I am not the measure of creation. This is beyond me, this fish
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I, that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.
sonette 135.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
There was life outside the church. There was much that the church did not include. He thought of God, and of the whole blue rotonda of the day. That was something great and free. He thought of the ruins of the Grecian worship, and it seemed, a temple was never perfectly a temple, till it was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the herbs.
BENVOLIO
By my head, here comes the Capulets.
MERCUTIO
By my heel, I care not.
Unless she would come to him, he must remain as nothingness. It was a hard experience. But, after her repeated obliviousness to him, after he had seen so often that he did not exist for her, after he had raged and tried to escape, and said he was good enough by himself, he was a man, and could stand alone, he must in the starry multiplicity of the night humble himself, and admit and know that without her he was nothing.
[...] it was one of those still moments when the small frets vanish, and the beauty of things stands out, and she had the peace and strength to see herself.
He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn’t keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett. I was thinking about Brett and my mind started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. After a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trams go by.. and then I went to sleep.
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
[...] og hun vil give mig et Vink med Øjnene at forstaa efter. Og naar hun kommer, forstaar mit Hjærte alt, og det slaar ikke længer, det klemter.
Jeg vet ikke om jeg er enig med deg, men gir deg en stjerne for å ploge opp i noe det er verdt å stange litt i. Og selv om jeg med en øse tvil og vranghet ikke tør å si meg enig, merker jeg at det ''er noe ved'' det du sier, kanskje litt sannhet. Litt sannhet, sier jeg, som om det kan måles i desiliter, men du forstår hva jeg mener. Jeg ser ikke -- ut ifra boksamlingen din altså -- at du har lest noe D. H. Lawrence. Det bør du. Selv arbeider jeg med en avhandling om Sons and Lovers. Hos ham har man kulturkritikk og sex i herlige samkvem (pun intended). Det var vel du og jeg som for to år tilbake hadde en slags avstikker om Nietzsche i en eller annen diskusjon her på forumet, og Lawrence er helt tydelig en ''nietzschemann''. Sånn, nå har jeg prøvd å overtale nok.
Både det beste og det aller aller dårligste jeg har lest har omhandlet sex. Jeg antar, for ordens skyld, at det du reagerer på ikke er at det skrives om dette, men måten det skrives på. Jeg mener, man kan jo ikke la være å skrive om det.
Du kaller et sted måten sex brukes i litteraturen idag som 'billig', og jeg føler på meg at du mener 'grådig'. Sex er utvilsomt blitt et fast inventar i romaner, og siden det er fast kan vi kanskje også tenke oss at det ofte er konstruert, og slik sett kan vi også gå videre og si det er uekte, som også vil si: det er kjedelig. «Her har han bare fulgt en oppskrift og skriver om det bare på jørs». Av og til kjennes det endog ut som det er en oppskrift man leser. Makan så tørt!
Jeg har vel bare snakket rundt grøten frem til nå, så la meg gå rett på sak: Jeg elsker å lese det litt mer saftige, men det meste synes jeg er kjedelig, alt for mye 'opp i ansiktet' HBO-stil, og jeg blir lei. Man gis ikke muligheten til å leve seg inn, og det er jo viktig? Jeg skulle gjerne funnet en middelvei mellom uhorvelig platt og uhorvelig plumpt. Sex er godt der det hører hjemme, og det hører hjemme i litteratur. Så da blir spørsmålet: «Er denne romanen litteratur?» Men huff, den diskusjonen skal jeg ikke begynne nå. For denne gang, jeg hilser farvel.
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.
The detail of the pattern is movement
As in the figure of the ten stairs
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving
Only the cause and end of movement
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always-
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after
Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides
Jeg er tilmode som en Brik i Schackspillet maa være det, naar Modspilleren siger om den: den Brik kan ikke røres.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered
There is a time for the evening under starlight
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album)
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning