Nearly Spring Quotes

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust; And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a fury slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing And weave their petty cells and die. Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife, And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day.

With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.

Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.

Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart is drunken with overmindfulness of self. Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast. And life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words. When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.

The end is near," Moridin said. "The Wheel has groaned its final rotation, the clock has lost its spring, the serpent heaves its final gasps.

Let's begin with an easy agreement. Before his death, your father and I were negotiating for a small area of land on our borders, near Libeth. The Carthyan land has a spring that my farmers need for their crops. Carthya has other spings nearby, so you won't miss it." "My father wouldn't have missed it, but I would," I said, with no actual idea of what spring he meant. "It happens to be my favourite water source in all of Carthya, and I won't part with it.

There must be a glowing light above such houses. The joy they contain must escape in light through the stones of the walls and shine dimly into the darkness. It is impossible that this sacred festival of destiny should not send a celestial radiation to the infinite. Love is the sublime crucible in which is consummated the fusion of man and woman; the one being, the triple being, the final being-- the human trinity springs from it. This birth of two souls into one space must be an emotion for space. The lover is priest; the apprehensive maiden submits. Something of this joy goes to God. Where there really is marriage, that is to say, where there is love, the ideal is mingled with it. A nuptial bed makes a halo in the darkness. Were it given to the eye of the flesh to perceive the fearful and enchanting sights of the superior life, it is likely that we should see the forms of night, the winged stranger, the blue travelers of the invisible, bending, a throng of shadowy heads, over the luminous house, pleased, blessing, showing to one another the sweetly startled maiden bride and wearing the reflection of the human felicity on their divine countenances. If at that supreme hour, the wedded pair, bewildered with pleasure, and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in their room a rustling of confused wings. Perfect happiness implies the solidarity of the angels. That obscure little alcove has for its ceiling the whole heavens. When two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near to each other to create, it is impossible, that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.

There came a time near dawn on the eve of spring, and Luthien danced upon a green hill; and suddenly she began to sing. Keen, heart-piercing was her song as the song of the lark that rises from the gates of night and pours its voice among the dying stars, seeing the sun behind the walls of the world; and the song of Luthien released the bonds of winter, and the frozen waters spoke, and flowers sprang from the cold earth where he feet had passed. Then the spell of silence fell from Beren, and he called to her, crying Tinuviel; and the woods echoed the name.

O perpetual revolution of configured stars, o perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, o world of spring and autumn, birth and dying! The endless cycle of idea and action, endless invention, endless experiment, brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; knowledge of speech, but not of silence; knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, all our ignorance brings us nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another. They were both very shy, and they knew each other slowly, tentatively; they came close and drew apart, they touched and withdrew, neither wishing to impose upon the other more than might be welcomed. Day by day the layers of reserve that protected them dropped away, so that at last they were like many who are extraordinarily shy, each open to the other, unprotected, perfectly and unselfconsciously at ease. Nearly every afternoon, when his classes were over, he came to her apartment. They made love, and talked, and made love again, like children who did not think of tiring at their play. The spring days lengthened, and they looked forward to the summer.

The streets transform every ordinary day into a series of trick questions, and every incorrect answer risks a beat-down, a shooting, or a pregnancy. No one survives unscathed. And yet the heat that springs from the constant danger, from a lifestyle of near-death experience, is thrilling.

Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willow. May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered the campus at all hours through starlight and rain.

God is love, and when we pray we are drawing near to love, and all our hatred must melt away like the snow melts when the sun shines on it in spring. Leave Lucien to God, Annette. He rewards both good and evil, but remember, He loves Lucien just the same as He loves Dani.

I don’t know where you are these days, what’s broken down and what’s beautiful in your life this season. I don’t know if this is a season of sweetness or one of sadness. But I’m learning that neither last forever. There will, I’m sure, be something that invades this current loveliness. That’s how life is. It won’t be sweet forever. But it won’t be bitter forever either. If everywhere you look these days, it’s wintery, desolate, lonely, practice believing in springtime. It always, always comes, even though on days like today it’s nearly impossible to imagine, ground frozen, trees bare and spiky. New life will spring from this same ground. This season will end, and something entirely new will follow it.

A short time later, near Gallina Springs, Graydon’s scouting party came upon the Mescaleros again. What happened there is not clear, because no Mescalero survived the incident.

It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony course of its education and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud; and she attempted to guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower. Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine of textbooks. My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her--there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch.

Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home "One swing set, well worn but structually sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may alos learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard how you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around." Swing set currently resides near 83rd and Spring Mill.

As the seasons age us I close my eyes and wish for snow Alas the Irish seasons been foretold For Spring will dawn and I will go Into another season Jack Frost cold. And when its here, I wish for night As childhood memories flash right by To see the birds in humble flight I wish for Summer with a sigh And on I go to months so sweet Dawns sweet chorus and sunbeams bright I yearn for Autumn leaves under feet Yet now I dream of Winters night As Auld Lang Syne rings in New Year Alas! I’m one year older as Spring draws near.

April was just beginning, and after the warm spring day it turned cooler, slightly frosty, and a breath of spring could be felt in the soft, cold air. The road from the convent to town was sandy, they had to go at a walking pace; and on both sides of the carriage, in the bright, still moonlight, pilgrims trudged over the sand. And everyone was silent, deep in thought, everything around was welcoming, young, so near— the trees, the sky, even the moon—and one wanted to think it would always be so.

I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong...The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.

There was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-titled streetlight; a frozen clock, a bird visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; towering off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. A bloody ross death-red on a platter; a headgetop under-hand as you flee late to some chalk-and-woodfire-smelling schoolhouse. Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded. The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger. Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead. Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it. Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlour; milk-sip at end of day. Some brandy-legged dog proudly back-ploughs the grass to cover its modest shit; a cloud-mass down-valley breaks apart over the course of a brandy-deepened hour; louvered blinds yield dusty beneath your dragging finger, and it is nearly noon and you must decide; you have seen what you have seen, and it has wounded you, and it seems you have only one choice left. Blood-stained porcelain bowl wobbles face down on wood floor; orange peel not at all stirred by disbelieving last breath there among that fine summer dust-layer, fatal knife set down in pass-panic on familiar wobbly banister, later dropped (thrown) by Mother (dear Mother) (heartsick) into the slow-flowing, chocolate-brown Potomac. None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them. I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant. Goodbye goodbye good-

Winter is nearly gone. Time flows on to a spring of little hope.

Nearly anything that can be said about Hinduism can be contradicted by something else that is equally true about it, and nothing whatever that is said about it can be entirely true or entirely false

Happiness is just near at hand – inside you are full of it. But until you drop this habit of suffering and your ways of enjoying suffering, these springs of happiness will not become available to you.

As summer neared, as the evening lengthened there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind- of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which cloud forever and shadows form, dreams persisted; and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if you questioned at once to withdraw) that good triumph, happiness prevails, order rules, or to resist the extra ordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity remote from the known pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand which would render the possessor secure. Moreover softened and acquiescent, the spring with their bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloud about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and fights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.

There were people who escaped Hiroshima and rushed to Nagasaki to see that their loved ones were safe. Arriving just in time to be incinerated. He went there after the war with a team of scientists. My father. He said that everything was rusty. Everything looked covered with rust. There were burnt-out shells of trolleycars standing in the streets. The glass melted out of the sashes and pooled on the bricks. Seated on the blackened springs the charred skeletons of the passengers with their clothes and hair gone and their bones hung with blackened strips of flesh. Their eyes boiled from their sockets. Lips and noses burned away. Sitting in their seats laughing. The living walked about but there was no place to go. They waded by the thousands into the river and died there. They were like insects in that no one direction was preferable to another. Burning people crawled among the corpses like some horror in a vast crematorium. They simply thought that the world had ended. It hardly even occurred to them that it had anything to do with the war. They carried their skin bundled up in their arms before them like wash that it not drag in the rubble and ash and they passed one another mindlessly on their mindless journeyings over the smoking afterground, the sighted no better served than the blind. The news of all this did not even leave the city for two days. Those who survived would often remember these horrors with a certain aesthetic to them. In that mycoidal phantom blooming in the dawn like an evil lotus and in the melting of solids not heretofore known to do so stood a truth that would silence poetry a thousand years. Like an immense bladder, they would say. Like some sea thing. Wobbling slightly on the near horizon. Then the unspeakable noise. They saw birds in the dawn sky ignite and explode soundlessly and fall in long arcs earthward like burning party favors. p.116

A torrent of language, a spring off the near-infinite stream of confessions he had harbored half his life, all of hers.

It was still late summer elsewhere, but here, high in Appalachia, fall was coming; for the last three mornings, she'd been able to see her breath. The woods, which started twenty feet back from her backdoor like a solid wall, showed only hints of the impending autumn. A few leaves near the treetops had turned, but most were full and green. Visible in the distance, the Widow's Tree towered above the forest. Its leaves were the most stubborn, tenaciously holding on sometimes until spring if the winter was mild. It was a transitional period, when the world changed its cycle and opened a window during which people might also change, if they had the inclination.

