Deck Stain Quotes

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The child who is decked with prince’s robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.
Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali)
Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?” “I think it’s in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren’t fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon.” “Thanks, honey.” AWESOME!
Neil Pasricha (The Book of (Even More) Awesome)
The two “idiots” Ginger and Zach, both golden retrievers, both beautiful-looking dogs—and both thicker than bricks when it came to brains—had been out sunning on the bedroom deck. They stood up and barked madly, as if he were an invader. Though if he were a real invader they’d have cowered in terror and stained the carpet as they fled into Jennifer’s room to hide.
William R. Forstchen (One Second After)
From the fields and from the vineyards Came no fruits to deck the feats, Only flesh of blood-stained victims Smouldered on the altar-fires, And whe'er the grieving goddess Turns her melancholy gaze, Sunk in vilest degradation, Man his loathsomeness displays.
Friedrich Schiller
How happily we explored our shiny new world! We lived like characters from the great books I curled up with in the big Draylon armchair. Like Jack Kerouak, like Gatsby, we created ourselves as we went along, a raggle-taggle of gypsies in old army overcoats and bell-bottoms, straggling through the fields that surrounded our granite farmhouse in search of firewood, which we dragged home and stacked in the living room. Ignorant and innocent, we acted as if the world belonged to us, as though we would ever have taken the time to hang the regency wallpaper we damaged so casually with half-rotten firewood, or would have known how to hang it straight, or smooth the seams. We broke logs against the massive tiled hearth and piled them against the sooty fire back, like the logs were tradition and we were burning it, like chimney fires could never happen, like the house didn't really belong to the poor divorcee who paid the rates and mortgage even as we sat around the flames like hunter gatherers, smoking Lebanese gold, chanting and playing the drums, dancing to the tortured music of Luke's guitar. Impelled by the rhythm, fortified by poorly digested scraps of Lao Tzu, we got up to dance, regardless of the coffee we knocked over onto the shag carpet. We sopped it up carelessly, or let it sit there as it would; later was time enough. We were committed to the moment. Everything was easy and beautiful if you looked at it right. If someone was angry, we walked down the other side of the street, sorry and amused at their loss of cool. We avoided newspapers and television. They were full of lies, and we knew all the stuff we needed. We spent our government grants on books, dope, acid, jug wine, and cheap food from the supermarket--variegated cheese scraps bundled roughly together, white cabbage and bacon ends, dented tins of tomatoes from the bargain bin. Everything was beautiful, the stars and the sunsets, the mold that someone discovered at the back of the fridge, the cows in the fields that kicked their giddy heels up in the air and fled as we ranged through the Yorkshire woods decked in daisy chains, necklaces made of melon seeds and tie-dye T-shirts whose colors stained the bath tub forever--an eternal reminder of the rainbow generation. [81-82]
Claire Robson (Love in Good Time: A Memoir)
Street-Cries II. The Ship of Earth Thou ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard, And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold, I fear thee, O! I fear thee, for I hear the tongue and sword At battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold! The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky, But all the deck is wet with blood and stains the crystal red. A pilot, God, a pilot! for the helm is left awry, And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead! Prattville, Alabama, 1868
Sidney Lanier (Poems of Sidney Lanier)
She will at least be decently clothed as she waits. Tomorrow I shall find her a brush and powder and whatever else a woman of her dignity requires.” Fin rolled her eyes. “Is ‘dignity’ what you call it?” Jeannot offered her his hand. Fin took it and pulled herself up from the deck. She was barefoot and her pants and shirt were stained with everything from blood to oakum to lampblack. She stretched her shirt out between her hands and considered its mottle of stains. “I’m not dignified?” she asked. When Fin looked up, Jeannot had an eyebrow cocked high and one side of his mouth was curled in amusement. “Where you are concerned, much requires redefinition.
