"We exclaimed at crucial moments of our journey, but otherwise I don’t remember that we talked a great deal, and we never quarreled. It was as if we were not yet married. Between our college dating and our wedding, there had been a year of separation, with our only contact by mail. Kirby was younger than her years, not in intelligence but in experience. In the ’50s girls were rarely six foot one, and Kirby’s height separated her from her classmates at Miss Fine’s School and at Radcliffe. She was shy, with crushes but without boyfriends. I had the usual girlfriends, but our greatest difference was my single-minded literary obsession. I required a wife who remained passive in the face of my determination."

The American Scholar: One Road - Donald Hall

alielikeus:

Milan cathedral, IT

“The angelus bells were booming like cannons
& the sun that blew out the church’s windows
flooded the cathedral on the castle hill…”

- Vitezslav Nezval, “Defenestration”

(via wasteyoursoul)

shineslikethesun:

Probably my favorite photo from my nature walk yesterday. 

“…to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”

- John Keats, “To Autumn”

Emily Dickinson, “The Spirit is the Conscious Ear” (733) →

The Spirit is the Conscious Ear.
We actually Hear
When We inspect — that’s audible —
That is admitted — Here —

For other Services — as Sound —
There hangs a smaller Ear
Outside the Castle — that Contain —
The other — only — Hear —

Towards Immortality: On Emily Dickinson’s “I dwell in Possibility…” (657) – Rethink. →

For Occupation – This -

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise -

Just remarked to http://stuckasleep.tumblr.com that these lines from “I dwell in Possibility” make me think about how we can make the most out of the least in life, make the little things divine.

William Carlos Williams, “Complete Destruction” →

It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it

in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

Emily Dickinson, "The Earth Has Many Keys" →

The earth has many keys,
Where melody is not
Is the unknown peninsula.
Beauty is nature’s fact.

But witness for her land,
And witness for her sea,
The cricket is her utmost
Of elegy to me.

G. M. Hopkins, “Heaven-Haven” →

A nun takes the veil

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

(visit link for commentary - just finished cleaning it up, hopefully it is clear and easy to follow.)

"Love," by Pablo Neruda (translation Margaret Sayers Peden) →

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
   I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
   Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
   I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
   Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
   Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
   I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
   Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.

brief comment on this poem here

"I think of the fastness of death.
Of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in prison
remember a theme:
“Sometimes the music heard
in our inward ear surpasses
the beauty of physical sound.
There is something purer about it.”
And perhaps it is so with the dead
when they rise again in the mind’s image
to walk again with the sharpness of life."

Gwen Harwood, ‘Past and Present’.  (via darklayde)