Whether by chance conjunction or not, the “wind-up bird” was a powerful presence in Cinnamon’s story. The cry of this bird was audible only to certain special people, who were guided by it toward inescapable ruin. The will of human beings meant nothing, then, as the veterinarian always seemed to feel. People were no more than dolls set on tabletops, the springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to move in ways they could not choose, moving in directions they could not choose. Nearly all within range of the wind-up bird’s cry were ruined, lost. Most of them died, plunging over the edge of the table.

In the first week of April the weather turned suddenly, unseasonably, insistently lovely. The sky was blue, the air warm and windless, and the sun beamed on the muddy ground with all the sweet impatience of June. Toward the fringe of the wood, the young trees were yellow with the first tinge of new leaves; woodpeckers laughed and drummed in the copses and, lying in bed with my window open, I could hear the rush and gurgle of the melted snow running in the gutters all night long. In the second week of April everyone waited anxiously to see if the weather would hold. It did, with serene assurance. Hyacinth and daffodil bloomed in the flower beds, violet and periwinkle in the meadows; damp, bedraggled white butterflies fluttered drunkenly in the hedgerows. I put away my winter coat and overshoes and walked around, nearly light-headed with joy, in my shirtsleeves.

Know that...there's plenty of food and of course popcorn on the dining-room table. Just...help yourself. If that runs out just let me know. Don't panic. And there's coffee, both caff and decaf, and soft drinks and juice in the kitchen, and plenty of ice in the freezer so...let me know if you have any questions with that.' And lastly, since I have you all here in one place, I have something to share with you. Along the garden ways just now...I too heard the flowers speak. They told me that our family garden has all but turned to sand. I want you to know I've watered and nurtured this square of earth for nearly twenty years, and waited on my knees each spring for these gentle bulbs to rise, reborn. But want does not bring such breath to life. Only love does. The plain, old-fashioned kind. In our family garden my husband is of the genus Narcissus , which includes daffodils and jonquils and a host of other ornamental flowers. There is, in such a genus of man, a pervasive and well-known pattern of grandiosity and egocentrism that feeds off this very kind of evening, this type of glitzy generosity. People of this ilk are very exciting to be around. I have never met anyone with as many friends as my husband. He made two last night at Carvel. I'm not kidding. Where are you two? Hi. Hi, again. Welcome. My husband is a good man, isn't he? He is. But in keeping with his genus, he is also absurdly preoccupied with his own importance, and in staying loyal to this, he can be boastful and unkind and condescending and has an insatiable hunger to be seen as infallible. Underlying all of the constant campaigning needed to uphold this position is a profound vulnerability that lies at the very core of his psyche. Such is the narcissist who must mask his fears of inadequacy by ensuring that he is perceived to be a unique and brilliant stone. In his offspring he finds the grave limits he cannot admit in himself. And he will stop at nothing to make certain that his child continually tries to correct these flaws. In actuality, the child may be exceedingly intelligent, but has so fully developed feelings of ineptitude that he is incapable of believing in his own possibilities. The child's innate sense of self is in great jeopardy when this level of false labeling is accepted. In the end the narcissist must compensate for this core vulnerability he carries and as a result an overestimation of his own importance arises. So it feeds itself, cyclically. And, when in the course of life they realize that their views are not shared or thier expectations are not met, the most common reaction is to become enraged. The rage covers the fear associated with the vulnerable self, but it is nearly impossible for others to see this, and as a result, the very recognition they so crave is most often out of reach. It's been eighteen years that I've lived in service to this mindset. And it's been devastating for me to realize that my efforts to rise to these standards and demands and preposterous requests for perfection have ultimately done nothing but disappoint my husband. Put a person like this with four developing children and you're gonna need more than love poems and ice sculpture to stay afloat. Trust me. So. So, we're done here.

The lives of men who have to live in our great cities are often tragically lonely. In many more ways than one, these dwellers in the hive are modern counterparts of Tantalus. They are starving to death in the midst of abundance. The crystal stream flows near their lips but always falls away when they try to drink of it. The vine, rich-weighted with its golden fruit, bends down, comes near, but springs back when they reach out to touch it...In other times, when painters tried to paint a scene of awful desolation, they chose the desert or a heath of barren rocks, and there would try to picture man in his great loneliness--the prophet in the desert, Elijah being fed by ravens on the rocks. But for a modern painter, the most desolate scene would have to be a street in almost any one of our great cities on a Sunday afternoon.

Even in the wake of Rachel Carson's best-selling Silent Spring, Americans in 1963 spent nearly as much money fighting crabgrass with chemical weed controls as they contributed to the American Cancer Society.

When I was younger and ran free in the forest, a hunter caught my mate and stunned him with a blow and locked him in a cage. I went to the place in the broad white of the spring moon; near to the hunter's fire I went, near enough to hear his man's breathing and see the flamelight catch on the knife in his hand. I gnawed through the bars of the cage and dragged at my mate, and half carried him as I would carry a cub, away into the trees. My paws were sore, I lost a tooth, my back pained me and I was afraid, but I never thought I could do otherwise. That is what love is.

The movies were wonderful because they took you out of yourself, and at the same time they gave you a sense of being whole. Things of the world might serve to remind you at every turn that your life was snarled and perilously incomplete, that terror would never be far from possession of your heart, but those perceptions would nearly always vanish, if only for a little while, in the cool and nicely scented darkness of any movie house, anywhere.

Tehran looked the way most of its remaining citizens must have felt: sad, forlorn, and defenseless, yet not without a certain dignity. The adhesive tape pasted on the window-panes to prevent the implosion of shattered glass told the story of its suffering, a suffering made more poignant because of its newly recovered beauty, the fresh green of trees, washed by spring showers, the blossoms and the rising snowcapped mountains now so near, as if pasted across the sky.

My birthday is in March, and that year it fell during an especially bright spring week, vivid and clear in the narrow residential streets where we lived just a handful of blocks south of Sunset. The night-blooming jasmine that crawled up our neighborhood's front gate released its heady scent at dusk, and to the north, the hills rolled charmingly over the horizon, houses tucked into the brown. Soon, daylight savings time would arrive, and even at early nine, I associated my birthday with the first hint of summer, with the feeling in classrooms of open windows and lighter clothing and in a few months no more homework. My hair got lighter in spring, from light brown to nearly blond, almost like my mother's ponytail tassel. In the neighborhood gardens, the agapanthus plants started to push out their long green robot stems to open up to soft purples and blues.

SPRING POEM It is spring, my decision, the earth ferments like rising bread or refuse, we are burning last year's weeds, the smoke flares from the road, the clumped stalks glow like sluggish phoenixes / it wasn't only my fault / birdsongs burst from the feathered pods of their bodies, dandelions whirl their blades upwards, from beneath this decaying board a snake sidewinds, chained hide smelling of reptile sex / the hens roll in the dust, squinting with bliss, frogbodies bloat like bladders, contract, string the pond with living jelly eyes, can I be this ruthless? I plunge my hands and arms into the dirt, swim among stones and cutworms, come up rank as a fox, restless. Nights, while seedlings dig near my head I dream of reconciliations with those I have hurt unbearably, we move still touching over the greening fields, the future wounds folded like seeds in our tender fingers, days I go for vicious walks past the charred roadbed over the bashed stubble admiring the view, avoiding those I have not hurt yet, apocalypse coiled in my tongue, it is spring, I am searching for the word: finished finished so I can begin over again, some year I will take this word too far.

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit. O perpetual revolution of configured stars, O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

How are you giving it magic?” he said, through his teeth. “I already found the path!” I said. “I’m just staying on it. Can’t you—feel it?” I asked abruptly, and held my hand cupping the flower out towards him; he frowned and put his hands around it, and then he said, “Vadiya rusha ilikad tuhi,” and a second illusion laid itself over mine, two roses in the same space—his, predictably, had three rings of perfect petals, and a delicate fragrance. “Try and match it,” he said absently, his fingers moving slightly, and by lurching steps we brought our illusions closer together until it was nearly impossible to tell them one from another, and then he said, “Ah,” suddenly, just as I began to glimpse his spell: almost exactly like that strange clockwork on the middle of his table, all shining moving parts. On an impulse I tried to align our workings: I envisioned his like the water-wheel of a mill, and mine the rushing stream driving it around. “What are you—” he began, and then abruptly we had only a single rose, and it began to grow. And not only the rose: vines were climbing up the bookshelves in every direction, twining themselves around ancient tomes and reaching out the window; the tall slender columns that made the arch of the doorway were lost among rising birches, spreading out long finger-branches; moss and violets were springing up across the floor, delicate ferns unfurling. Flowers were blooming everywhere: flowers I had never seen, strange blooms dangling and others with sharp points, brilliantly colored, and the room was thick with their fragrance, with the smell of crushed leaves and pungent herbs. I looked around myself alight with wonder, my magic still flowing easily. “Is this what you meant?” I asked him: it really wasn’t any more difficult than making the single flower had been. But he was staring at the riot of flowers all around us, as astonished as I was. He looked at me, baffled and for the first time uncertain, as though he had stumbled into something, unprepared. His long narrow hands were cradled around mine, both of us holding the rose together. Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song. I was abruptly too hot, and strangely conscious of myself. I pulled my hands free.

