Splendid Night Quotes

I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid and the hard words I ever feared to say can now be said: I love you.

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!

Charles,” Bones said distinctly. “You’d better have a splendid explanation for her being on top of you.” The black-haired vampire rose to his feet as soon as I jumped off, brushing the dirt off his clothes. “Believe me, mate, I’ve never enjoyed a woman astride me less. I came out to say hello, and this she-devil blinded me by flinging rocks in my eyes. Then she vigorously attempted to split my skull before threatening to impale me with silver if I so much as even twitched! It’s been a few years since I’ve been to America, but I daresay the method of greeting a person has changed dramatically!” Bones rolled his eyes and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re still upright, Charles, and the only reason you are is because she didn’t have any silver. She’d have staked you right and proper otherwise. She has a tendency to shrivel someone first and then introduce herself afterwards.

Barter Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children's faces looking up Holding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell, Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms that hold, And for your spirit's still delight, Holy thoughts that star the night. Spend all you have for loveliness, Buy it and never count the cost; For one white singing hour of peace Count many a year of strife well lost, And for a breath of ecstasy Give all you have been, or could be.

People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...

To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows, We drained a hundred jugs of wine. A splendid night it was . . . . In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed, But at last drunkenness overtook us; And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain, The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet

The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.

And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking into these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!

And in the night my own mother came to the window to meet me, strange, solitary; splendid with countless stars; my mother Night; mine, lovely, mine. My home…

In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them. In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is! In autumn, the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; more charming still is a file of wild geese, like specks in the distant sky. When the sun has set, one's heart is moved by the sound of the wind and the hum of the insects. In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well this fits the season's mood! But as noon approaches and the cold wears off, no one bothers to keep the braziers alight, and soon nothing remains but piles of white ashes.

When my mom was alive, she read me stories every night. ”Use your imagination, Lorelei,” she’d say, “and your whole life can be a fairy tale.” I wanted that to be true. But I should have paid more attention to the fairy tales.

You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick's.

She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy. Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved.

Oh, here we are at the bridge. I'm going to shut my eyes tight. I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can't help imagining that perhaps, just as we get to the middle, they'll crumple up like a jackknife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for all when I think we're getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the bridge did crumple up I'd want to see it crumple. What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world? There, we're over. Now I'll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.

I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind - of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware that they are deceiving one another. But I have no special interest in instances of mutual deception. I myself spent the whole day long deceiving human beings with my clowning. I have not been able to work much up much concern over the morality prescribed in textbooks of ethics under the name as “righteousness.” I find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives, or who is sure he can live, purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit. Human beings never did teach me that abstruse secret. If I had only known that one thing I should never have had to dread human beings so, nor should I have opposed myself to human life, nor tasted such torments of hell every night.

Look at me," John gasped. "I cannot remember the last time I allowed myself to be so happy. I smile all day long without knowing why. I climbed a bloody tree, vaulted through your window, and here I am—laughing.It's the middle of the night, and yet here I am with you. Dancing at midnight, holding perfection in my arms." -John Blackwood to Arabella Blydon

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars, And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.

In the middle of the night, when Laila woke up thirsty, she found their hands still clamped together, in the white-knuckle, anxious way of children clutching balloon strings.

It was one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe.

That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows. At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar." "Titanic City" was born. It's the song, they said. No, the sea. The luxury. The ship. It's the sex, they whispered. Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo. "Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead.

The sunset was a splendid display. I wondered if it was showing off for my benefit or if it was often that spectacular. Rarely had I seen such a gorgeous scene; the riotous colors flamed out over the sky in shades that I had no words to describe. Birds sang their last songs of the day before tucking in for the night, and still the darkness hung back. Now, I thought, I understand the word "twilight." It was created for just this time - in this land.

Dear Nastenka, I know I describe splendidly, but, excuse me, I don't know how else to do it. At this moment, dear Nastenka, at this moment I am like the spirit of King Solomon when, after lying a thousand years under seven seals in his urn, those seven seals were at last taken off. At this moment, Nastenka, when we have met at last after such a long separation - for I have known you for ages, Nastenka, because I have been looking for some one for ages, and that is a sign that it was you I was looking for, and it was ordained that we should meet now - at this moment a thousand valves have opened in my head, and I must let myself flow in a river of words, or I shall choke. And so I beg you not to interrupt me, Nastenka, but listen humbly and obediently, or I will be silent.

