Great and of the Little Metre; nor were we disturbed when they passed our door with sticks of enchantment under their arms, travelling towards the forest to contend against his coming, nor when they returned after nightfall with torn robes and despairing cries; for the click of our knives writing our thoughts in Ogham filled us with peace and our dispute filled us with joy; nor even when in the morning crowds passed us to hear the strange Druid preaching the commandments of his god. The crowds passed, and one, who had laid down his knife to yawn and stretch himself, heard a voice speaking far off, and knew that the Druid Patrick was preaching within the king's house; but our hearts were deaf, and we carved and disputed and read, and laughed a thin laughter together. In a little we heard many feet coming towards the house, and presently two tall figures stood in the door, the one in white, the other in a crimson robe; like a great lily and a heavy poppy; and we knew the Druid Patrick and our King Leaghaire. We laid down the slender knives and bowed before the king, but when the black and green robes had ceased to rustle, it was not the loud rough voice of King Leaghaire that spoke to us, but a strange voice in which there was a rapture as of one speaking from behind a battlement of Druid flame: "I preached the commandments of the Maker of the world," it said; "within the king's house and from the centre of the earth to the windows of Heaven there was a great silence, so that the eagle floated with unmoving wings in the white air, and the fish with unmoving fins in the dim water, while the linnets and the wrens and the sparrows stilled there ever-trembling tongues in the heavy boughs, and the clouds were like white marble, and the rivers became their motionless mirrors, and the shrimps in the far-off sea-pools were still enduring eternity in patience, although it was hard." And as he named these things, it was like a king numbering his people. "But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken staves, and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with anger. O, little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although the summer pass above you with innumerable feet. O, men who have no part in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but dwell with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot touch you as they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons cannot sweep about you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a curse, and change you to an example for ever and ever; you shall become grey herons and stand pondering in grey pools and flit over the world in that hour when it is most full of sighs, having forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet found the flame of the sun; and you shall preach to the other herons until they also are like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and your deaths shall come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of certainty may visit your hearts."'</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen bent over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to understand something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for a long time, had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his dream. The old man of learning had crawled along the grass, and was now trying to draw the cross down low enough for his lips to reach it.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">'You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not have trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh and was still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green clothes, for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to understand that he had something the man of learning wanted and pleaded for, and now that the blessed beads were safe, his fear had nearly all gone; and surely, he thought, if that big cloak, and that little tight-fitting cloak under it, were warm and without holes, Saint Patrick would take the enchantment out of them and leave them fit for human use. But the black and green clothes fell away wherever his fingers touched them, and while this was a new wonder, a slight wind blew over the pool and crumbled the old man of learning and all his ancient gear into a little heap of dust, and then made the little heap less and less until there was nothing but the smooth green grass.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Source: </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><a href="http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/5795">The Secret Rose by W. B. Yeats</a><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><br /></p>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-30890299120542589312020-06-16T10:03:00.004-07:002022-08-18T08:42:09.814-07:00The City of Dreadful Night<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
I sat forlornly by the river-side,<br />
And watched the bridge-lamps glow like golden stars<br />
Above the blackness of the swelling tide,<br />
Down which they struck rough gold in ruddier bars;<br />
And heard the heave and plashing of the flow<br />
Against the wall a dozen feet below.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Large elm-trees stood along that river-walk;<br />
And under one, a few steps from my seat,<br />
I heard strange voices join in stranger talk,<br />
Although I had not heard approaching feet:<br />
These bodiless voices in my waking dream<br />
Flowed dark words blending with sombre stream:—</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
And you have after all come back; come back.<br />
I was about to follow on your track.<br />
And you have failed: our spark of hope is black.</div>
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That I have failed is proved by my return:<br />
The spark is quenched, nor ever more will burn,<br />
But listen; and the story you shall learn.</div>
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I reached the portal common spirits fear,<br />
And read the words above it, dark yet clear,<br />
"Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here:"</div>
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And would have passed in, gratified to gain<br />
That positive eternity of pain<br />
Instead of this insufferable inane.</div>
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A demon warder clutched me, Not so fast;<br />
First leave your hopes behind!—But years have passed<br />
Since I left all behind me, to the last:</div>
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You cannot count for hope, with all your wit,<br />
This bleak despair that drives me to the Pit:<br />
How could I seek to enter void of it?</div>
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He snarled, What thing is this which apes a soul,<br />
And would find entrance to our gulf of dole<br />
Without the payment of the settled toll?</div>
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Outside the gate he showed an open chest:<br />