Flowers bloomed without glimpsing your smile in spring, leaves have fallen in autumn chiming in with the gloom, the chill of winter has gone and now is the first light of summer without you near but in our hearts will forever hold you dear..." Elizabeth's Shorter Poems

Every spring in the wet meadows and ditches I hear a little shrilling chorus which sounds for all the world like an endlessly reiterated “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here.” And so they are, as frogs, of course. Confident little fellows. I suspect that to some greater ear than ours, man’s optimistic pronouncements about his role and destiny may make a similar little ringing sound that travels a small way out into the night. It is only its nearness that is offensive. From the heights of a mountain, or a marsh at evening, it blends, not too badly, with all the other sleepy voices that, in croaks or chirrups, are saying the same thing.

One spring morning timing the lean near-liquid progress of a horse on a track, the dust exploding, the rapid hasping of his hocks, coming up the straight foreshortened and awobble and passing elongate and birdlike wish harsh breaths and slatted brisket heaving and the muscles sliding and brunching in clocklike flexion under the wet black hide and a gout of foam hung from the long jaw and then gone in a muted hoofclatter, the aging magistrate snapped his thumb from the keep of the stopwatch he held and palmed it into his waistcoat pocket and looking at nothing, nor child nor horse, said anent that simple comparison of rotary motions and in the oratory to which he was prone that they had witnessed a thing against which time would not prevail.

In the utter peace and stillness the world seemed holding its breath, a little apprehensively, drawing near to the fire to warm itself. There was none of that sense of urgeful, pushing life that robs even a calm spring day of the sense of silence; life was over and the year was just waiting, harboring its strength for the final storms and turmoil of its death. The warmth and the color of maturity was there, exultant and burning, visible to the eyes, but the prophecy of decay was felt in a faint shiver of cold at morning and evening and a tiny sigh of the elms at midnight when a wandering ghost of a wind plucked a little of their gold away from them.

If you’ve managed to keep a creature in your fridge for longer than most Americans remain married, you probably know a thing or two about it. Tardigrades are found on every continent and at nearly all elevations: in deep-sea trenches, burbling hot springs, forest canopies, and desert dunes.

Smelling A Stone In The Middle Of Winter I can't remember What gravel and weeds look like. This little stone becomes important And starts to act big. I expect it to orbit the kitchen stove Any minute now. Near my nose It gets Bigger and bigger Until it's a mountain I'm lost on. This stone is different Than the stone that grinds me down All day At work. This stone Smells like the inside of your dress On a spring afternoon. It's the hard feeling in my stomach When I'm talking nonsense to you. This stone is so inviting Everyone wants to walk right into it And become a fossil.

All her life, from the time she was eight or nine years old, Gloria had relied on a neat, nearly automatic little trick of her mind for adjusting to minor disappointments. When you opened the bright wrappings of some meager or poorly chosen gift, you simply let your mind tell you it was just what you wanted; that way you could always make the right response, and you could even believe it.

She rose and washed and dressed herself and braided her hair freshly, and having made her room neat for the day she went into the peach-tree garden. It lay in the silence of the spring morning. Under the early sun the dew still hung in a bright mist on the grass, and the pool in the center of the garden was brimming its stone walls. The water was clear and the fish were flashing their golden sides near the surface. The great low-built house that surrounded the garden was still in sleep. Birds twittered in the eaves undisturbed and a small Pekingese dog slept on the threshold like a small lioness.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

I. My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the workings of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. II. What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare. III. If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed, neither pride Now hope rekindling at the end descried, So much as gladness that some end might be. IV. For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out through years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope. V. As when a sick man very near to death Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bit the other go, draw breath Freelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saith And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;') VI. When some discuss if near the other graves be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves And still the man hears all, and only craves He may not shame such tender love and stay. VII. Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among 'The Band' to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now - should I be fit? VIII. So, quiet as despair I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. IX. For mark! No sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round; Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on, naught else remained to do. X. So on I went. I think I never saw Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind with none to awe, You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove. XI. No! penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. 'See Or shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly, It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this place Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.

To the man of science, on his unassuming and laborious travels, which must often enough be journeys through the desert, there appear those glittering mirages called 'philosophical systems'; with bewitching deceptive power they show the solution of all enigmas and the freshest draught of the true water of life to be near at hand; his heart rejoices, and it seems to the weary traveller that his lips already touch the goal of all the perseverance and sorrows of the scientific life... Other natures again, may well grow exceedingly ill-humoured and curse the salty taste which these apparitions leave behind in the mouth and from which arises a raging thirst – without one having been brought so much as a step nearer to any kind of spring.

Gavin turned us to face Josh, a satisfied grin springing up when he noticed the condition of Josh’s clothes. “Thanks for the last-minute invitation, man.” Josh chuckled, patting Gavin on the shoulder. “Shall I do the honors, Mr. Suave?” “Sure thing, Frodo Baggins. By the way, I hear the Shire has impeccable dinner parties this time of year.” The corners of Gavin’s lips twitched and his eyebrows shot up as he gestured to a food stain of some sort near the collar of Josh’s white shirt. Josh’s chin shot down to follow Gavin’s amusement and he quickly tried to wipe away the crumbs. “Yeah, well … you know how we hobbits like to eat.

Rhett: Where you kids at? Willa: Working on ruining our blood sugar. You? Rhett: Jasper and I just pulled up. Wanna meet near Cade’s truck? Willa: Sure, we’ll head your way. Rhett: I’m supposed to tell you to be careful. Willa: Of what? Rhett: I think my brother’s words were: she’s clueless that a bunch of dumbass cowboys keep humping her leg when she walks past. Willa: Cool, cool, cool. I’ll try not to trip while they do.

WE ARE A RIVER Our life has not been an ascent up one side of a mountain and down the other. We did not reach a peak, only to decline and die. We have been as drops of water, born in the ocean and sprinkled on the earth in a gentle rain. We became a spring, and then a stream, and finally a river flowing deeper and stronger, nourishing all it touches as it nears its home once again. Don’t accept the modern myths of aging. You are not declining. You are not fading away into uselessness. You are a sage, a river at its deepest and most nourishing. Sit by a riverbank sometime and watch attentively as the river tells you of your life.

Another inventor, J. B. McComber, representing the Chicago-Tower Spiral-Spring Ascension and Toboggan Transportation Company, proposed a tower with a height of 8,947 feet, nearly nine times the height of the Eiffel Tower, with a base one thousand feet in diameter sunk two thousand feet into the earth. Elevated rails would lead from the top of the tower all the way to New York, Boston, Baltimore, and other cities. Visitors ready to conclude their visit to the fair and daring enough to ride elevators to the top would then toboggan all the way back home.

He said, “You are lucky to be traveling in a place where a spring is so handy. In my country you can ride for days and see no ground water. I have lapped filthy water from a hoofprint and was glad to have it. You don’t know what discomfort is until you have nearly perished for water.” Rooster said, “If I ever meet one of you Texas waddies that says he never drank from a horse track I think I will shake his hand and give him a Daniel Webster cigar.

For a long time it was assumed that anything so miraculously energetic as radioactivity must be beneficial. For years, manufacturers of toothpaste and laxatives put radioactive thorium in their products, and at least until the late 1920s the Glen Springs Hotel in the Finger Lakes region of New York (and doubtless others as well) featured with pride the therapeutic effects of its ‘Radio-active mineral springs27’. It wasn’t banned in consumer products until 193828. By this time it was much too late for Mme Curie, who died of leukaemia in 1934. Radiation, in fact, is so pernicious and long-lasting that even now her papers from the 1890s – even her cookbooks – are too dangerous to handle. Her lab books are kept in lead-lined boxes29 and those who wish to see them must don protective clothing.

With an admittedly goofy spring in his step, he made his way across the main hall to the breakfast room, pausing only to peek through the sitting room at the large window, which some enterprising footman had pulled open to let in the warm, spring air. What a day, what a day. Birds were chirping, the sky was blue, the grass was green (as always, but it was still an excellent thing), and he had kissed Miss Wynter. He nearly bounced right off his feet, just thinking about it. It had been splendid. Marvelous. A kiss to deny all previous kisses. Really, he didn’t know what he’d been doing with all those other women, because whatever had happened when his lips had touched theirs, those had not been kisses. Not like last night.