The Flower Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed. To and fro they went Thro’ my garden-bower, And muttering discontent Cur’d me and my flower. Then it grew so tall It wore a crown of light, But thieves from o’er the wall Stole the seed by night. Sow’d it far and wide By every town and tower, Till all the people cried, “Splendid is the flower.” Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed. And some are pretty enough, And some are poor indeed; And now again the people Call it but a weed.

I was already doing a lot of splendid research reading all the books about ghosts I could get hold of, and particularly true ghost stories - so much so that it became necessary for me to read a chapter of _Little Women_ every night before I turned out the light - and at the same time I was collecting pictures of houses, particularly odd houses, to see what I could find to make into a suitable haunted house.

To Selene (Moon) Hear, Goddess queen, diffusing silver light, bull-horn'd and wand'ring thro' the gloom of Night. With stars surrounded, and with circuit wide Night's torch extending, thro' the heav'ns you ride: Female and Male with borrow'd rays you shine, and now full-orb'd, now tending to decline. Mother of ages, fruit-producing Moon [Mene], whose amber orb makes Night's reflected noon: Lover of horses, splendid, queen of Night, all-seeing pow'r bedeck'd with starry light. Lover of vigilance, the foe of strife, in peace rejoicing, and a prudent life: Fair lamp of Night, its ornament and friend, who giv'st to Nature's works their destin'd end. Queen of the stars, all-wife Diana hail! Deck'd with a graceful robe and shining veil; Come, blessed Goddess, prudent, starry, bright, come moony-lamp with chaste and splendid light, Shine on these sacred rites with prosp'rous rays, and pleas'd accept thy suppliant's mystic praise.

That night, the sea had invaded the land.

How condescending, how splendidly democratic of Sir Lancelot, to laugh, as if he were an ordinary man! Perhaps he eats and drinks as well, or even sleeps at night.

We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man’s experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose.

She looked at the exquisite red carpet beneath her feet. Someone had done a splendid job of getting all the blood out. How much of the blood on the carpet had been hers—and how much of it had belonged to Sam Cortland, her rival and coconspirator in the destruction of Arobynn’s slave agreement? She still didn’t know what Arobynn had done to him that night.

Lying asleep between the strokes of night I saw my love lean over my sad bed, Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head, Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite, Too wan for blushing and too warm for white, But perfect-coloured without white or red. And her lips opened amorously, and said-- I wist not what, saving one word--Delight. And all her face was honey to my mouth, And all her body pasture to my eyes; The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire, The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south, The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.

I am only saying that I will find you mad wolves to hunt," Ian told his wife, "and that I will never break your heart." If part of that heart was always out of reach, that seemed entirely fair to Ian. You did not get a whole heart when you pinned yours to a splendid, battered, high-flying hawk like a Night Witch. Nina's soul would always in some deep place yearn to be soaring under a bomber's moon with her dark-eyed Moscow rose, and that was fine. Ian thought there was a chance, despite her prickles, that a bit of that remaining heart might thaw enough for him.

Pherae. He was Ortilochus’ son, whose father was Alpheus, and there they spent the night. [490] Diocles offered them the hospitality he owed to strangers who stayed there as his guests. As soon as rose-fingered early Dawn appeared, they hitched their horses, climbed in the splendid chariot, and set off from the echoing portico

You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick’s. Up in the mountains, where the air is crisper than the humid atmosphere of Scirland, I beheld a beauty I had never before seen.

As the boy looked at it, my thing moved and he whispered "It is splendid! Do let me try its love-making" ... And I was too polite to disobey.

But only yesterdays are truly splendid … And there are other singers, sweeter than I, to sing of tomorrow. I can only write of today, of Pipalnagar, where I have lived and loved.

Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick’s.

Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings. Mariam's final thoughts were a few words from the Koran, which she muttered under her breath. He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night, and He has made the sun and the moon subservient; each one runs on to an assigned term; now surely He is the Mighty, the Great Forgiver. "Kneel," the Talib said. O my Lord! Forgive and have mercy, for you are the best of the merciful ones. "Kneel here, hamshira. And look down." One last time, Mariam did as she was told.