Here pay their entrance fees the souls unblest;<br />
Cast in some hope, you enter with the rest.</div>
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This is Pandora's box; whose lid shall shut,<br />
And Hell-gate too, when hopes have filled it; but<br />
They are so thin that it will never glut.</div>
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I stood a few steps backwards, desolate;<br />
And watched the spirits pass me to their fate,<br />
And fling off hope, and enter at the gate.</div>
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When one casts off a load he springs upright,<br />
Squares back his shoulders, breathes with all his might,<br />
And briskly paces forward strong and light:</div>
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But these, as if they took some burden, bowed;<br />
The whole frame sank; however strong and proud<br />
Before, they crept in quite infirm and cowed.</div>
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And as they passed me, earnestly from each<br />
A morsel of his hope I did beseech,<br />
To pay my entrance; but all mocked my speech.</div>
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No one would cede a little of his store,<br />
Though knowing that in instants three or four<br />
He must resign the whole for evermore.</div>
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So I returned. Our destiny is fell;<br />
For in this Limbo we must ever dwell,<br />
Shut out alike from heaven and Earth and Hell.</div>
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The other sighed back, Yea; but if we grope<br />
With care through all this Limbo's dreary scope,<br />
We yet may pick up some minute lost hope;</div>
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And sharing it between us, entrance win,<br />
In spite of fiends so jealous for gross sin:<br />
Let us without delay our search begin.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">- Francis Thomson</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">Click the link below to read the rest of the poem</div>
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Source:</div>
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<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1238/1238-h/1238-h.htm">The City of Dreadful Night by Francis Thomson</a></div>
David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-65882953786968907852020-06-06T10:38:00.003-07:002023-07-06T14:58:11.263-07:00Ninon de l'Enclos on her last birthday<div class="KonaBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding-right: 5px;">
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So let me have the rouge again,<br />
And comb my hair the curly way.<br />
The poor young men, the dear young men<br />
They'll all be here by noon today.<br />
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And I shall wear the blue, I think-<br />
They beg to touch its rippled lace;<br />
Or do they love me best in pink,<br />
So sweetly flattering the face?<br />
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And are you sure my eyes are bright,<br />
And is it true my cheek is clear?<br />
Young what's-his-name stayed half the night;<br />
He vows to cut his throat, poor dear!<br />
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So bring my scarlet slippers, then,<br />
And fetch the powder-puff to me.<br />
The dear young men, the poor young men-<br />
They think I'm only seventy!</div>
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- Dorothy Parker</div>
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<span data-offset-key="478f6-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">“If a man needs a religion to conduct himself properly in this world, it is a sign that he has either a limited mind or a corrupt heart.” </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Ninon de l'Enclos</span></div>
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David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-78615316519508603442020-04-30T10:13:00.002-07:002021-01-23T11:44:47.949-08:00Sredni Vashtar by Saki<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.</div>
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Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.</div>
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In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman's religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen. These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. de Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out.</div>
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The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. de Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all respectability.</div>
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After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. "It is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers," she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing: there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it "gave trouble," a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.</div>
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"I thought you liked toast," she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.</div>
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"Sometimes," said Conradin.</div>
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In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, to-night he asked a boon.</div>
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"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."</div>
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The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.</div>
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And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up: "Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."</div>
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Mrs. de Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection.</div>
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"What are you keeping in that locked hutch?" she asked. "I believe it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all cleared away."</div>
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Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then he imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience. And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:</div>
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Sredni Vashtar went forth,<br />
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.<br />
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.<br />
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.</div>
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And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the paean of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.</div>