A.S. Peterson (Fiddler's Green (Fin's Revolution, #2))
(from Lady of the Lake) The western waves of ebbing day Rolled o’er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; Round many an insulated mass, The native bulwarks of the pass, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain. The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement, Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o’er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen, The brier-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs. Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child. Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale, and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrowed sky. Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, Where glist’ning streamers waved and danced, The wanderer’s eye could barely view The summer heaven’s delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep A narrow inlet, still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim As served the wild duck’s brood to swim. Lost for a space, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark-blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter strayed, Still broader sweep its channels made. The shaggy mounds no longer stood, Emerging from entangled wood, But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, Like castle girdled with its moat; Yet broader floods extending still Divide them from their parent hill, Till each, retiring, claims to be An islet in an inland sea. And now, to issue from the glen, No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken, Unless he climb, with footing nice A far projecting precipice. The broom’s tough roots his ladder made, The hazel saplings lent their aid; And thus an airy point he won, Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnished sheet of living gold, Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled, In all her length far winding lay, With promontory, creek, and bay, And islands that, empurpled bright, Floated amid the livelier light, And mountains, that like giants stand, To sentinel enchanted land. High on the south, huge Benvenue Down to the lake in masses threw Crags, knolls, and mountains, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world; A wildering forest feathered o’er His ruined sides and summit hoar, While on the north, through middle air, Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.
Walter Scott
Beauty Void lay the world, in nothingness concealed, Without a trace of light or life revealed, Save one existence which second knew- Unknown the pleasant words of We and You. Then Beauty shone, from stranger glances free, Seen of herself, with naught beside to see, With garments pure of stain, the fairest flower Of virgin loveliness in bridal bower. No combing hand had smoothed a flowing tress, No mirror shown her eyes their loveliness No surma dust those cloudless orbs had known, To the bright rose her cheek no bulbul flown. No heightening hand had decked the rose with green, No patch or spot upon that cheek was seen. No zephyr from her brow had fliched a hair, No eye in thought had seen the splendour there. Her witching snares in solitude she laid, And love's sweet game without a partner played. But when bright Beauty reigns and knows her power She springs indignant from her curtained bower. She scorns seclusion and eludes the guard, And from the window looks if doors be barred. See how the tulip on the mountain grown Soon as the breath of genial Spring has blown, Bursts from the rock, impatient to display Her nascent beauty to the eye of day. When sudden to thy soul reflection brings The precious meaning of mysterious things, Thou canst not drive the thought from out thy brain; Speak, hear thou must, for silence is such pain. So beauty ne'er will quit the urgent claim Whose motive first from heavenly beauty came When from her blessed bower she fondly strayed, And to the world and man her charms displayed. In every mirror then her face was shown, Her praise in every place was heard and known. Touched by her light, the hearts of angels burned, And, like the circling spheres, their heads were turned, While saintly bands, whom purest at the sight of her, And those who bathe them in the ocean sky Cries out enraptured, "Laud to God on high!" Rays of her splendour lit the rose's breast And stirred the bulbul's heart with sweet unrest. From her bright glow its cheek the flambeau fired, And myriad moths around the flame expired. Her glory lent the very sun the ray Which wakes the lotus on the flood to-day. Her loveliness made Laila's face look fair To Majnún, fettered by her every hair. She opened Shírín's sugared lips, and stole From Parvíz' breast and brave Farhád's the soul. Through her his head the Moon of Canaan raised, And fond Zulaikha perished as she gazed. Yes, though she shrinks from earthly lovers' call, Eternal Beauty is the queen of all; In every curtained bower the screen she holds, About each captured heart her bonds enfolds. Through her sweet love the heart its life retains, The soul through love of her its object gains. The heart which maidens' gentle witcheries stir Is, though unconscious, fired with love of her. Refrain from idle speech; mistake no more: She brings her chains and we, her slaves, adore. Fair and approved of Love, thou still must own That gift of beauty comes from her alone. Thou art concealed: she meets all lifted eyes; Thou art the mirror which she beautifies. She is that mirror, if we closely view The truth- the treasure and the treasury too. But thou and I- our serious work is naught; We waste our days unmoved by earnest thought. Cease, or my task will never end, for her Sweet beauties lack a meet interpreter. Then let us still the slaves of love remain For without love we live in vain, in vain. Jámí, "Yúsuf and Zulaikha". trans. Ralph T. H. Griffith. Ballantyne Press 1882. London. p.19-22
Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī
[Nero] castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images,​ fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing. He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched​ by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House. Its size and splendour will be sufficiently indicated by the following details. Its vestibule was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor a hundred and twenty feet high; and it was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade​ a mile long. There was a pond too, like a sea, surrounded with buildings to represent cities,​ besides tracts of country, varied by tilled fields, vineyards, pastures and woods, with great numbers of wild and domestic animals. In the rest of the house all parts were overlaid with gold and adorned with gems and mother-of‑pearl. There were dining-rooms with fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens. His mother offended him by too strict surveillance and criticism of his words and acts. At last terrified by her violence and threats, he determined to have her life, and after thrice attempting it by poison and finding that she had made herself immune by antidotes, he tampered with the ceiling of her bedroom, contriving a mechanical device for loosening its panels and dropping them upon her while she slept. When this leaked out through some of those connected with the plot, he devised a collapsible boat,​ to destroy her by shipwreck or by the falling in of its cabin. ...[He] offered her his contrivance, escorting her to it in high spirits and even kissing her breasts as they parted. The rest of the night he passed sleepless in intense anxiety, awaiting the outcome of his design. On learning that everything had gone wrong and that she had escaped by swimming, driven to desperation he secretly had a dagger thrown down beside her freedman Lucius Agermus, when he joyfully brought word that she was safe and sound, and then ordered that the freedman be seized and bound, on the charge of being hired to kill the emperor; that his mother be put to death, and the pretence made that she had escaped the consequences of her detected guilt by suicide.