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower is it in reaching maturity. Man reaches the maturity of his reasoning and mental faculties scarcely before he is eight-and-twenty; woman when she is eighteen; but hers is reason of very narrow limitations. This is why women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important. It is by virtue of man’s reasoning powers that he does not live in the present only, like the brute, but observes and ponders over the past and future; and from this spring discretion, care, and that anxiety which we so frequently notice in people.

I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

To My Wife You are like a young white hen. Her feathers ruffle in the wind, her neck curves down to drink, and she rummages in the earth: but, in walking, she has your slow, queenly step, haughty and proud. She is better than the male. She is like the females of all the serene animals who draw near to God. Here, if my eye, if my judgment doesn’t deceive me, among these, you find your equals, and in no other woman. When evening lulls the little hens to sleep, they make sounds that call to mind those mild, sweet voices with which you argue with your pains, and don’t know that your voice has the soft, sad music of the henyard. You are like a pregnant heifer, still free, and without heaviness, merry, in fact; who, if someone strokes her, turns her neck, where a tender pink tinges her flesh. If you meet up with her, and hear her bellow, so mournful is this sound that you tear at the earth to give her a present. In the same way, I offer my gift to you when you are sad. You are like a tall, thin female dog, that always has so much sweetness in her eyes and ferociousness in her heart. At your feet, she seems a saint who burns with an indomitable fervor and in this way looks at you as her God and Lord. When you are at home, or going down the street, to anyone who tries, uninvited, to approach you, she uncovers her shining white teeth. And her love suffers from jealousy. You are like the fearful rabbit. Within her narrow cage, she stands upright to look at you, and extends her long, still ear; she deprives herself of the husks and roots that you bring her, and cowers, seeking the darkest corners. Who might take away this food? Who might take away the fur which she tears from her back to add to the nest where she will give birth? Who would ever make you suffer? You are like the swallow which returns in the spring. But each autumn will depart— you don’t have this art. You have this of the swallow: the light movements; that which, to me, seemed and was old, you proclaim another spring. You are like the provident ant. She whom the grandmother speaks of to the child as they go out in the countryside. And thus I find you in the bumble bee and in all the females of all the serene animals who draw near to God. And in no other woman.

Pandora launched into a detailed account of her conversation with the hermit crab, reporting that his name was Shelley, after the poet, whose works he admired. He was a well-traveled crustacean, having flown to distant lands while clinging to the pink leg of a herring gull who had no taste for shellfish, preferring hazelnuts and bread crumbs. One day, the herring gull, who possessed the transmigrated soul of an Elizabethan stage actor, had taken Shelley to see Hamlet at the Drury Lane theater. During the performance, they had alighted on the scenery and played the part of a castle gargoyle for the entire second act. Shelley had enjoyed the experience but had no wish to pursue a theatrical career, as the hot stage lights had nearly fricasseed him. Gabriel stopped digging and listened, transported by the wonder and whimsy of Pandora's imagination. Out of thin air, she created a fantasy world in which animals could talk and anything was possible. He was charmed out of all reason as he watched her, this sandy, disheveled, storytelling mermaid, who seemed already to belong to him and yet wanted nothing to do with him. His heart worked in strange rhythms, as if it were struggling to adjust to a brand new metronome. What was happening to him?

Thou goest home this night to thy home of winter, To thy home of autumn, of spring, and of summer; Thou goest home this night to thy perpetual home, To thine eternal bed, to thine eternal slumber. Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow, Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow, Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow, Sleep, thou beloved, in the Rock of the fold. The shade of death lies upon thy face, beloved, But the Jesus of grace has His hand round about thee; In nearness to the Trinity farewell to thy pains, Christ stands before thee and peace is in His mind. Jenny, Ian, Fergus, and Marsali joined in, murmuring the final verse with him. Sleep, O sleep in the calm of all calm, Sleep, O sleep in the guidance of guidance, Sleep, O sleep in the love of all loves, Sleep, O beloved, in the Lord of life, Sleep, O beloved, in the God of life!

So as you prepared to enter into the planetary relationship, you created beings to represent your original state of unified awareness. These are the angels. Their value, as well as their limitation, springs from the fact that they have no comprehension of the process you are undertaking. Their instructions were to pretty much stay out of things until near the very end of the process. Then, upon receipt of a pre-arranged signal, they were to commune with the human beings on Earth at that time and assist them in awakening to their original state of unified consciousness.

He came cripping slowly back up the driveway - when an African remembrance flashed into his mind, and near the front of the house he bent down and started peering around. Determining the clearest prints that Kizzy's bare feet had left in the dust, scooping up the double handful containing those footprints, he went rushing toward the cabin: The ancient forefathers said that precious dust kept in some safe place would insure Kizzy's return to where she made the footprints. He burst through the cabin's open door, his eyes sweeping the room and falling upon his gourd on a shelf containing his pebbles. Springing over there, in the instant before opening his cupped hands to drop in the dirt, suddenly he knew the truth: His Kizzy was gone; she would not return. He would never see his Kizzy again. His face contorting, Kunta flung his dust toward the cabin's roof. Tears bursting, from his eyes, snatching his heavy gourd up high over his head, his mouth wide in a soundless scream, he hurled the gourd down with all his strength, and it shattered against the packed-Earth floor, his 662 pebbles representing each month of his 55 rains flying out, ricocheting wildly in all directions.

Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter...to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring— these are some of the rewards of the simple life. The most precious things of life are near at hand, without money and without price. Each of you has the whole wealth of the universe at your very door. All that I ever had, and still have, may be yours by stretching forth your hand and taking it.

Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bug opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges. The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it.

As Adrian hurried past the Senate House he noticed two old men standing outside Bowes and Bowes. He put an extra spring in his step, a thing he often did when walking near elderly. He imagined old people would look at his athletic bounce with a misty longing for their own youth. Not that he was trying to show off or rub salt into the wounds of the infirm, he really believed he was offering a service, an opportunity for nostalgia, like whistling the theme tune from Happidrome or spinning a Diablo. He skipped past them with carefree ease, missed his footing and fell to the ground with a thump. One of the old men helped him up.

Bad or good, movies nearly always have a strange diminishing effect on works of fantasy (of course there are exceptions; The Wizard of Oz is an example which springs immediately to mind). In discussions, people are willing to cast various parts endlessly. I've always thought Robert Duvall would make a splendid Randall Flagg, but I've heard people suggest such people as Clint Eastwood, Bruce Dern and Christopher Walken. They all sound good, just as Bruce Springsteen would seem to make an interesting Larry Underwood, if ever he chose to try acting (and, based on his videos, I think he would do very well ... although my personal choice would be Marshall Crenshaw). But in the end, I think it's best for Stu, Larry, Glen, Frannie, Ralph, Tom Cullen, Lloyd, and that dark fellow to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of the imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films, even the best of them, freeze fiction - anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and then reads Ken Kesey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad ... but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms. It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.

We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, are be definition more interesting that ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of self-effacing ... Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rain trout in a creek near Colorado Springs. The rest of us are expected, rightly, to affect absorption in other people's favorite dresses, other people's trout.

I hear the door open again behind me. “Honestly, Eleanor, I will not move in with you. You’re welcome to come to Gallen. I’m certain we could find something for you to study.” A voice that is not Eleanor’s answers me. “I plan on studying history scholars, actually.” All the grief I have neatly packed and stored in the shadows of my soul springs up, rising into my throat and choking me. I stand, unable to turn, unable to draw a breath for fear of being mistaken, my eyes glued to the floor. A fine pair of shoes enters the narrow range of my vision. They cast no shadow. “You’re dead,” I whisper, still not daring to look up. “Nearly,” Finn answers, his voice the soft song of my dreams. I look up, barely able to see him through tears. He’s thinner, with the pale and drawn look of someone who has been sick for a long time but is on the mend. “It’s a tricky thing, trying to use a transport spell stored in your body while being pulled down a river bleeding to death. You will have to excuse me for getting lost and taking so long to get back to you.” “I will excuse no such thing.” I throw my arms around his neck and bury my face in his shoulder. “You are not excused, you will never be excused, and you will spend the rest of your life making it up to me.” He laughs. “I had planned on nothing less.” My lips meet his, and I do not resign myself to this fate. I claim it as my own. Forever.

I dreamed I stood upon a little hill, And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed Like a waste garden, flowering at its will With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed Black and unruffled; there were white lilies A few, and crocuses, and violets Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun. And there were curious flowers, before unknown, Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades Of Nature's willful moods; and here a one That had drunk in the transitory tone Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades Of grass that in an hundred springs had been Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars, And watered with the scented dew long cupped In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt, A grey stone wall. o'ergrown with velvet moss Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair. And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across The garden came a youth; one hand he raised To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes Were clear as crystal, naked all was he, White as the snow on pathless mountains frore, Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes A marble floor, his brow chalcedony. And he came near me, with his lips uncurled And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth, And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend, Come I will show thee shadows of the world And images of life. See from the South Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.' And lo! within the garden of my dream I saw two walking on a shining plain Of golden light. The one did joyous seem And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids And joyous love of comely girl and boy, His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy; And in his hand he held an ivory lute With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair, And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, And round his neck three chains of roses were. But he that was his comrade walked aside; He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight, And yet again unclenched, and his head Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death. A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold With the device of a great snake, whose breath Was fiery flame: which when I did behold I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth, Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.' Then straight the first did turn himself to me And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame, But I am Love, and I was wont to be Alone in this fair garden, till he came Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.' Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will, I am the love that dare not speak its name.

They were bonded. He rose smoothly, sheathing his sword, studying her. “Men who weren’t there call it the Battle of the Shining Walls,” he said abruptly. “Men who were, call it the Blood Snow. No more. They know it was a battle. On the morning of the first day, I led nearly five hundred men. Kandori, Saldaeans, Domani. By evening on the third day, half were dead or wounded. Had I made different choices, some of those dead would be alive. And others would be dead in their places. In war, you say a prayer for your dead and ride on, because there is always another fight over the next horizon. Say a prayer for the dead, Moiraine Sedai, and ride on.” Startled, she came close to gaping. She had forgotten that the bond’s flow worked both ways. He knew her emotions, too, and apparently could make out hers far better than she could his. After a moment, she nodded, though she did not know how many prayers it would take to clear her mind. Handing her Arrow’s reins, he said, “Where do we ride first?” “Back to Chachin,” she admitted. “And then Arafel, and….” So few names remained that were easy to find. “The world, if need be. We win this battle, or the world dies.” Side by side they rode down the hill and turned south. Behind them the sky rumbled and turned black, another late storm rolling down from the Blight.

He knew it would take as many years as he could think of now to forget the tracks, no matter how deeply buried. Some morning in autumn, spring, or winter he knew he’d wake and, if he didn’t go near the window, if he just lay deep and snug and warm, in his bed, he would hear it, faint and far away. And around the bend of the morning street, up the avenue, between the even rows of sycamore, elm and maple, it the quietness before the start of living, past his house he would hear the familiar sounds. Like the ticking of a clock, the rumble of a dozen metal barrels rolling, the hum of single immense dragonfly at dawn. Like a merry-go-round like a small electrical storm, the color of blue lightning, coming, here, and gone. The trolley’s chime! The hiss like a soda-fountain spigot as it let down and took up its step, and the starting of the dream again, as on it sailed along its way, traveling a hidden and buried track to some hidden and buried destination.

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry— Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there’s a story in a book about it: Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest, The chisel work of an enormous Glacier That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain. Nor need you mind the serial ordeal Of being watched from forty cellar holes As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins. As for the woods’ excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how Someone’s road home from work this once was, Who may be just ahead of you on foot Or creaking with a buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you’re lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only field Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall. First there’s the children’s house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house, But only a belilaced cellar hole, Now slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny’s A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.) I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t. (I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn't a very good poem. I have decided my best poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it. Drips from the roof are plopping into the water-butt by the back door. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the more my mind's eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem. It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing - though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person; her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty-one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older. I am no beauty but I have a neatish face. I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic - two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I must admit that our home is an unreasonable place to live in. Yet I love it. The house itself was built in the time of Charles II, but it was grafted on to a fourteenth-century castle that had been damaged by Cromwell. The whole of our east wall was part of the castle; there are two round towers in it. The gatehouse is intact and a stretch of the old walls at their full height joins it to the house. And Belmotte Tower, all that remains of an even older castle, still stands on its mound close by. But I won't attempt to describe our peculiar home fully until I can see more time ahead of me than I do now. I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel - I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.

To the ancients, bears symbolized resurrection. The creature goes to sleep for a long time, its heartbeat decreases to almost nothing. The male often impregnates the female right before hibernation, but miraculously, egg and sperm do not unite right away. They float separately in her uterine broth until much later. Near the end of hibernation, the egg and sperm unite and cell division begins, so that the cubs will be born in the spring when the mother is awakening, just in time to care for and teach her new offspring. Not only by reason of awakening from hibernation as though from death, but much more so because the she-bear awakens with new young, this creature is a profound metaphor for our lives, for return and increase coming from something that seemed deadened. The bear is associated with many huntress Goddesses: Artemis and Diana in Greece and Rome, and Muerte and Hecoteptl, mud women deities in the Latina cultures. These Goddesses bestowed upon women the power of tracking, knowing, 'digging out' the psychic aspects of all things. To the Japanese the bear is the symbol of loyalty, wisdom, and strength. In northern Japan where the Ainu tribe lives, the bear is one who can talk to God directly and bring messages back for humans. The cresent moon bear is considered a sacred being, one who was given the white mark on his throat by the Buddhist Goddess Kwan-Yin, whose emblem is the crescent moon. Kwan-Yin is the Goddess of Deep Compassion and the bear is her emissary. "In the psyche, the bear can be understood as the ability to regulate one's life, especially one's feeling life. Bearish power is the ability to move in cycles, be fully alert, or quiet down into a hibernative sleep that renews one's energy for the next cycle. The bear image teaches that it is possible to maintain a kind of pressure gauge for one's emotional life, and most especially that one can be fierce and generous at the same time. One can be reticent and valuable. One can protect one's territory, make one's boundaries clear, shake the sky if need be, yet be available, accessible, engendering all the same.

It appears that some part of Slothrop ran into the AWOL Džabajev one night in the heart of downtown Niederschaumdorf. (Some believe that fragments of Slothrop have grown into consistent personae of their own. If so, there's no telling which of the Zone's present-day population are offshoots of his original scattering. There's supposed to be a last photograph of him on the only record album ever put out by The Fool, an English rock group—seven musicians posed, in the arrogant style of the early Stones, near an old rocket-bomb site, out in the East End, or South of the River. It is spring, and French thyme blossoms in amazing white lacework across the cape of green that now hides and softens the true shape of the old rubble. There is no way to tell which of the faces is Slothrop's: the only printed credit that might apply to him is "Harmonica, kazoo—a friend." But knowing his Tarot, we would expect to look among the Humility, among the gray and preterite souls, to look for him adrift in the hostile light of the sky, the darkness of the sea. . . .)

Some of the boys from the Times wanted me to come to a memorial dinner tonight, but a quiet evening with Kreizler seemed much the more appropriate thing. It wasn’t out of nostalgia for any shared boyhood in New York that we raised our glasses, because Laszlo and Theodore didn’t actually meet until Harvard. No, Kreizler and I were fixing our hearts on the spring of 1896—nearly a quarter-century ago!—and on a series of events that still seems too bizarre to have occurred even in this city. By the end of our dessert and Madeira (and how poignant to have a memorial meal in Delmonico’s, good old Del’s, now on its way out like the rest of us, but in those days the bustling scene of some of our most important encounters), the two of us were laughing and shaking our heads, amazed to this day that we were able to get through the ordeal with our skins; and still saddened, as I could see in Kreizler’s face and feel in my own chest, by the thought of those who didn’t

A chill penetrating wail of outrage screamed up from the depts of the Abyss. So loud and horrifying was it that all the citizens of Palanthas woke shruddering from even the deepest sleep and lay in their beds, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the end of the world. The guards on the the city walls could move neither hand nor foot. Shutting their eyes, they cowered in shadows, awaiting death. Babies wimpered in fear, dogs cringed and slunk beneath beds, cat's eyes gleamed. The shriek sounded again, and a pale hand reached out from the Tower gates. A ghastly face, twisted in fury, floated in the dank air. Raistlin did not move. The hand drew near, the face promised him tortures of the Abyss, where he would be dragged for his great folly in daring the curse of the Tower. The skeletal hand touched Raistlin's heart. Then, trembling, it halted. 'Know this,' said Raistlin calmly, looking up at the Tower, pitching his voice so that it could be heard by those within. 'I am the master of the past and the present! My coming was foretold. For me, the gates will open.' The skeletal hand shrank back and, with a slow sweeping motion of invitation, parted the darkness. The gates swung open upon silent hinges. Raistlin passed through them without a glance at the hand or the pale visage that was lowered in reverence. As he entered, all the black and shapeless, dark and shadowy things dwelling within the Tower bowed in homage. Then Raistlin stopped and looked around him. 'I am home,' he said.