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"Tea is ready," said the sour-faced maid; "where is the mistress?"</div>
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"She went down to the shed some time ago," said Conradin.</div>
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And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.</div>
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"Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for the life of me!" exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.</div>
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Source:</div>
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<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3688">The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki (H.H. Munro)</a></div>
David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-43303533690533925392019-08-08T12:53:00.001-07:002020-04-30T10:15:19.495-07:00A Cat's Friendship<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHsR_6pObFAS5YRQvWFTfVkJbgt-LyBRcdHAWYA622LGiyE2XY7tVajcoeT3jWoX4NMe3GtrFR3d7XJjfaU9nXUgVnnuHFS8-rd46e70P487mG6aMKooDXdSfT0p2xq0Hbb4L3PiZlcFSR/s1600/Max+relaxing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHsR_6pObFAS5YRQvWFTfVkJbgt-LyBRcdHAWYA622LGiyE2XY7tVajcoeT3jWoX4NMe3GtrFR3d7XJjfaU9nXUgVnnuHFS8-rd46e70P487mG6aMKooDXdSfT0p2xq0Hbb4L3PiZlcFSR/s640/Max+relaxing.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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A Cat's friendship is a hard thing to conquer. Cats are philosophical animals - sedate, quiet, fixed in their habits, true believers in decency and order, and not at all given to the bestowing of a thoughtless affection. They will be your friend if you prove worthy of friendship; but they will never be your slaves. Even in moments of tenderness a cat preserves his freedom of will, and cannot be made to comply with demands which seem to him unreasonable. But once he surrenders himself to you as a friend, what absolute confidence he gives! what fidelity of affection! He constitutes himself the companion of your solitary hours, of your melancholy, of your work. He will pass whole evenings purring on your knees, happy in your company, and forsaking that of animals of his own species. In vain do enticing mews re-echo from the roofs, calling him to one of those cat soirees where juicy red herrings take the place of tea. He will not be tempted away, and shares your vigil to the end. If you put him on the floor, he jumps back to his place with a murmuring noise that is like a soft reproach. Sometimes, standing near, he looks at you with his eyes so full of melting tenderness, so loving and so human, that you are half frightened; for it seems impossible, that in such a regard reason can be lacking.<br />
<br />
- Theophile Gautier<br />
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<br />
Source:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://archive.org/details/myhouseholdofpet00gautiala/page/n8">My Household of Pets, Théophile Gautier, tr. Susan Coolidge, Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1882. </a>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-66646647338688726762019-07-27T11:33:00.000-07:002023-07-26T18:23:47.958-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihoRJFBlMABaw9Khigd4sluMfsADlULFg62LxyYnX9hfjPuZ1UBCleKNsmmicWl8KiyQJFJjUnDVcZQTwfh3CUrKSEdNQ5QdjWrH5hRZYbMUF6uVjcjlGtaIGUVwoyS9EHuTvZ1Wc7ehv8/s1600/Saint+Sebastian%252C+Antonello+da+Messina%252C+1476-77.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="796" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihoRJFBlMABaw9Khigd4sluMfsADlULFg62LxyYnX9hfjPuZ1UBCleKNsmmicWl8KiyQJFJjUnDVcZQTwfh3CUrKSEdNQ5QdjWrH5hRZYbMUF6uVjcjlGtaIGUVwoyS9EHuTvZ1Wc7ehv8/s640/Saint+Sebastian%252C+Antonello+da+Messina%252C+1476-77.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Saint Sebastian</i>, Antonello da Messina, 1476-77</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-12703280072489489252019-07-04T16:30:00.000-07:002019-07-12T17:02:10.712-07:00The New Colossus <div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<br />
<img alt="Image result for statue of liberty design" height="400" src="https://s.hdnux.com/photos/42/34/37/9029574/3/rawImage.jpg" width="317" /><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">With conquering limbs astride from land to land;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Emma Lazarus, 1883.</span></div>
David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-73032593106471160122019-05-26T13:04:00.000-07:002020-06-25T10:35:34.882-07:00On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake by Fitz-Greene Halleck<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ_zvG3q7Ax8BdmQyzcxuSowWwOMh3Mu0SRKWRW0TkbYZErcDKeydOmqEaVXB0WlH47MFY7u7L1CxSuWuqhiaK6_ikl_PWwFq7lO8gLmOmUWHIFoTiz8IEfLUPmqT0wsotHilQG717dxku/s1600/Joseph_Rodman_Drake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1109" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ_zvG3q7Ax8BdmQyzcxuSowWwOMh3Mu0SRKWRW0TkbYZErcDKeydOmqEaVXB0WlH47MFY7u7L1CxSuWuqhiaK6_ikl_PWwFq7lO8gLmOmUWHIFoTiz8IEfLUPmqT0wsotHilQG717dxku/s400/Joseph_Rodman_Drake.jpg" width="287" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Green be the turf above thee,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Friend of my better days!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
None knew thee but to love thee,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Nor named thee but to praise.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Tears fell, when thou wert dying,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
From eyes unused to weep,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And long where thou art lying,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Will tears the cold turf steep.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When hearts, whose truth was proven,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Like thine, Are laid in earth,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
There should a wreath be woven</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To tell the world their worth;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And I who woke each morrow</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To clasp thy hand in mine,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Whose weal and woe were thine:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
It should be mine to braid it</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Around thy faded brow,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But I've in vain essayed it,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And feel I can not know.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