Suetonius (The Twelve Caesars)
He loves you,’ I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. ‘He won’t stop.’ I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt. ‘We’ll have a bit of time, then, but none to waste. Jamie can send word downriver, to keep an eye out for Roger. Speaking of Roger …’ I hesitated, picking a bit of dried fern from my sleeve. ‘I don’t suppose he knows about this, does he?’ Brianna took a deep breath, and her fist closed tight on the leaf in her hand, crushing it. ‘Well, see, there’s a problem about that,’ she said. She looked up at me, and suddenly she was my little girl again. ‘It isn’t Roger’s.’ ‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘It. Isn’t. Roger’s. Baby,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I sank down beside her once more. Her worry over Roger suddenly took on new dimensions. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Here, or there?’ Even as I spoke, I was calculating – it had to be someone here, in the past. If it had been a man in her own time, she’d be farther along than two months. Not only in the past, then, but here, in the Colonies. I wasn’t planning to have sex, she’d said. No, of course not. She hadn’t told Roger, for fear he would follow her – he was her anchor, her key to the future. But in that case – ‘Here,’ she said, confirming my calculations. She dug in the pocket of her skirt, and came out with something. She reached toward me, and I held out my hand automatically. ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.’ The worn gold wedding band sparked in the sun, and my hand closed reflexively over it. It was warm from being carried next to her skin, but I felt a deep coldness seep into my fingers. ‘Bonnet?’ I said. ‘Stephen Bonnet?’ Her throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed, head jerking in a brief nod. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you – I couldn’t; not after Ian told me about what happened on the river. At first I didn’t know what Da would do; I was afraid he’d blame me. And then when I knew him a little better – I knew he’d try to find Bonnet – that’s what Daddy would have done. I couldn’t let him do that. You met that man, you know what he’s like.’ She was sitting in the sun, but a shudder passed over her, and she rubbed her arms as though she was cold. ‘I do,’ I said. My lips were stiff. Her words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t planning to have sex. I couldn’t tell … I was afraid he’d blame me. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, and was surprised that my voice sounded calm. ‘Did he hurt you, baby?’ She grimaced, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them against herself. ‘Don’t call me that, okay? Not right now.’ I reached to touch her, but she huddled closer into herself, and I dropped my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I didn’t want to know; I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. She looked up at me, lips tightened to a straight white line. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to. But I think I’d better.’ She had stepped aboard the Gloriana in broad daylight, cautious, but feeling safe by reason of the number of people around; loaders, seamen, merchants, servants – the docks bustled with life. She had told a seaman on the deck what she wanted; he had vanished into the recesses of the ship, and a moment later, Stephen Bonnet had appeared. He had on the same clothes as the night before; in the daylight, she could see that they were of fine quality, but stained and badly crumpled. Greasy candle wax had dripped on the silk cuff of his coat, and his jabot had crumbs in it. Bonnet himself showed fewer marks of wear than did his clothes; he was fresh-shaven, and his green eyes were pale and alert. They passed over her quickly, lighting with interest. ‘I did think ye comely last night by candlelight,’ he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘But a-many seem so when the drink is flowin’. It’s a good deal more rare to find a woman fairer in the sun than she is by the moon.
Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
There are beatings, murders, summary executions, mutinies; only the progress of the pestilence prevents complete anarchy. Men become too ill to kill, then too ill to work. A helmsman with a neck bubo is strapped to the helm; a ship’s carpenter with a bloody cough, to his bench. A rigger shaking with fever is lashed to the mast. Gradually each escaping vessel becomes a menagerie of grotesques. Everywhere there are delirious men who talk to the wind and stain their pants with bloody anal leakages; and weeping men who cry out for absent mothers and wives and children; and cursing men who blaspheme God, wave their fists at an indifferent sky, and burble blood when they cough. There are men who ooze pus from facial and body sores and stink to high heaven; lethargic men who stare listlessly into the cruel, gray sea; mad men who laugh hysterically and dig filthy fingernails into purple, mottled flesh; and dead men, whose bloated bodies roll back and forth across pitching decks until they hit a rail or mast and burst open like piñatas.
John Kelly (The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time)
Well, Mr. Cranton,” she said, brows raised. “When you told me you needed my gown so as to clean the sea stains and tar from it, I had no idea that you had… uh, other uses for it.” Loud guffaws met her remark. “Really, Captain O’ Devir,” she said, turning to the grinning Irishman. “Your so-called Navy has some odd ways of amusing itself.” “Odd ways that saved all of our hides,” cried a nearby seaman. “Three cheers for our captain!” “Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah!” Nerissa, confused, could only stare at them all. They’d surely lost their minds. “I expected there to be a sea fight, and I’m very glad there was not, but how did you manage to avoid getting blown to the ends of the earth, Captain O’ Devir?” He just shrugged, his eyes hungry and dark as he took in her long, willowy form, her legs clearly outlined in Midshipman Cranton’s skinny breeches. “Well, Lady Nerissa, ye’re the most valuable person on this ship and that countryman of yers back there knows it. He wouldn’t dare fire on us with you up here on deck.” “But I wasn’t up here on deck.” “Aye, precisely. But that piece of sh—… ehm, that blaggard back there, didn’t know that. Ye’ll stay in Cranton’s uniform so he doesn’t find out.” “What? What are you all talking about?” Lieutenant Morgan, chewing on a piece of dried ginger, was the one who clarified it for her. “Captain O’ Devir would never risk your life by having you up on deck where musket or cannonballs could be flying, so he had Cranton here pretend to be you.” The youth rubbed the back of his head. “Didn’t need to hit me quite so hard, sir,” he said good naturedly. “I nearly didn’t have to fake being knocked out cold.” “My heavens,” Nerissa said, as laughter greeted the youth’s remark, and immediately the sailor’s teasing resumed. “Still think you make a fetching young lady, Mr. Cranton!” “Can I call on you, my lady?” asked Tackett the sailing master, making an elegant leg to the blushing youth. “I’d love to run my fingers through your hair….” “Hell, I’d love to run mine through his cleavage.” “Hahaha!” “Shut yer gobs, ye rogues,” said Captain O’ Devir. “That’s an officer ye’re talkin’ to. Give him some respect.” More guffaws, because it was hard to give a man any respect when he stood before them in a lady’s gown, red-faced, fuming, and reaching into his bosom to tear out the other stocking. He flung it down. “My apologies, Lady Nerissa,” he said, looking like he was about to take a swing at the sailing master. “You should not have to listen to such talk.” She couldn’t help but be caught up in their high spirits. “I have brothers,” she said, smiling. “There’s not much that will offend me, I can assure you.
Danelle Harmon (The Wayward One (The de Montforte Brothers, #5))
Ah fall off the pan, ma knees splashing ontae the pishy flair. My jeans crumple tae the deck and greedily absorb the urine, but ah hardly notice. Ah roll up ma shirt sleeve and hesitate only briefly, glancing at ma scabby and occasionally weeping track marks, before plunging ma hands and forearms intae the brown water. Ah rummage fastidiously and get one ay ma bombs back straight away. Ah rub off some shite that's attached tae it. A wee bit melted, but still largely intact. Ah stick it oan toap ay the cistern. Locating the other takes several long dredges through the mess and the panhandling of the shite ay many good Muirhoose and Pilton punters. Ah gag once, but get ma white nugget ay gold, surprisingly even better preserved than the first. The feel ay water disgusts us even mair than the shite. Ma brown-stained airm reminds us ay the classic t-shirt tan. The line goes right up past ma elbow as ah hud tae go right aroond the bend.