She felt him trying to piece together in a laborious and elementary fashion fragments of belief, unsoldered and separate, lacking the unity of phrases fashioned by the old believers. Together they groped in this difficult region, where the unfinished, the unfulfilled, the unwritten, the unreturned, came together in their ghostly way and wore the semblance of the complete and the satisfactory. The future emerged more splendid than ever from this construction of the present.

The summer night sky over the Hindu Kush, domed by the Milky Way's mage light, was infinitely splendid. Strewn against this craggy luminosity, millions of tiny stars shone, a diamond heist gone awry.

Thus on Predator Day we meditate on the Alpha Predator aspects of God. The suddenness and ferocity with which an apprehension of the Divine may appear to us; our smallness and fearfulness-may I say, our Mouselikeness-in the face of such Power; our feelings of individual annihilation in the brightness of that splendid Light. God walks in the tender dawn Gardens of the mind, but He also prowls in its night Forests. He is not a tame Being, my Friends: he is a wild Being, and cannot be summoned and controlled like a Dog."-Adam One

He lived then before me, he lived as much as he had ever lived---a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities, a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me---the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshipers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum regular and muffled like the beating of a heart, the heart of a conquering darkness.

weren't we all the same as children?" eiko asked. "all of us, destined to become beautiful brides in fluffy white dresses!" she giggled to herself. "where did we go wrong?" isn't that what keeps life interesting?" i replied. "and who knows? next year you could be somebody's wife. no one knows what will happen." sometimes i think it would be wonderful just to stay the way i am forever, just kick back and space out during the afternoon thinking about all the exciting things that the night will bring, all the naughty things i might take part in." she snickered again. well," i said, "aren't you the happy one." she squinted her tiny nose and laughed. dawn was breaking as we said good-bye. i saw her off by watching her small body disappear into the background, her high heels clapping along, echoing in the early morning city. my drunkenness, the sunrise, the bright sky, and a friend who was leaving. if i had died in my fall i would have missed that morning - that splendid sunrise over tokyo.

My husband's personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. On the very night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often said jokingly to me: 'Well, have you already picked out a lover?' I blushed with shame. 'Don't deceive me,' he added on one occasion, 'that would seem ugly to me, but pick out an attractive lover, or preferably several. You are a splendid woman, but still half a child, and you need toys.

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.

I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. I heard four speeches which I can never forget... one by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll, — oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began... How handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from his lips! What an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! How pale those speeches are in print, but how radiant, how full of color, how blinding they were in the delivery! It was a great night, a memorable night. I doubt if America has seen anything quite equal to it. I am well satisfied I shall not live to see its equal again... Bob Ingersoll’s music will sing through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears. And I shall always see him, as he stood that night on a dinner-table, under the flash of lights and banners, in the midst of seven hundred frantic shouters, the most beautiful human creature that ever lived... You should have seen that vast house rise to its feet; you should have heard the hurricane that followed. That's the only test! People might shout, clap their hands, stamp, wave their napkins, but none but the master can make them get up on their feet. {Twain's letter to his wife, Livy, about friend Robert Ingersoll's incredible speech at 'The Grand Banquet', considered to be one of the greatest oratory performances of all time}

Apples of Hesperides Glinting golden through the trees, Apples of Hesperides! Through the moon-pierced warp of night Shoot pale shafts of yellow light, Swaying to the kissing breeze Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming, Apples of Hesperides!. Far and lofty yet they glimmer, Apples of Hesperides! Blinded by their radiant shimmer, Pushing forward just for these; Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred, Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred, Always thinking soon to seize And possess the golden-glistening Apples of Hesperides!. Orbed, and glittering, and pendent, Apples of Hesperides! Not one missing, still transcendent, Clustering like a swarm of bees. Yielding to no man's desire, Glowing with a saffron fire, Splendid, unassailed, the golden Apples of Hesperides!

On, I don't think I'm a genius!' cried Josie, growing calm and sober as she listened to the melodious voice and looked into the expressive face that filled her with confidence, so strong, sincere and kindly was it. 'I only want to find out if I have talent enough to go on, and after years of study be able to act well in any of the good plays people never tire of seeing. I don't expected to be a Mrs. Siddons or a Miss Cameron, much as I long to be; but it does seem as if I had something in me which can't come out in any way but this. When I act I'm perfectly happy. I seem to live, to be in my own world, and each new part is a new friend. I love Shakespeare, and am never tired of his splendid people. Of course I don't understand it all; but it's like being alone at night with the mountains and the stars, solemn and grand, and I try to imagine how it will look when the sun comes up, and all is glorious and clear to me. I can't see, but I feel the beauty, and long to express it.