While memory bids me weep thee,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Nor thoughts nor words are free,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That grief is fixed too deeply</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That mourns a man like thee.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #000020; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje3_OLRzzGMXJlu3_9gJ-TrlSy_gEnMd8ruytSSfN3VCTOTurBXRZgjHxBphKxJzLAIcplCvHP3D_C4akRI14foapfqWuv0cq2VP8Ghoe5iPZWXrZgTVKKVNyDpp-w8QjpYeP7TeKskKhL/s1600/fitz-greene+halleck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1238" data-original-width="789" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje3_OLRzzGMXJlu3_9gJ-TrlSy_gEnMd8ruytSSfN3VCTOTurBXRZgjHxBphKxJzLAIcplCvHP3D_C4akRI14foapfqWuv0cq2VP8Ghoe5iPZWXrZgTVKKVNyDpp-w8QjpYeP7TeKskKhL/s400/fitz-greene+halleck.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #000020; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Fitz-Greene Halleck</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #000020; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> (1790–1867)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />
<br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-55884221671028208542019-05-06T22:31:00.000-07:002019-05-15T13:39:47.207-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpTjeDv3za_08PeWd5-Tg-7yCjP1r-wv8nyeNfqlUsoUAAB8CmuNU_Ak1dg5XqzgnqPEjfhn0cJBP0GeXLv6dk-1xeArnzngp05pAdJOlFfvovCejC-zr_Elrb-AvbP4uRCzjV3Datslo/s1600/The_Mutiliation_of_Uranus_by_Saturn+Georgio+Vasari+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="1122" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpTjeDv3za_08PeWd5-Tg-7yCjP1r-wv8nyeNfqlUsoUAAB8CmuNU_Ak1dg5XqzgnqPEjfhn0cJBP0GeXLv6dk-1xeArnzngp05pAdJOlFfvovCejC-zr_Elrb-AvbP4uRCzjV3Datslo/s640/The_Mutiliation_of_Uranus_by_Saturn+Georgio+Vasari+.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Mutilation of Uranus</i> by Giorgio Vasari, 1555.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
<br />
Related reading:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm">The Theogony of Hesiod, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914. </a>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-83575833452410172112019-04-21T10:00:00.000-07:002019-04-21T12:27:00.468-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaOdXzTuAHReHho7KUvR41kr5JUlaUNXB4wxF_vllNGuwnKA-e-LEgBO39l-p6cwiEhrA0EGwXnwKT9ypYirFRU8RntR3GSfxDQcS6gta1KzTlvJhC-xqnppHXGd_ouO0skciK604L2E3-/s1600/Corinth_Lovis_Crucified_Thief.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1098" data-original-width="493" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaOdXzTuAHReHho7KUvR41kr5JUlaUNXB4wxF_vllNGuwnKA-e-LEgBO39l-p6cwiEhrA0EGwXnwKT9ypYirFRU8RntR3GSfxDQcS6gta1KzTlvJhC-xqnppHXGd_ouO0skciK604L2E3-/s640/Corinth_Lovis_Crucified_Thief.jpg" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lovis Corinth, <i>Crucified Thief</i>, 1883</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-66818203084292935042019-02-28T18:05:00.001-08:002021-08-18T13:22:49.362-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzgqsYkUGgleCY7yy4I9cYfnimwvd7u8-zT-krcfIbQHH3jDJ7FDGLKIiZ_LhLkI4TMrYrt14zOBSdOD-veynw6hlOOO75nMWURJ00RU4mi_0U0eotYP-qNY8gk0r4fjzPjyuEiYqyHgbh/s1600/Man+Carrying+the+Burdens+of+Time.+An+Allegory+of+the+Three+Ages+of+Man%252C+studio+of+Jacob+de+Backer%252C+c.1571-c.1591..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="1255" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzgqsYkUGgleCY7yy4I9cYfnimwvd7u8-zT-krcfIbQHH3jDJ7FDGLKIiZ_LhLkI4TMrYrt14zOBSdOD-veynw6hlOOO75nMWURJ00RU4mi_0U0eotYP-qNY8gk0r4fjzPjyuEiYqyHgbh/s640/Man+Carrying+the+Burdens+of+Time.+An+Allegory+of+the+Three+Ages+of+Man%252C+studio+of+Jacob+de+Backer%252C+c.1571-c.1591..jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; display: inline; float: none; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><i>Man Carrying the Burdens of Time. An Allegory of the Three Ages of Man</i>, studio of Jacob de Backer, c.1571-c.1591.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-87949669311471645252019-02-20T15:37:00.001-08:002019-03-16T14:10:58.917-07:00Where the tides ebb and flow<div id="id00120" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-top: 32px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwrmbDOezvsoWcJeWS2TUSnvRJjJNBiF8fv9cgLOhlr6zpJOw3yUJJUdFH7-ANnv2Ek-QWNs_aGbCGRkfmf8aJSyBqz3fFIr_xprm3V-7oa_mEEkOSIeTRTx7ldRIN1TH_WgrWG3tkXJ8D/s1600/sidney+sime+lord+dunsany+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="780" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwrmbDOezvsoWcJeWS2TUSnvRJjJNBiF8fv9cgLOhlr6zpJOw3yUJJUdFH7-ANnv2Ek-QWNs_aGbCGRkfmf8aJSyBqz3fFIr_xprm3V-7oa_mEEkOSIeTRTx7ldRIN1TH_WgrWG3tkXJ8D/s640/sidney+sime+lord+dunsany+.jpg" width="487" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration by Sidney Sime</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
I dreamt that I had done a horrible thing, so that burial was to be denied
me either in soil or sea, neither could there be any hell for me.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00121" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
I waited for some hours, knowing this. Then my friends came for me, and
slew me secretly and with ancient rite, and lit great tapers, and carried
me away.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00122" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
It was all in London that the thing was done, and they went furtively at
dead of night along grey streets and among mean houses until they came to
the river. And the river and the tide of the sea were grappling with one
another between the mud-banks, and both of them were black and full of
lights. A sudden wonder came in to the eyes of each, as my friends came
near to them with their glaring tapers. All these things I saw as they
carried me dead and stiffening, for my soul was still among my bones,
because there was no hell for it, and because Christian burial was denied
me.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00123" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
They took me down a stairway that was green with slimy things, and so came
slowly to the terrible mud. There, in the territory of forsaken things,
they dug a shallow grave. When they had finished they laid me in the
grave, and suddenly they cast their tapers to the river. And when the
water had quenched the flaring lights the tapers looked pale and small as
they bobbed upon the tide, and at once the glamour of the calamity was
gone, and I noticed then the approach of the huge dawn; and my friends
cast their cloaks over their faces, and the solemn procession was turned
into many fugitives that furtively stole away.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00124" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Then the mud came back wearily and covered all but my face. There I lay
alone with quite forgotten things, with drifting things that the tides
will take no farther, with useless things and lost things, and with the
horrible unnatural bricks that are neither stone nor soil. I was rid of
feeling, because I had been killed, but perception and thought were in my
unhappy soul. The dawn widened, and I saw the desolate houses that crowded
the marge of the river, and their dead windows peered into my dead eyes,