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting (Mark Renton, #2))
But it wasn’t our differences that I wanted to focus on. So I parked in one of the visitors’ spots and pulled out the GPS I had taken to carrying in my backpack when I went running. I switched it on so I could pinpoint my coordinates, the longitude and latitude that placed me here and nowhere else in the world. The problem was, inside the car, the device couldn’t locate the satellites, so I unrolled the window, stuck my hand out and held the device to the sun. As soon as it calibrated, I grabbed my notebook from my backpack, ripped out a random page, and wrote my position on the paper. As I folded the sheet in half, I caught sight of my meager notes from the lecture about Fate Maps all those months ago. Genetics might be our first map, imprinted within us from the moment the right sperm meets the right egg. But who knew that all those DNA particles are merely reference points in our own adventures, not dictating our fate but guiding our future? Take Jacob’s cleft lip. If his upper lip had been fused together the way it was supposed to be inside his mother’s belly, he’d probably be living in a village in China right now. Then there was me with my port-wine stain. I lifted my eyes to the rearview mirror, wondering what I would have been like had I never been born with it. My fingers traced the birthmark landlocked on my face, its boundary lines sharing the same shape as Bhutan, the country neighboring Tibetans call the Land of the Dragon. I liked that; the dragons Dad had always cautioned me about had lived on my face all this time. Here be dragons, indeed. I leaned back in my seat now, closing my eyes, relishing the feel of the sun warming my face. No, I wouldn’t trade a single experience — not my dad or my birthmark — to be anyone but me, right here, right now. At last, at 3:10, I open my door. I don’t know how I’ll find Jacob, only that I will. A familiar loping stride ambles out of the library. Not a Goth guy, not a prepster, just Jacob decked in a shirt as unabashedly orange as anything in Elisa’s Beijing boutique. This he wore buttoned to the neck and untucked over jeans, sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned arms. For the first time, I see his aggressively modern glasses, deathly black and rectangular. His hair is the one constant: it’s spiked as usual. What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I’ve ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.
Justina Chen (North of Beautiful)
looked like Brett Daniels had sunk six posts into the ground near a tree, framed it, then built a small platform on top with deck boards. It was all treated wood but not stained or painted. A wooden ladder was built onto one side and all of it—the posts, the decking, the ladder—was a worn, weathered gray
Michael Stagg (False Oath (Nate Shepherd, #4))
The child who is decked with prince's robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life. O
Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali (Illustrated))
We all have the same holes in our hearts Everything falls apart at the exact same time It all comes together perfectly for the next step But my fear is this prison that I keep locked below the main deck I keep a key under my pillow, it’s quiet and it’s hidden And my hopes are weapons that I’m still learning how to use right But they’re heavy and I’m awkward, I'm always running out of fight So I’ve carved a wooden heart, put it in this sinking ship Hoping it would help me float for just a few more weeks But I am all made out of shipwrecks, every twisted beam Lost and found like you and me, all scattered out on the seas So come on, let’s wash each other With tears of joy and tears of grief And fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach Come on and sew us together We're just some tattered rags stained forever We only have what we remember
Listener
When Predator sailed into war, she sang. The rapid winds and rising shrieks suddenly blended into a single harmonious tone. Lines in the rigging and the yards and the masts themselves quivered in time, and began giving off their own notes of music, in harmony with one another. As the speed increased, the chord rose and rose, and built and built, until it reached a crescendo of pure, eerie, inhuman fury. Grimm felt the music rise around him, felt the ship straining eagerly to her task, and his own heart raced in fierce exultation in time with her. Every line of the ship, every smudge upon her decks, every stain upon the leathers of his aeronauts leapt into his mind in vibrant detail. He could feel the ship's motion, forward and down, could feel the wind of her passage, could feel the rising terror of his crew. One of the men screamed--one of them always did--and then the entire crew joined in with Predator, shrieking their battle cries together with their ship's. The ship would not fail them--Grimm knew it; he felt it, the way he could feel sunlight on his face or the rake of wind in his hair.
Jim Butcher (The Aeronaut's Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1))