What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansion! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path?

He paused a moment, gazing in awe at the huge mass of buildings composing the castle. It stood close to the river, on either side and to the rear stretched the extensive park and gardens, filled with splendid trees, fountains and beds of brilliant flowers in shades of pink, crimson, and scarlet. The castle itself was built of pink granite, and enclosed completely a smaller, older building which the present Duke's father had considered too insignificant for his town residence. The new castle had taken forty years to build; three architects and hundreds of men had worked day and night, and the old Duke had personally selected every block of sunset-colored stone that went to its construction. 'I want it to look like a great half-open rose,' he declared to the architects, who were fired with enthusiasm by this romantic fancy. It was begun as a wedding present to the Duke's wife, whose name was Rosamond, but unfortunately she died some nine years before it was completed. 'never mind, it will do for her memorial instead,' said the grief-stricken but practical widower. The work went on. At last the final block was laid in place. The Duke, by now very old, went out in his barouche and drove slowly along the opposite riverbank to consider the effect. He paused midway for a long time, then gave his opinion. 'It looks like a cod cutlet covered in shrimp sauce,' he said, drove home, took to his bed, and died.

No one ever said aloud any of the kinds of things he was so constantly thinking, because no one in the parish, not Alice, not Lady Higgs, not anybody, ever seemed to see the things he saw. If they thought as he did, if they saw what he did, they never mentioned it; and to have things which are precious to one eternally unmentioned makes one, he had long discovered, lonely. These August nights, for instance—remarkably and unusually beautiful, warm and velvety as he had never known them, ushered in each evening by the most astonishing variety of splendid sunsets—nobody had said a single word about them. They might have been February ones, for all the notice they got. Sometimes he climbed up to the top of Burdon Down towards evening, and stood staring in amazement at what looked like heaven let loose in flames over England; but always he stood alone, always there was no one but himself up there, and no one afterwards, when he descended from his heights, seemed to be aware that anything unusual had been going on.

Billy's native arrogance might well have been a gift of miffed genes, then come to splendid definition through the tests to which a street like Broadway puts a young man on the make: tests designed to refine a breed, enforce a code, exclude all simps and gumps, and deliver into the city's life a man worthy of functioning in this age of nocturnal supremacy. Men like Billy Phelan, forged in the brass of Broadway, send, in the time of their splendor, telegraphic statements of mission: I, you bums, am a winner. And that message, however devoid of Christ-like other-cheekery, dooms the faint-hearted Scottys of the night, who must sludge along, never knowing how it feels to spill over with the small change of sassiness, how it feels to leave the spillover on the floor, more where that came from, pal. Leave it for the sweeper.

You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?” “No, indeed!” “You’ll be interested to hear that I’m engaged.” “My dear fellow! I congrat----” “To Milverton’s housemaid.” “Good heavens, Holmes!” “I wanted information, Watson.” “Surely you have gone too far?” “It was a most necessary step. I am a plumber with a rising business, Escott, by name. I have walked out with her each evening, and I have talked with her. Good heavens, those talks! However, I have got all I wanted. I know Milverton’s house as I know the palm of my hand.” “But the girl, Holmes?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You can’t help it, my dear Watson. You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table. However, I rejoice to say that I have a hated rival, who will certainly cut me out the instant that my back is turned. What a splendid night it is!

The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed, their red glory all over. It occurred to him that all the flowers he had seen in the glass cases that first night must have gone the same way, long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass; and it was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run. Paul took one of the blossoms carefully from his coat and scooped a little hole in the snow, where he covered it up. Then he dozed awhile, from his weak condition, seemingly insensible to the cold.

I am almost ashamed to answer,' she said. 'As I have said before, Emily Fox-Seton has become the lodestar of my existence. I cannot live without her. She has walked over to Maundell to make sure that we do not have a dinner-party without fish to-night.' 'She has _walked_ over to Maundell,' said Lord Walderhurst--'after yesterday?' 'There was not a pair of wheels left in the stable,' answered Lady Maria. 'It is disgraceful, of course, but she is a splendid walker, and she said she was not too tired to do it. It is the kind of thing she ought to be given the Victoria Cross for--saving one from a dinner-party without fish.' The Marquis of Walderhurst took up the cord of his monocle and fixed the glass rigidly in his eye. 'It is not only four miles to Maundell,' he remarked, staring at the table-cloth, not at Lady Maria, 'but it is four miles back.