windows with bales behind them instead of human souls. I grew so weary
looking at these forlorn things that I wanted to cry out, but could not,
because I was dead. Then I knew, as I had never known before, that for all
the years that herd of desolate houses had wanted to cry out too, but,
being dead, were dumb. And I knew then that it had yet been well with the
forgotten drifting things if they had wept, but they were eyeless and
without life. And I, too, tried to weep, but there were no tears in my
dead eyes. And I knew then that the river might have cared for us, might
have caressed us, might have sung to us, but he swept broadly onwards,
thinking of nothing but the princely ships.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00125" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
At last the tide did what the river would not, and came and covered me
over, and my soul had rest in the green water, and rejoiced and believed
that it had the Burial of the Sea. But with the ebb the water fell again,
and left me alone again with the callous mud among the forgotten things
that drift no more, and with the sight of all those desolate houses, and
with the knowledge among all of us that each was dead.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00126" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
In the mournful wall behind me, hung with green weeds, forsaken of the
sea, dark tunnels appeared, and secret narrow passages that were clamped
and barred. From these at last the stealthy rats came down to nibble me
away, and my soul rejoiced thereat and believed that he would be free
perforce from the accursed bones to which burial was refused. Very soon
the rats ran away a little space and whispered among themselves. They
never came any more. When I found that I was accursed even among the rats
I tried to weep again.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00127" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Then the tide came swinging back and covered the dreadful mud, and hid the
desolate houses, and soothed the forgotten things, and my soul had ease
for a while in the sepulture of the sea. And then the tide forsook me
again.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00128" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
To and fro it came about me for many years. Then the County Council found
me, and gave me decent burial. It was the first grave that I had ever
slept in. That very night my friends came for me. They dug me up and put
me back again in the shallow hold in the mud.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00129" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Again and again through the years my bones found burial, but always behind
the funeral lurked one of those terrible men who, as soon as night fell,
came and dug them up and carried them back again to the hole in the mud.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00130" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
And then one day the last of those men died who once had done to me this
terrible thing. I heard his soul go over the river at sunset.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00131" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
And again I hoped.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00132" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
A few weeks afterwards I was found once more, and once more taken out of
that restless place and given deep burial in sacred ground, where my soul
hoped that it should rest.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00133" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Almost at once men came with cloaks and tapers to give me back to the mud,
for the thing had become a tradition and a rite. And all the forsaken
things mocked me in their dumb hearts when they saw me carried back, for
they were jealous of me because I had left the mud. It must be remembered
that I could not weep.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00134" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
And the years went by seawards where the black barges go, and the great
derelict centuries became lost at sea, and still I lay there without any
cause to hope, and daring not to hope without a cause, because of the
terrible envy and the anger of the things that could drift no more.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00135" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Once a great storm rode up, even as far as London, out of the sea from the
South; and he came curving into the river with the fierce East wind. And
he was mightier than the dreary tides, and went with great leaps over the
listless mud. And all the sad forgotten things rejoiced, and mingled with
things that were haughtier than they, and rode once more amongst the
lordly shipping that was driven up and down. And out of their hideous home
he took my bones, never again, I hoped, to be vexed with the ebb and flow.
And with the fall of the tide he went riding down the river and turned to
the southwards, and so went to his home. And my bones he scattered among
many isles and along the shores of happy alien mainlands. And for a
moment, while they were far asunder, my soul was almost free.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00136" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Then there arose, at the will of the moon, the assiduous flow of the tide,
and it undid at once the work of the ebb, and gathered my bones from the
marge of sunny isles, and gleaned them all along the mainland's shores,
and went rocking northwards till it came to the mouth of the Thames, and
there turned westwards its relentless face, and so went up the river and
came to the hole in the mud, and into it dropped my bones; and partly the
mud covered them, and partly it left them white, for the mud cares not for
its forsaken things.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00137" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Then the ebb came, and I saw the dead eyes of the houses and the jealousy
of the other forgotten things that the storm had not carried thence.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00138" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
And some more centuries passed over the ebb and flow and over the
loneliness of things for gotten. And I lay there all the while in the
careless grip of the mud, never wholly covered, yet never able to go free,
and I longed for the great caress of the warm Earth or the comfortable lap
of the Sea.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00139" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Sometimes men found my bones and buried them, but the tradition never
died, and my friends' successors always brought them back. At last the
barges went no more, and there were fewer lights; shaped timbers no longer
floated down the fairway, and there came instead old wind-uprooted trees
