For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it - Ivan Panin
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
(William Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice)
Let this coming year be better than all the others. Vow to do some of the things you've always wanted to do but couldn't find the time. Call up a forgotten friend. Drop an old grudge, and replace it with some pleasant memories. Vow not to make a promise you don't think you can keep. Walk tall, and smile more. You'll look ten years younger. Don't be afraid to say, 'I love you'. Say it again. They are the sweetest words in the world. (Ann Landers)
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. (J. H. Payne 1795-1852)
There is a spot, 'mid barren hills
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But, if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.
The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight’s dome;
But what on earth is half so dear,
So longed for, as the hearth of home?
The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o’ergrown,
I love them, how I love them all!
A little and a lone green lane
That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain
Of mountains, circling every side.
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And, deepening still the dream-like charm,
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. (Emily Bronte 1818-1848)
12th century silk painting “Bird on a Branch” by Li Anzhong
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have won. (Henry David Thoreau)
All through the night there’s a little brown bird singing,
Singing in the hush of the darkness and the dew.
Would that his song through the stillness could go winging
To you.
All through the night-time my lonely heart is singing
Sweeter songs of love than the brown bird ever knew.
Would that the song of my heart could go winging
To you.
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
(William Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night)
We the fairies blithe and antic,
Of dimensions not gigantic,
Though the moonshine mostly keep us,
Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.
Stolen sweets are always sweeter,
Stolen kisses much completer,
Stolen looks are nice in chapels,
Stolen, stolen, be your apples.
When to bed the world is bobbing,
Then’s the time for orchard robbing,
Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
Were it not for stealing, stealing. (Leigh Hunt 1784-1859)
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