They find countless mysterious ways

“Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality.
They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write;
nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding,
by sending each other the song of birds,
the scent of flowers,
the laughter of children,
the light of the sun,
the sighing of the wind,
and the gleam of the stars – all the beauties of creation.”
– Victor Hugo

Frederick Walker, 1871

 

 

Alone – with each other

“Think of this — that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and that they were alone with each other “

– A. S. Byatt

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

 

“Antoni Arissa Untitled 1930-1936 ”

 

It will have its own – Mary Webb

The British novelist and poet Mary Webb, around 1920. Credit Dorothy Hicklin

“For the love of nature is a passion for those in whom it once lodges. It can never be quenched. It cannot change. It is a furious, burning, physical greed, as well as a state of mystical exaltation. It will have its own.”
– Mary Webb from The House in Dormer Forest (circa 1921)

The young Mary Webb

The Mary Webb Society website 

The Ancient Gods – Mary Webb

Certainly there were splashings in the water,
Certainly there were shadows on the hill,
Dark with the leaves of purple-spotted orchis;
But now all’s still.

It may be that the catkin-covered sallow,
With her illusive, glimmering surprise,
Pale golden-tinted as a tall young goddess,
Deceived my eyes;

And the white birches wading in the margin,
Each one a naked and a radiant god,
Dazzled me; and the foam was flung by currents
Where no feet trod.

Only I know I saw them–stately, comely,
Within the leafy shadows of the stream;
They woke amid the shallow, singing water
A fading gleam.

They left no trail for any beast to follow,
No track upon the moss for man to trace;
In a long, silent file up-stream they vanished
With measured pace.

The hollow water curved about their ankles
Like amber; splashes glistened on their thighs;
Sun barred their lifted heads and their far-seeing
Yet sightless eyes.

Some were like women, with deep hair of willows,
Bare breasts and gracious arms and long, smooth hips,
And the red roses of desire half frozen
Upon their lips:

But most were massive-browed and massive-shouldered
And taller than the common height of men.
They went as those that have not home nor kindred,
Nor come again.

Still, where the birches fingered their reflection,
The thrushes chanted to the evening sky;
Still the grey wagtails raced across the shingle
As they went by.

Beyond the furthest of the saffron shallows
I lost them in the larches’ rainy green,
And only saw the stretches of marsh-mallows
Where they had been.

You say the sallow and the birch deceived me:
But I know well that I beheld to-day
The ancient gods, unheralded, majestic,
Upon their way.

 The Mary Webb Society website  

Mary Webb © by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

https://allpoetry.com/The-Ancient-Gods

Your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes

“You will find it less easy to unroot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults, still less of others faults; in every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honour that; rejoice in it and as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.”
― John Ruskin

 

Living on a Hint

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

— Henry David Thoreau

Everything is flowing – like blood in Nature’s warm heart

“Everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks… While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood…in Nature’s warm heart.” – John Muir

image: Konstantin Bogaevsky

Every step we take on earth brings us to a new world – Federico Garcia Lorca

 

After the Rain, 1930’s, Pál Kaczur

Every step we take on earth
brings us to a new world.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

In the Case of Good Books

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” 
― Mortimer J. Adler

image: Lin Kristensen acquired from Wikimedia Commons

Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside

Image: René Magritte

“Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colours. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well… Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us…I could light myself…that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting…” – Jacques Lusseyran