What is withdrawal?" "Let's see, since you know your scripture so well, was that Onan? Yes, that bugger. What he did." "Spilling his seed on the floor?" "Yes," continued her husband, "it would be lovely if I could take you and spill my seed somewhere else. Not on the floor, mind you. But perhaps on your very soft belly. Perhaps even on your splendid breasts. and perhaps, if I'm in a really terrible mood, I'll make you swallow it. - Vere to Elissande

But just for the sake of argument, let's say I am cornered. Or perhaps I am in the middle of a crowded ballroom and do not want to make a scene. If you were flirting with a young lady who had just told you not to call her sweetheart, what would you do?" "I would accede to her wishes and bid her good night," he said starchily. "You would not!" Henry accused with a playful smile. "You're a terrible rake, Dunford. Belle told me." "Belle talks too much," he muttered.

Poor Cook, thought Captain, I must be kinder to her. She makes a splendid pet. How faithful she is! I always say you can't get the same love from a dog that you can from a human. So clever, too. I believe she understands every word I say. I believe they have souls, just like dogs. It's uncanny how canine a human can be, if you are kind to them and treat them well. I know for a fact that when some dogs in history died, their humans lay down on the grave and howled all night and refused food and pined away. It was just instinct, of course, not real intelligence, but all the same it makes you think. I believe that when a human does, it goes to a special heaven for humans, with kind dogs to look after it.

Göring had promised Hitler he would bring England to its knees in four days, but even after four weeks of nightly attacks on London and raids against a host of other targets, there was still no sign that Churchill was beginning to waver.

Churchill stayed at the White House, as did secretary Martin and several others, and got a close-up look at Roosevelt’s own secret circle. Roosevelt, in turn, got a close-up look at Churchill. The first night Churchill and members of his party spent in the White House, Inspector Thompson—also one of the houseguests—was with Churchill in his room, scouting various points of danger, when someone knocked at the door. At Churchill’s direction, Thompson answered and found the president outside in his wheelchair, alone in the hall. Thompson opened the door wide, then saw an odd expression come over the president’s face as he looked into the room behind the detective. “I turned,” Thompson wrote. “Winston Churchill was stark naked, a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other.” The president prepared to wheel himself out. “Come on in, Franklin,” Churchill said. “We’re quite alone.” The president offered what Thompson called an “odd shrug,” then wheeled himself in. “You see, Mr. President,” Churchill said, “I have nothing to hide.

That night, Zalmai wakes up coughing. Before Laila can move, Tariq swings his legs over the side of the bed. He straps on his prosthesis and walks over to Zalmai, lifts him up into his arms. From the bed, Laila watches Tariq's shape moving back and forth in the darkness. She sees the outline of Zalmai's head on his shoulder, the knot of his hands at Tariq's neck, his small feet bouncing by Tariq's hip. When Tariq comes back to bed, neither of them says anything. Laila reaches over and touches his face. Tariq's cheeks are wet.

It’s not the bombs I’m scared of any more, it’s the weariness,” wrote a female civil servant in her Mass-Observation diary—“trying to work and concentrate with your eyes sticking out of your head like hat-pins, after being up all night. I’d die in my sleep, happily, if only I could sleep.

The prayer that moves Omnipotence to pity, and summons all the hosts of heaven to help, is not the prayer of nicely rounded periods--Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null--but the prayer of passionate entreaty. It is a call--a call such as a doctor receives at dead of night; a call such as the fireman receives when all the alarms are clanging; a call such as the ships receive in mid-ocean, when, hurtling through the darkness and the void, there comes the wireless message, 'S.O.S.' 'Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.

Mad, you must see me mad; your opinion is awash to me as long as I am crazed by love. I welcome this folly that you give to me with great estate. Thief? Rascal? I did what others did and what others had me do and we are all doomed, but I do not regret for one instant the coming of events of this most splendid night. You should have seen how carefully I proceeded and how I found love in the most dreadful of streets, during my most mourning of states and on the most propitious of nights. Play samartian to the fool, champion to the underdog. So to speak, I am a hubris acolyte of love.