in all their natural simplicity.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00140" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
At last I was aware that somewhere near me a blade of grass was growing,
and the moss began to appear all over the dead houses. One day some
thistledown went drifting over the river.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00141" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
For some years I watched these signs attentively, until I became certain
that London was passing away. Then I hoped once more, and all along both
banks of the river there was anger among the lost things that anything
should dare to hope upon the forsaken mud. Gradually the horrible houses
crumbled, until the poor dead things that never had had life got decent
burial among the weeds and moss. At last the may appeared and the
convolvulus. Finally, the wild rose stood up over mounds that had been
wharves and warehouses. Then I knew that the cause of Nature had
triumphed, and London had passed away.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00142" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
The last man in London came to the wall by the river, in an ancient cloak
that was one of those that once my friends had worn, and peered over the
edge to see that I still was there. Then he went, and I never saw men
again: they had passed away with London.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00143" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
A few days after the last man had gone the birds came into London, all the
birds that sing. When they first saws me they all looked sideways at me,
then they went away a little and spoke among themselves.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00144" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
"He only sinned against Man," they said; "it is not our quarrel."</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00145" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
"Let us be kind to him," they said.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00146" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Then they hopped nearer me and began to sing. It was the time of the
rising of the dawn, and from both banks of the river, and from the sky,
and from the thickets that were once the streets, hundreds of birds were
singing. As the light increased the birds sang more and more; they grew
thicker and thicker in the air above my head, till there were thousands of
them singing there, and then millions, and at last I could see nothing but
a host of flickering wings with the sunlight on them, and little gaps of
sky. Then when there was nothing to be heard in London but the myriad
notes of that exultant song, my soul rose up from the bones in the hole in
the mud and began to climb heavenwards. And it seemed that a lane-way
opened amongst the wings of the birds, and it went up and up, and one of
the smaller gates of Paradise stood ajar at the end of it. And then I knew
by a sign that the mud should receive me no more, for suddenly I found
that I could weep.</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><br />
<div id="id00147" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
At this moment I opened my eyes in bed in a house in London, and outside
some sparrows were twittering in a tree in the light of the radiant
morning; and there were tears still wet upon my face, for one's restraint
is feeble while one sleeps. But I arose and opened the window wide, and
stretching my hands out over the little garden, I blessed the birds whose
song had woken me up from the troubled and terrible centuries of my dream.<br />
<br />
- Lord Dunsany</div>
<div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike><br /></strike></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Source:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8129" target="_blank">A Dreamer's Tales by Lord Dunsany, 1910</a></div>
<br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-16055710986310362092019-02-20T12:14:00.000-08:002019-02-20T16:25:51.803-08:00Markest thou what sentry is seated in the doorway? what shape guards the threshold?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKK49wc3PnUAM9_n6no04bflyQbNUb3GvRNWBsi-sJFC602RhJLKTy2-AiC530DwvF180qBvBn1cjXZxn9qbNxCdBgwzDDBwiy_YNbvVUCBHswJxqU99TGS3SI7BzdNqhsitkyeqHPw1k/s1600/Jan+Brueghel+the+Younger%252C+Aeneas+and+the+Sibyl+in+the+Underworld%252C+c.+1630+..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1229" data-original-width="1600" height="491" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKK49wc3PnUAM9_n6no04bflyQbNUb3GvRNWBsi-sJFC602RhJLKTy2-AiC530DwvF180qBvBn1cjXZxn9qbNxCdBgwzDDBwiy_YNbvVUCBHswJxqU99TGS3SI7BzdNqhsitkyeqHPw1k/s640/Jan+Brueghel+the+Younger%252C+Aeneas+and+the+Sibyl+in+the+Underworld%252C+c.+1630+..jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jan Brueghel the Younger, <i>Aeneus and the Sybil in the Underworld</i>, 1630's.</td></tr>
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Aeneas looks swiftly back, and sees beneath the cliff on the left hand a wide city, girt with a triple wall and encircled by a racing river of boiling flame, Tartarean Phlegethon, that echoes over its rolling rocks. In front is the gate, huge and pillared with solid adamant, that no warring force of men nor the very habitants of heaven may avail to overthrow; it stands up a tower of iron, and Tisiphone sitting girt in bloodstained pall keeps sleepless watch at the entry by night and day. Hence moans are heard and fierce lashes resound, with the clank of iron and dragging chains. Aeneas stopped and hung dismayed at the tumult.<br />
<br />
'What shapes of crime are here? declare, O maiden; or what the punishment that pursues them, and all this upsurging wail?'<br />
<br />
Then the soothsayer thus began to speak:<br />
<br />
'Illustrious chief of Troy, no pure foot may tread these guilty courts; but to me Hecate herself, when she gave me rule over the groves of Avernus, taught how the gods punish, and guided me through all her realm. Gnosian Rhadamanthus here holds unrelaxing sway, chastises secret crime revealed, and exacts confession, wheresoever in the upper world one vainly exultant in stolen guilt hath till the dusk of death kept clear from the evil he wrought. Straightway avenging Tisiphone, girt with her scourge, tramples down the shivering sinners, menaces them with the grim snakes in her left hand, and summons forth her sisters in merciless train. Then at last the sacred gates are flung open and grate on the jarring hinge. Markest thou what sentry is seated in the doorway? what shape guards the threshold? More grim within sits the monstrous Hydra with her fifty black yawning throats: and Tartarus' self gapes sheer and strikes into the gloom through twice the space that one looks upward to Olympus and the skyey heaven. Here Earth's ancient children, the Titans' brood, hurled down by the thunderbolt, lie wallowing in the abyss. Here likewise I saw the twin Aloïds, enormous of frame, who essayed with violent hands to pluck down high heaven