(Still one of the most perfect poems I’ve ever read or heard. – Owen) Learning the Bicycle for Heather The older children pedal past Stable as little gyros, spinning hard To supper, bath, and bed, until at last We also quit, silent and tired Beside the darkening yard where trees Now shadow up instead of …
Continue reading "“Learning the Bicycle” by Wyatt Prunty"
What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter. Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty. Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure. – Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night” Yes, I played the fool: But it was love, I swear it was — For …
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Only in sleep I see their faces, Children I played with when I was a child, Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, Annie with ringlets warm and wild. Only in sleep Time is forgotten— What may have come to them, who can know? Yet we played last night as long ago, And the …
Continue reading "“Only In Sleep” by Sara Teasdale and Ēriks Ešenvalds"
… Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here …
Continue reading "Excerpt from “Politics and The English Language” by George Orwell"
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.” – Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals Escape – It’s all he really sought. The certitudes of power games beyond the touch of anything like love — And he had always found the ones who still believed; The having …
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“The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long.” –Horace They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate. They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream …
Continue reading "Vitae Summa Brevis by Ernest Dowson"
In every life, no matter how full or empty one’s purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift, and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes, and to add to other people’s store of it. What happens if, …
Continue reading "Favorite Movie Quotes – Nicholas Nickleby"
The summer envied you, I thought Because you were so bright and free, And you would still and always be If freedom could be made or verdure bought —
... that I have all the time.