Gift Nothing will hurt you that much despite how you feel the stress on your back shapes your insight this splendid November rain Toussaint. I find you by your marks, he says an imprint But when I summon you, I talk to—I say— my memory of your face. It’s kind of crazy to others. They’re not very interesting he says. When I first came to this country, and now I know the language I say, but I had in a dream spoken it many years previously. That is, not the language of the dead the language of France. I took one year of French in 1964 and then nothing but once, in 1977 I spoke French in a dream all night: I was in the future I moved here in 1992. Country of the more logical than I? though the people of my quartier know and like me, even as I a foreigner remain strange You do everything alone a woman said to me. There are ways to care without interfering but the French speak of anguish frequently they are conscious of emotional extremity a terrible gift. It’s all a gift, he says . . . some haven’t been opened. I’m not sure he said that it’s nearly my sixty-seventh birthday today though it’s the day of the dead hello we love you they say.

Love, that is first and last of all things made, The light that has the living world for shade, The spirit that for temporal veil has on The souls of all men woven in unison, One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought, And alway through new act and passion new Shines the divine same body and beauty through, The body spiritual of fire and light That is to worldly noon as noon to night; Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man And spirit within the flesh whence breath began; Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime; Love, that is blood within the veins of time; That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand, Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land, And with the pulse and motion of his breath Through the great heart of the earth strikes life and death, The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune live Through day and night of things alternative, Through silence and through sound of stress and strife, And ebb and flow of dying death and life: Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears, Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears, That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings; Love that is root and fruit of terrene things; Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown, The whole world's fiery forces not burn down; Love, that what time his own hands guard his head The whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead; Love, that if once his own hands make his grave The whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save; Love, that for very life shall not be sold, Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold; So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell, Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell; So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given, Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven; Love that is fire within thee and light above, And lives by grace of nothing but of love; Through many and lovely thoughts and much desire Led these twain to the life of tears and fire; Through many and lovely days and much delight Led these twain to the lifeless life of night.

In a Whispering Gallery That whisper takes the voice Of a Spirit, speaking to me, Close, but invisible, And throws me under a spell At the kindling vision it brings; And for a moment I rejoice, And believe in transcendent things That would make of this muddy earth A spot for the splendid birth Of everlasting lives, Whereto no night arrives; And this gaunt gray gallery A tabernacle of worth On this drab-aired afternoon, When you can barely see Across its hazed lacune If opposite aught there be Of fleshed humanity Wherewith I may commune; Or if the voice so near Be a soul’s voice floating here.

Then a state-sponsored play out of Berlin begins: a story of invaders sneaking into a village at night. All twelve children sit riveted. In the play, the invaders pose as hook-nosed department-store owners, crooked jewelers, dishonorable bankers; they sell glittering trash; they drive established village businessmen out of work. Soon they plot to murder German children in their beds. Eventually a vigilant and humble neighbor catches on. Police are called: big handsome-sounding policemen with splendid voices. They break down the doors. They drag the invaders away. A patriotic march plays. Everyone is happy again.

The moment I stepped out the front door I was faced again with Manhattan. There it was, oh splendid ship of concrete and steel, aluminum, glass and electricity, forging forever up the dark river. (The hudson - like a river of oil, filthy and rich, gleaming with silver lights.) Manhattan at twilight: floating gardens of tender neon, the lavender towers where each window glittered at sundown with reflected incandescence, where each crosstown street became at evening a gash of golden fire, and the endless flow of the endless traffic on the West Side Highway resembled a luminous necklace strung round the island's shoulders.

The two often sheltered from air raids in the room of another resident, Australian prime minister Menzies, whom Pamela had come to know well because of her connection to the Churchills. Menzies occupied a large suite on the Dorchester’s much-coveted first floor. The women spent nights on mattresses laid out in its windowless entry alcove. Now

So much had happened since those childhood days, so much that needed to be said. But that first night the enormity of it all stole the words from her. That night, it was blessing enough to be beside him. It was blessing enough to know that he was here, to feel the warmth of him next to her, to lie with him, their heads touching, his right hand laced in her left.