Epistle to Be Left in the Earth ...It is colder now, There are many stars, We are drifting North by the Great Bear, The leaves are falling, The water is stone in the scooped rocks, To southward Red sun grey air: The crows are Slow on their crooked wings, The jays have left us: Long since we passed the flares of Orion. Each man believes in his heart he will die. Many have written last thoughts and last letters. None know if our deaths are now or forever: None know if this wandering earth will be found. We lie down and the snow covers our garments. I pray you, You (if any open this writing) Make in your mouths the words that were our names. I will tell you all we have learned, I will tell you everything: The earth is round, There are springs under the orchards, The loam cuts with a blunt knife, Beware of Elms in thunder, The lights in the sky are stars— We think they do not see, We think also The trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us: The birds too are ignorant. Do not listen. Do not stand at dark in the open windows. We before you have heard this: They are voices: They are not words at all but the wind rising. Also none among us has seen God. (...We have thought often The flaws of sun in the late and driving weather Pointed to one tree but it was not so.) As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous: The wind changes at night and the dreams come. It is very cold, There are strange stars near Arcturus, Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

My darling, My day’s sweetest moments are at dawn, for I awake with dreams of you still in my head. As the light touches my lips, I can almost feel yours upon mine. I imagine your footsteps coming up the walk, but today is the same as the day before. It is only fanciful thinking. As the first beams of morning sunlight dance across my weary shoulders I cry out, “How can you be so cheery and bright with so much sorrow across our land?” I know I must be strong and face another day, but tears fill my eyes. Suddenly, a white dove lands upon my window sill. Surely this be the omen that peace is near at hand. Just like the breath of the coming Spring, this little dove now brings me new hope. God has heard our prayers and our Southland will flower again.

Desperately trying to remember her manners, she curtseyed and murmured, "Your Grace." The smile lines at his eyes deepened subtly. "You appear to be in need of rescue. Why don't you come inside with me, away from this riffraff? The duchess is eager to meet you." As Pandora hesitated, thoroughly intimidated, he assured her. "I'm quite trustworthy. In fact, I'm very nearly an angel. You'll come to love me in no time." "Take heed," Lord St. Vincent advised Pandora sardonically, fastening the loose sides of his vest. "My father is the pied piper of gullible women." "That's not true," the duke said, "The non-gullible ones follow me as well." Pandora couldn't help chuckling. She looked up into silvery-blue eyes lit with sparks of humor and playfulness. There was something reassuring about his presence, the sense of a man who truly liked women. When she and Cassandra were children, they had fantasized about a handsome father who would lavish them with affection and advice, and spoil them just a little, but not too much. A father who might have let them stand on his feet to dance. This man looked very much like the one Pandora had imagined. She moved forward and took his arm. "How was your journey, my dear?" the duke asked as he escorted her into the house. Before Pandora could reply, Lord St. Vincent spoke from behind them. "Lady Pandora doesn't like small talk, Father. She would prefer to discuss topics such as Darwin, or women's suffrage." "Naturally an intelligent young woman would wish to skip over mundane chitchat," the duke said, giving Pandora such an approving glance that she fairly glowed. "However," he continued thoughtfully, "most people need to be guided into a feeling of safety before they dare reveal their opinions to someone they've only just met. There's a beginning to everything, after all. Every opera has its prelude, every sonnet its opening quatrain. Small talk is merely a way of helping a stranger to trust you, by first finding something you can both agree on." "No one's ever explained it that way before," Pandora said with a touch of wonder. "It actually makes sense. But why must it be so often about weather? Isn't there something else we all agree on? Runcible spoons- everyone likes those, don't they? And teatime, and feeding ducks." "Blue ink," the duke added. "And a cat's purr. And summer storms- although I suppose that brings us back to weather." "I wouldn't mind talking about weather with you, Your Grace," Pandora said ingenuously. The duke laughed gently. "What a delightful girl.

It was a relief to see his father, who'd always been an unfailing source of reassurance and comfort. They clasped hands in a firm shake, and used their free arms to pull close for a moment. Such demonstrations of affection weren't common among fathers and sons of their rank, but then, they'd never been a conventional family. After a few hearty thumps on the back, Sebastian drew back and glanced over him with the attentive concern that hearkened to Gabriel's earliest memories. Not missing the traces of weariness on his face, his father lightly tousled his hair the way he had when he was a boy. "You haven't been sleeping." "I went carousing with friends for most of last night," Gabriel admitted. "It ended when we were all too drunk to see a hole through a ladder." Sebastian grinned and removed his coat, tossing the exquisitely tailored garment to a nearby chair. "Reveling in the waning days of bachelorhood, are we?" "It would be more accurate to say I'm thrashing like a drowning rat." "Same thing." Sebastian unfastened his cuffs and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. An active life at Heron's Point, the family estate in Sussex, had kept him as fit and limber as a man half his age. Frequent exposure to the sunlight had gilded his hair and darkened his complexion, making his pale blue eyes startling in their brightness. While other men of his generation had become staid and settled, the duke was more vigorous than ever, in part because his youngest son was still only eleven. The duchess, Evie, had conceived unexpectedly long after she had assumed her childbearing years were past. As a result there were eight years between the baby's birth and that of the next oldest sibling, Seraphina. Evie had been more than a little embarrassed to find herself with child at her age, especially in the face of her husband's teasing claims that she was a walking advertisement of his potency. And indeed, there have been a hint of extra swagger in Sebastian's step all through his wife's last pregnancy. Their fifth child was a handsome boy with hair the deep auburn red of an Irish setter. He'd been christened Michael Ivo, but somehow the pugnacious middle name suited him more than his given name. Now a lively, cheerful lad, Ivo accompanied his father nearly everywhere.

Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, ’tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’ Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, There’s brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world’s not. And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past: The mischief is that ’twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, I’d face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. ’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul’s stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all that springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. —I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with What you felt stirring across the land . . . it was the equinox . . . green spring equal nights . . . canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell . . . human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. This is the World just before men. Too violently pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by men directly. They are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or coal. Alive, it was a threat: it was Titans, was an overpeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona about Earth's body that some spoiler had to be brought in before it blew the Creation apart. So we, the crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. God's spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. It is our mission to promote death. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the Creatures. It was something we had to work on, historically and personally. To build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong.

Another inventor, J. B. McComber, representing the Chicago-Tower Spiral-Spring Ascension and Toboggan Transportation Company, proposed a tower with a height of 8,947 feet, nearly nine times the height of the Eiffel Tower, with a base one thousand feet in diameter sunk two thousand feet into the earth. Elevated rails would lead from the top of the tower all the way to New York, Boston, Baltimore, and other cities. Visitors ready to conclude their visit to the fair and daring enough to ride elevators to the top would then toboggan all the way back home. “As the cost of the tower and its slides is of secondary importance,” McComber noted, “I do not mention it here, but will furnish figures upon application.” A third proposal demanded even more courage from visitors. This inventor, who gave his initials as R. T. E., envisioned a tower four thousand feet tall from which he proposed to hang a two-thousand-foot cable of “best rubber.” Attached at the bottom end of this cable would be a car seating two hundred people. The car and its passengers would be shoved off a platform and fall without restraint to the end of the cable, where the car would snap back upward and continue bouncing until it came to a stop. The engineer urged that as a precaution the ground “be covered with eight feet of feather bedding.

It is hypocritical to exhort the Brazilians to conserve their rainforest after we have already destroyed the grassland ecosystem that occupied half the continent when we found it. A large-scale grassland restoration project would give us some moral authority when we seek conservation abroad. I must admit that I also like the idea because it would mean a better home for pronghorn, currently pushed by agriculture into marginal habitats-The high sagebrush deserts of the West. I would love to return the speedsters to their evolutionary home, the Floor of the Sky. Imagine a huge national reserve where anyone could see what caused Lewis and Clark to write with such enthusiasm in their journals-the sea of grass and flowers dotted with massive herds of bison, accompanied by the dainty speedsters and by great herds of elk. Grizzly bears and wolves would patrol the margins of the herds and coyotes would at last be reduced to their proper place. The song of the meadowlarks would pervade the prairie and near water the spring air would ring with the eerie tremolos of snipe.

Ireland, like Ukraine, is a largely rural country which suffers from its proximity to a more powerful industrialised neighbour. Ireland’s contribution to the history of tractors is the genius engineer Harry Ferguson, who was born in 1884, near Belfast. Ferguson was a clever and mischievous man, who also had a passion for aviation. It is said that he was the first man in Great Britain to build and fly his own aircraft in 1909. But he soon came to believe that improving efficiency of food production would be his unique service to mankind. Harry Ferguson’s first two-furrow plough was attached to the chassis of the Ford Model T car converted into a tractor, aptly named Eros. This plough was mounted on the rear of the tractor, and through ingenious use of balance springs it could be raised or lowered by the driver using a lever beside his seat. Ford, meanwhile, was developing its own tractors. The Ferguson design was more advanced, and made use of hydraulic linkage, but Ferguson knew that despite his engineering genius, he could not achieve his dream on his own. He needed a larger company to produce his design. So he made an informal agreement with Henry Ford, sealed only by a handshake. This Ford-Ferguson partnership gave to the world a new type of Fordson tractor far superior to any that had been known before, and the precursor of all modern-type tractors. However, this agreement by a handshake collapsed in 1947 when Henry Ford II took over the empire of his father, and started to produce a new Ford 8N tractor, using the Ferguson system. Ferguson’s open and cheerful nature was no match for the ruthless mentality of the American businessman. The matter was decided in court in 1951. Ferguson claimed $240 million, but was awarded only $9.25 million. Undaunted in spirit, Ferguson had a new idea. He approached the Standard Motor Company at Coventry with a plan, to adapt the Vanguard car for use as tractor. But this design had to be modified, because petrol was still rationed in the post-war period. The biggest challenge for Ferguson was the move from petrol-driven to diesel-driven engines and his success gave rise to the famous TE-20, of which more than half a million were built in the UK. Ferguson will be remembered for bringing together two great engineering stories of our time, the tractor and the family car, agriculture and transport, both of which have contributed so richly to the well-being of mankind.