and thrust Jove from his upper realm. Likewise I saw Salmoneus in the cruel payment he gives for mocking Jove's flame and Olympus' thunders. Borne by four horses and brandishing a torch, he rode in triumph midway through the populous city of Grecian Elis, and claimed for himself the worship of deity; madman! who would mimic the storm-cloud and the inimitable bolt with brass that rang under his trampling horse-hoofs. But the Lord omnipotent hurled his shaft through thickening clouds (no firebrand his nor smoky glare of torches) and dashed him headlong in the fury of the whirlwind. Therewithal Tityos might be seen, fosterling of Earth the mother of all, whose body stretches over nine full acres, and a monstrous vulture with crooked beak eats away the imperishable liver and the entrails that breed in suffering, and plunges deep into the breast that gives it food and dwelling; nor is any rest given to the fibres that ever grow anew. Why tell of the Lapithae, of Ixion and Pirithoüs? over whom a stone hangs just slipping and just as though it fell; or the high banqueting couches gleam golden-pillared, and the feast is spread in royal luxury before their faces; couched hard by, the eldest of the Furies wards the tables from their touch and rises with torch upreared and thunderous lips. Here are they who hated their brethren while life endured, or struck a parent or entangled a client in wrong, or who brooded alone over found treasure and shared it not with their fellows, this the greatest multitude of all; and they who were slain for adultery, and who followed unrighteous arms, and feared not to betray their masters' plighted hand. Imprisoned they await their doom. Seek not to be told that doom, that fashion of fortune wherein they are sunk. Some roll a vast stone, or hang outstretched on the spokes of wheels; hapless Theseus sits and shall sit for ever, and Phlegyas in his misery gives counsel to all and witnesses aloud through the gloom, <i>Learn by this warning to do justly and not to slight the gods.</i> This man sold his country for gold, and laid her under a tyrant's sway; he set up and pulled down laws at a price; this other forced his daughter's bridal chamber and a forbidden marriage; all dared some monstrous wickedness, and had success in what they dared. Not had I an hundred tongues, an hundred mouths, and a voice of iron, could I sum up all the shapes of crime or name over all their punishments.'<br />
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Source:<br />
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<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22456/22456-h/22456-h.htm" target="_blank">The Aeneid of Virgil, translated by J.W. Mackail, M.A., London, MacMillan and Co., 1885.</a><br />
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<br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-32849232348094234102017-09-21T13:29:00.002-07:002019-03-16T14:11:38.088-07:00Hermes <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkDeD129HwC9ua-Dao1-V3ZkJYdBbcWTYDhSOxS6jbYxxVtXKa5xPI4AX0OYGG7Su39WCVMHcCY5AmwiAIfkOLWyy5BdSQPF1KAxAautjZ-9i-tW5y8OQIrCZ48NdP3PtlSLy847ZP9H1V/s1600/Hiremy.Hirschl.Adolf.Souls.on.the.Banks.of.the.Acheron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="1030" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkDeD129HwC9ua-Dao1-V3ZkJYdBbcWTYDhSOxS6jbYxxVtXKa5xPI4AX0OYGG7Su39WCVMHcCY5AmwiAIfkOLWyy5BdSQPF1KAxAautjZ-9i-tW5y8OQIrCZ48NdP3PtlSLy847ZP9H1V/s640/Hiremy.Hirschl.Adolf.Souls.on.the.Banks.of.the.Acheron.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Souls on the Banks of Acheron</i> by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl, 1898</td></tr>
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Whether the dead be enclosed in sculptured stone sarcophagi, or sealed in the hollow of metal or clay urns, or encased upright, gilded and decorated in blue, with brain and viscera removed, swathed in linen bands, yet will I conduct them in a company and guide them on their way with my controlling wand. </div>
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We advance down a swift path that eye of man hath not seen. Harlots press close against virgins, murderers against philosophers, mothers against those that refused to bear children, and priests against perjurers. For they repent them of their sins, were they those of the imagination or of the deed. And having never been free upon earth, since they were there trammelled by customs and laws, or their own beliefs, they fear isolation and cling to each other for help. She that slept naked in the tiled chambers among the men is consoling a young girl who died before her nuptial eve, — yet dreaming imperiously of her love. One that was wont to murder on the highways, his face grimed with ashes and soot, places his hand on the brow of a thinker who wished to regenerate the world and preached death. The woman who loved her children and suffered through them buries her face in the bosom of an hetaira who, by intent, was without issue. The long-robed man that was persuaded he believed in his God and constrained himself to kneel often, now weeps on the shoulder of a cynic who broke every law of the flesh and spirit before the eyes of the world. So sustains the one the other along the route, journeying under the yoke of memory. </div>
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Then they come to the bank of Lethe where I range them along the shore of the silent-flowing water. Some plunge therein their heads containing evil thoughts, others the hands that wrought evil. Rising therefrom, the water of Lethe has effaced all remembrance. </div>
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Therewith they stand aloof from one another, and each smiles believing he is free.<br />
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- Marcel Schwob</div>
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Source:<br />
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<a href="https://archive.org/details/mimeswithprologv00schw" target="_blank"><i>Mimes, with a prologue and epilogue</i> by Marcel Schwob, tr. A, Lenalie, p. Thomas B. Mosher, 1901.</a><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-24407218030236642202017-09-13T13:37:00.000-07:002017-09-21T20:51:11.686-07:00Our Lady of Sighs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxmDqg8kiTD9_aYhmLZguJ1nSKleL2yNWcErXBPuPsSyDRbNoqvBP8KjT1Ne5H6CfyBvTmQxLtZu2IgwiUkGds4qz7xeOAapav7Rvq3LecLuQZf7MnxFeeSXlXHnOjCW9F0QdWaPnb1A_/s1600/Thomas_de_Quincey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1032" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxmDqg8kiTD9_aYhmLZguJ1nSKleL2yNWcErXBPuPsSyDRbNoqvBP8KjT1Ne5H6CfyBvTmQxLtZu2IgwiUkGds4qz7xeOAapav7Rvq3LecLuQZf7MnxFeeSXlXHnOjCW9F0QdWaPnb1A_/s320/Thomas_de_Quincey.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
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The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum — Our Lady <br />
of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad <br />
upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if <br />
they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no <br />
man could read their story; they would be found filled with <br />
perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. <br />
But she raises not her eyes; her head, on which sits a <br />
dilapidated turban, droops for ever, for ever fastens on the <br />
dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs <br />
inaudibly at intervals. Her sister. Madonna, is oftentimes <br />
stormy and frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, <br />
and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs <br />
never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious <br />
aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the <br />
meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, <br />
but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself <br />
in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in <br />
solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined <br />
cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest.<br />
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- Thomas De Quincey</div>
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Source:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bartleby.com/27/22.html" target="_blank">Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow by Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)</a><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-84921183273112754302017-08-15T14:26:00.000-07:002017-08-15T17:05:19.099-07:00Mankind<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1X4aT-T6-A5Jt72rku5YUYaQ94W0j6LikVS095y4EzJ3GSPuaCyXD5I_iqLksLktAJYQGA9C169oEsHE3Iajc8zVmJI-8V_aPsJm_fJ1zhPqM_3cMRdmYO0TwUO6_hK0er34h0R-S58AW/s1600/david-park-barnitz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="281" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1X4aT-T6-A5Jt72rku5YUYaQ94W0j6LikVS095y4EzJ3GSPuaCyXD5I_iqLksLktAJYQGA9C169oEsHE3Iajc8zVmJI-8V_aPsJm_fJ1zhPqM_3cMRdmYO0TwUO6_hK0er34h0R-S58AW/s400/david-park-barnitz.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Park Barnitz (1878-1901)</td></tr>
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Mankind</div>
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They do not know that they are wholly dead,<br />
Nor that their bodies are to the worm given o'er;<br />
They pass beneath the sky forevermore;<br />
With their dead flesh the earth is cumbered.</div>
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Each day they drink of wine and eat of bread,<br />
And do the things that they have done before;<br />
And yet their hearts are rotten to the core,<br />
And from their eyes the light of life is fled.</div>
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Surely the sun is weary of their breath;<br />
They have no ears, and they are dumb and blind;<br />
Long time their bodies hunger for the grave.</div>
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How long, O God, shall these dead corpses rave?<br />
When shall the earth be clean of humankind?<br />
When shall the sky cease to behold this death?</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
- David Park Barnitz</div>
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Sources:</div>
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<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3XwtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">The Book of Jade, David Park Barnitz, 1901.</a></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.bookofjade.com/" target="_blank">http://www.bookofjade.com/</a></div>
<br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-78492791920091075312017-08-07T18:02:00.000-07:002017-08-15T14:32:31.175-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBu7zUH-9Dwq26n-122iuf3OGzLJxxSdbbuXRDV2fycXnJWvQ7ZQnQfNBZPeNGWAUcBhPUpBa1hEoU8uNbqYnFUVQVDUDlEUc5IxcF2OPoPBxSsPz0TBhjOGNmIE4IbdwvCdGwNOOYyDzP/s1600/Detanger_Germain_Nu_Masculin_Avec_Faucon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="1000" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBu7zUH-9Dwq26n-122iuf3OGzLJxxSdbbuXRDV2fycXnJWvQ7ZQnQfNBZPeNGWAUcBhPUpBa1hEoU8uNbqYnFUVQVDUDlEUc5IxcF2OPoPBxSsPz0TBhjOGNmIE4IbdwvCdGwNOOYyDzP/s640/Detanger_Germain_Nu_Masculin_Avec_Faucon.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="mw-mmv-title" original-title=""><span class="need_ref" style="cursor: help;" title="Ce passage nécessite une référence."><i>Le Fauconnier</i>, Germain Détanger, 1882</span></span></td></tr>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8845378511014918642.post-81241570281519342492017-07-27T13:17:00.002-07:002017-07-27T17:23:44.561-07:00The Defilers <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWgLlouG0fTvRTMsvb1Bp4LDlK3HyKAWA770Vm2mTtF_MT_q1sZkWxK6q0XUMfpUYWtaDwbW8DR6WCTVm_3UqZqAZ31adxZZ_B-O9FmaBQdgqAigJKCIq-RMYSE0yguT5BMQQThfMVArs/s1600/david-park-barnitz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="281" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWgLlouG0fTvRTMsvb1Bp4LDlK3HyKAWA770Vm2mTtF_MT_q1sZkWxK6q0XUMfpUYWtaDwbW8DR6WCTVm_3UqZqAZ31adxZZ_B-O9FmaBQdgqAigJKCIq-RMYSE0yguT5BMQQThfMVArs/s400/david-park-barnitz.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Park Barnitz (1878-1901)</td></tr>
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<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" style="text-align: center;">
The Defilers<br />
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O endless idiocy of humankind!<br />
O blatant dead that howl and scream and roar!<br />
O strange dead things the worms have gambled for!<span class="text_exposed_hide">...</span><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /> O dull and senseless, foolish, mad and blind!<br /> How long now shall your scent defile the wind?<br /> How long shall you make vile the earth's wide floor?<br /> How long, how long, O waiting ages hoar,<br /> Shall the white dawn their gaping faces find?<br /> O vile and simple, blind of heart and mind,<br /> When shall your last wave roll forevermore<br /> Back from the sick and long-defiled shore?<br /> When shall the grave the last dead carcass bind?<br /> O shameless humankind! O dead! O dead!<br /> When shall your rottenness be buried?</span><br />
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<div class="text_exposed_show" style="text-align: center;">
- David Park Barnitz </div>
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<br /></div>
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Sources:</div>
<div>
<i></i><br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3XwtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank"><i>The Book of Jade</i>, David Park Barnitz, 1901.</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.bookofjade.com/" target="_blank">http://www.bookofjade.com/</a></div>
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David Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03751529612011611340noreply@blogger.com0