Born in the East, and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is the son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wisemen ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wise and the proud tremble at its warnings, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lighted the reading of its well-worn pages. It has woven itself into our deepest affections, and colored our dearest dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh. Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us uncalled. They fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the beauty of them lingers in our ear long after the sermons which they have adorned have been forgotten. They return to us swiftly and quietly, like birds flying from far away. They surprise us with new meanings, like springs of water breaking forth from the mountain beside a long-forgotten path. They grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the shadow, he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, "Good-by, we shall meet again"; and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into light.

He reached for me, and fast as lightning, he boxed my ears. All I remember is the world exploding. Cassandra says she helped me back to our room, and there was blood coming from my left ear. My right ear mended in a day or two, but I could only hear a little out of the left one, and there was a beating pain deep down. Soon I took ill with fever. Mama said that had nothing to do with the ear, but I think it did." Pandora paused, unwilling to relate any of the distasteful details of her ear suppurating and draining. She glanced cautiously at Gabriel, whose face was averted. He was no longer playing with her braid. His hand had clenched around it until the muscles of his forearms and wrist stood out. "Even after I recovered from the fever," Pandora said, "the hearing didn't come back all the way. But the worst part was that I kept losing my balance, especially at night. It made me afraid of the dark. Ever since then-" She stopped as Gabriel lifted his head. His face was hard and murderous, the hellfrost in his eyes frightening her more than her father's fury ever had. "That bloody son of a bitch," he said softly. "If he were still alive, I'd beat him with a thresher's flail." Pandora reached out with a fluttering motion, patting the air near him. "No," she said breathlessly, "no, I wouldn't want that. I hated him for a long time, but now I feel sorry for him." Gabriel caught her hand in midair, swift but gentle, as if it were a bird he wanted to hold without injuring. His eyes had dilated until she could see reflections of herself in the dark centers. "Why?" he whispered after a long moment. "Because hurting me was the only way to hide his own pain.

We have both been talking about you. Cosette loves you so dearly! You must not forget that you have a chamber here, we want nothing more to do with the Rue de l'Homme Armé. We will have no more of it at all. How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is disagreeable, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where one is cold, and into one cannot enter? You are to come and install yourself here. And this very day. Or you will have to deal with Cosette. She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden; the trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed is made, it is all ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near your bed Cosette has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered with Utrecht velvet and she has said to it: 'Stretch out your arms to him.' A nightingale comes to the clump of acacias opposite your windows every spring. In two months more you will have it. You will have its nest on your left and ours on your right. By night it will sing, and by day Cosette will prattle. Your chamber faces due South. Cosette will arrange your books for you, your Voyages of Captain Cook and the other,— Vancouver's and all your affairs. I believe that there is a little valise to which you are attached, I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that. You have conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with delight if you play whist. It is you who shall take Cosette to talk on the days when I am at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know, as you used to, in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely resolved to be happy. And you shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you hear, father? Come, will you breakfast with us to-day?" "Sir," said Jean Valjean, "I have something to say to you. I am an ex-convict.

The song she heard from the meadow was the same tune as the bird's call.She looked up in the trees.For a moment she thought she'd lost the bird, and she nearly cried out for him, but he fluttered down,landed right at her feet, and grew into a man." "Oh." Meg sighed.She'd always liked that part. "He whistled the tune once more, then the fey man said, 'My lady,will you dance?" "'I will.' She crossed the bridge to the meadow,and danced with the whistler." "Tell us they married," Meg said. "The story doesn't go like that," Poppy reminded. "It should." Meg stroked Tom's blood-clotted hair. I fumbled with the charcoal in my blackened fingers. As the story went, the girl danced through the seasons, but when she wandered home at last and reached her cottage door, she was a shriveled-up old women, for a hundred years had passed while she danced with the whistler,and everyone she'd known in her former life had died. Meg knew how it went.But when our eyes locked, I saw tonight she couldn't bear it. I found another bit of charcoal. "That very spring when the meadow was in bloom,the whistler, who had fey power to transform into a bird and sing any girl he wished to into the wood, chose the one girl who'd followed him so bravely and so far to be his wife. And she lived with him and the fey folk deep in Dragonswood in DunGarrow Castle, a place that blends into the mountainside and cannot be seen with human eyes unless the fairies will it so." I drew the couple hand in hand, rouch sketches on the cave wall; the stone wasn't smooth by any means. "She lived free among the fey folk and never wanted to return to her old life that had been full of hunger and sorrow under her father's roof." I sketched what came next before I could think of it. "A dragon came to their wedding," I said, drawing his right wing so large, I had to use the ceiling. "He lit a bonfire to celebrate their union." I drew the left wing spanning over the couple in the meadow. "And they lived all their lives content in Dragonswood.

In those days, long before, a view over the rooftops of Paris was an unaffordable luxury. The apartment he had shared with a mousy young writer from Laon had a view of the Jardin de Luxembourg – if he stuck his head out of the window as far as it would go and twisted it to the left, a smudge of green foliage appeared in the corner of one eye. That had been his best apartment to date. They had decorated it in the ‘Bohemian’ style of the 1830s : a few volumes of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, a Phrygian cap, an Algerian hookah, a skull on a broomstick handle (from the brother of a friend, Charles Toubin, who was an intern at one of the big hospitals) and, of course, a window box of geraniums, which was not only pretty but also illegal. (Death by falling window box was always high up the official list of fatalities.) For a proper view of Paris, they visited Henry’s painter friends who lived in a warren of attic rooms near the Barriere d’Enfer and called themselves the Water-Drinkers. When the weather was fine and the smell of their own squalor became unbearable, they clambered onto the roof and sat on the gutters and ridges, sketching chimneyscapes, and sending up more smoke from their pipes than the fireplaces below. Three of the Water-Drinkers had since died of various illnesses known collectively as ‘lack of money’. When the last of the three was buried, in the spring of 1844, Henry and the others had found themselves at the graveside without a sou to give a gravedigger. ‘Never mind’, said he, “you can pay me the next time, ‘ and then, to his collegue : ‘It’s all right – these gentlemen are a regular customers.

But there’s never been anyone? Really?” Sarah shrugs. “Penny and I were tutored at home when we were young . . . but in year ten, there was this one boy.” I rub my hands together. “Here we go—tell me everything. I want all the sick, lurid details. Was he a footballer? Big and strong, captain of the team, the most popular boy in school?” I could see it. Sarah’s delicate, long and lithe, but dainty, beautiful—any young man would’ve been desperate to have her on his arm. In his lap. In his bed, on the hood of his car, riding his face . . . all of the above. “He was captain of the chess team.” I cover my eyes with my hand. “His name was Davey. He wore these adorable tweed jackets and bow ties, he had blond hair, and was a bit pale because of the asthma. He had the same glasses as I and he had a different pair of argyle socks for every day of the year.” “You’re messing with me, right?” She shakes her head. “Argyle socks, Sarah? I am so disappointed in you right now.” “He was nice,” she chides. “You leave my Davey alone.” Then she laughs again—delighted and free. My cock reacts hard and fast, emphasis on hard. It’s like sodding granite. “So what happened to old Davey boy?” “I was alone in the library one day and he came up and started to ask me to the spring social. And I was so excited and nervous I could barely breathe.” I picture how she must’ve looked then. But in my mind’s eyes she’s really not any different than she is right now. Innocent, sweet, and so real she couldn’t deceive someone if her life depended on it. “And then before he could finish the question, I . . .” I don’t realize I’m leaning toward her until she stops talking and I almost fall over. “You . . . what?” Sarah hides behind her hands. “I threw up on him.” And I try not to laugh. I swear I try . . . but I’m only human. So I end up laughing so hard the car shakes and I can’t speak for several minutes. “Christ almighty.” “And I’d had fish and chips for lunch.” Sarah’s laughing too. “It was awful.” “Oh you poor thing.” I shake my head, still chuckling. “And poor Davey.” “Yes.” She wipes under her eyes with her finger. “Poor Davey. He never came near me again after that.” “Coward—he didn’t deserve you. I would’ve swam through a whole lake of puke to take a girl like you to the social.” She smiles so brightly at me, her cheeks maroon and round like two shiny apples. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” I wiggle my eyebrows. “I’m all about the compliments.

I’ve lived near here at several different stretches across time, but once, when I lived here a few hundred years ago, I had a camel I named Oded. He was just about the laziest creature ever to talk the Earth. He would pass out when I was in the middle of feeding him, and making it to the closest Bedouin camp for tea was a minor miracle. But when I first met you in that lifetime-“ “Oded broke into a run,” Luce said without thinking. “I screamed because I thought he was going to trample me. You said you’d never seen him move like that.” “Yeah, well,” Daniel said. “He liked you.” They paused and looked at each other, and Daniel started laughing when Luce’s jaw dropped. “I did it!” she cried out. “It was just there, in my memory, a part of me. Like it happened yesterday. I came to me without thinking!” It was miraculous. All those memories from all those lives that had been lost each time Lucinda died in Daniel’s arms were somehow finding their way back to her, the way Luce always found her way back to Daniel. No. She was finding her way to them. It was like a gate had been left open after Luce’s quest through the Announcers. Those memories stayed with her, from Moscow to Helston to Egypt. Now more were becoming available. She had a sudden, keen sense of who she was-and she wasn’t just Luce Price from Thunderbolt, Georgia. She was every girl she’d ever been, an amalgamation of experience, mistakes, achievements, and, above all, love. She was Lucinda. “Quick,” she said to Daniel. “Can we do another?” “Okay, how about another desert life? You were living in the Sahara when I found you. Tall and gangly and the fastest runner in your village. I was passing through one day, on my way to visit Roland, and I stopped for the night at the closest spring. All the other men were very distrustful of me, but-“ “But my father paid you three zebra skins for the knife you had in your satchel!” Daniel grinned. “He drove a hard bargain.” “This is amazing,” she said, nearly breathless. How much more did she have in her that she didn’t know about? How far back could she go? She pivoted to face him, drawing her knees against her chest and leaning in so that their foreheads were almost touching. “Can you remember everything about our pasts?” Daniel’s eyes softened at the corners. “Sometimes the order of things gets mixed up in my head. I’ll admit, I don’t remember long stretches of time I’ve spent alone, but I can remember every first glimpse of your face, every kiss of your lips, every memory I’ve ever made with you.

Onions! Fresh, hot, sweet onions,” Sam called as Mary Lou pulled the cart down Main Street. “Eight cents a dozen.” It was a beautiful spring morning. The sky was painted pale blue and pink—the same color as the lake and the peach trees along its shore. Mrs. Gladys Tennyson was wearing just her nightgown and robe as she came running down the street after Sam. Mrs. Tennyson was normally a very proper woman who never went out in public without dressing up in fine clothes and a hat. So it was quite surprising to the people of Green Lake to see her running past them. “Sam!” she shouted. “Whoa, Mary Lou,” said Sam, stopping his mule and cart. “G’morning, Mrs. Tennyson,” he said. “How’s little Becca doing?” Gladys Tennyson was all smiles. “I think she’s going to be all right. The fever broke about an hour ago. Thanks to you.” “I’m sure the good Lord and Doc Hawthorn deserve most of the credit.” “The Good Lord, yes,” agreed Mrs. Tennyson, “but not Dr. Hawthorn. That quack wanted to put leeches on her stomach! Leeches! My word! He said they would suck out the bad blood. Now you tell me. How would a leech know good blood from bad blood?” “I wouldn’t know,” said Sam. “It was your onion tonic,” said Mrs. Tennyson. “That’s what saved her.” Other townspeople made their way to the cart. “Good morning, Gladys,” said Hattie Parker. “Don’t you look lovely this morning.” Several people snickered. “Good morning, Hattie,” Mrs. Tennyson replied. “Does your husband know you’re parading about in your bed clothes?” Hattie asked. There were more snickers. “My husband knows exactly where I am and how I am dressed, thank you,” said Mrs. Tennyson. “We have both been up all night and half the morning with Rebecca. She almost died from stomach sickness. It seems she ate some bad meat.” Hattie’s face flushed. Her husband, Jim Parker, was the butcher. “It made my husband and me sick as well,” said Mrs. Tennyson, “but it nearly killed Becca, what with her being so young. Sam saved her life.” “It wasn’t me,” said Sam. “It was the onions.” “I’m glad Becca’s all right,” Hattie said contritely. “I keep telling Jim he needs to wash his knives,” said Mr. Pike, who owned the general store. Hattie Parker excused herself, then turned and quickly walked away. “Tell Becca that when she feels up to it to come by the store for a piece of candy,” said Mr. Pike. “Thank you, I’ll do that.” Before returning home, Mrs. Tennyson bought a dozen onions from Sam. She gave him a dime and told him to keep the change. “I don’t take charity,” Sam told her. “But if you want to buy a few extra onions for Mary Lou, I’m sure she’d appreciate it.” “All right then,” said Mrs. Tennyson, “give me my change in onions.” Sam gave Mrs. Tennyson an additional three onions, and she fed them one at a time to Mary Lou. She laughed as the old donkey ate them out of her hand.

I prop my guitar up against the nightstand. Then I turn toward the bed and fall into it face first. The mattress is soft but firm, like a sheet of steel wrapped in a cloud. I roll around, moaning loud and long. “Oh, that’s good. Really, really good. What a grand bed!” Sarah clears her throat. “Well. We should probably get to sleep, then. Big day tomorrow.” The pillow smells sweet, like candy. I can only imagine it’s from her. I wonder if I pressed my nose to the crook of her neck, would her skin smell as delicious? I brush away the thought as I watch her stiffly gather a pillow and blanket from the other side of the bed, dragging them to . . . the nook. “What are you doing?” She looks up, her doe eyes widening. “Getting ready for bed.” “You’re going to sleep there?” “Of course. The sofa’s very uncomfortable.” “Why can’t we share the bed?” She chokes . . . stutters. “I . . . I can’t sleep with you. I don’t even know you.” I throw my arms out wide. “What do you want to know? Ask me anything—I’m an open book.” “That’s not what I mean.” “You’re being ridiculous! It’s a huge bed. You could let one rip and I wouldn’t hear it.” And the blush is back. With a vengeance. “I’m not . . . I don’t . . .” “You don’t fart?” I scoff. “Really? Are you not human?” She curses under her breath, but I’d love to hear it out loud. I bet uninhibited Sarah Von Titebottum would be a stunning sight. And very entertaining. She shakes her head, pinning me with her eyes. “There’s something wrong with you.” “No.” I explain calmly, “I’m just free. Honest with myself and others. You should try it sometime.” She folds her arms, all tight, trembling indignation. It’s adorable. “I’m sleeping in the nook, Your Highness. And that’s that.” I sit up, pinning her gaze right back at her. “Henry.” “What?” “My name is not Highness, it’s fucking Henry, and I’d prefer you use it.” And she snaps. “Fine! Fucking Henry—happy?” I smile. “Yes. Yes, I am.” I flop back on the magnificent bed. “Sleep tight, Titebottum.” I think she growls at me, but it’s muffled by the sound of rustling bed linens and pillows. And then . . . there’s silence. Beautiful, blessed silence. I wiggle around, getting comfy. I turn on my side and fluff the pillow. I squeeze my eyes tight . . . but it’s hopeless. “Fucking hell!” I sit up. And Sarah springs to her feet. “What? What’s wrong?” It’s the guilt. I’ve barged into this poor girl’s room, confiscated her bed, and have forced her to sleep in a cranny in the wall. I may not be the man my father was or the gentleman my brother is, but I’m not that much of a prick. I stand up, rip my shirt over my head. and march toward the window seat. I feel Sarah’s eyes graze my bare chest, arms. and stomach, but she circles around me, keeping her distance. “You take the bloody bed,” I tell her. “I’ll sleep in the bloody nook.” “You don’t have to do that.” I push my hand through my hair. “Yes, I do.” Then I stand up straight and proper, an impersonation of Hugh Grant in one of his classic royal roles. “Please, Lady Sarah.” She blinks, her little mouth pursed. “Okay.” Then she climbs onto the bed, under the covers. And I squeeze onto the window bench, knees bent, my elbow jammed against the icy windowpane, and my neck bent at an odd angle that I’m going to be feeling tomorrow. The light is turned down to a very low dim, and for several moments all I hear is Sarah’s soft breaths. But then, in the near darkness, her delicate voice floats out on a sigh. “All right, we can sleep in the bed together.” Music to my ears. I don’t make her tell me twice—I’ve fulfilled my noble quota for the evening. I stumble from the nook and crash onto the bed. That’s better.