A morning-flowered dalliance demured and dulcet-sweet with ebullience and efflorescence admiring, cozy cottages and elixirs of eloquence lie waiting at our feet - We'll dance through fetching pleasantries as we walk ephemeral roads evocative epiphanies ethereal, though we know our hearts are linked with gossamer halcyon our day a harbinger of pretty things infused with whispers longing still and gamboling in sultry ways to feelings, all ineffable screaming with insouciance masking labyrinthine paths where, in our nonchalance, we walk through the lilt of love’s new morning rays. Mellifluous murmurings from a babbling brook that soothes our heated passion-songs and panoplies perplexed with thought of shadows carried off with clouds in stormy summer rains… My dear, and that I can call you 'dear' after ripples turned to crashing waves after pyrrhic wins, emotions drained we find our palace sunned and rayed with quintessential moments lit with wildflower lanterns arrayed on verandahs lush with mutual love, the softest love – our preferred décor of life's lilly-blossom gate in white-fenced serendipity… Twilight sunlit heavens cross our gardens, graced with perseverance, bliss, and thee, and thou, so splendid, delicate as a morning dove of charm and mirth – at least with me; our misty mornings glide through air... So with whippoorwill’d sweet poetry - of moonstones, triumphs, wonder-woven in chandliers of winglet cherubs wrought with time immemorial, crafted with innocence, stowed away and brought to light upon our day in hallelujah tapestries of ocean-windswept galleries in breaths of ballet kisses, light, skipping to the breakfast room cascading chrysalis's love in diaphanous imaginings delightful, fleeting, celestial-viewed as in our eyes which come to rest evocative, exuberant on one another’s moon-stowed dreams idyllic, in quiescent ways, peaceful in their radiance resplendent with a myriad of thought soothing muse, rhapsodic song until the somnolence of night spreads out again its shaded truss of luminescent fantasies waiting to be loved by us… Oh, love! Your sincerest pardons begged! I’ve gone too long, I’ve rambled, dear, and on and on and on and on - as if our hours were endless here… A morning toast, with orange-juiced lips exalting transcendent minds suffused with sunrise symphonies organic-born tranquilities sublimed sonorous assemblages with scintillas of eternity beating at our breasts – their embraces but a blushing, longing glance away… I’ll end my charms this enraptured morn' before cacophony and chafe coarse in crude and rough abrade when cynical distrust is laid by hoarse and leeching parasites, distaste fraught with smug disgust by hairy, smelly maladroit mediocrities born of poisoned wells grotesque with selfish lies - shrill and shrieking, biting, creeping around our love, as if they rose from Edgar Allen’s own immortal rumpled decomposing clothes… Oh me, oh my! I am so sorry! can you forgive me? I gone and kissed you for so long, in my morning imaginings, through these words, through this song - ‘twas supposed to be "a trifle treat," but little treats do sometimes last a little longer; and, oh, but oh, but if I could, I surly would keep you just a little longer tarrying here, tarrying here with me this pleasant morn

I, too, head for the Baths of Caracalla, thinking—with my old, magnificent privilege of thinking… (And let there still be a god in me that thinks, lost, weak, and childish, yet whose voice is so human it is almost a song.) Oh, to leave this prison of poverty! To be free of the yearning that makes these ancient nights so splendid! He who knows yearning, and he who does not, have something in common: man’s desires are humble.

I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that’s the truth. We were bored. We intellectuals. Because you can't read all day and all night. You can't write all day and all night. Splendid isolation has never been our style...

A full moon, although less splendid than that earlier on,lit everything around. Before I reached the point where I would have to leave the road and set off across country, the narrow path I was following seemed suddenly to end and disappear behind a large hedge, and there before me, as if blocking my way, stood a single, tall tree, very dark at first against the transparently clear night sky. Out of nowhere, a breeze got up. It set the tender stems of the grasses shivering, made the green blades of the reeds shudder and sent a ripple across the brown waters of a puddle. Like a wave, it lifted up the spreading branches of the tree and, murmuring, climbed the trunk, and then, suddenly, the leaves turned their undersides to the moon and the whole beech tree (because it was a beech) was covered in white as far as the topmost branch.It was only a moment, no more than that, but the memory of it will last as long as my life lasts.

What, then, remains to be done by those who live now, devoted body and soul to our ideal of visible (and invisible) perfection on all planes? On a worldwide scale, or even national, absolutely nothing. It is too late. The “twenty-fifth hour” has sounded for too long a time. On the individual scale, or at least “restricted,” there remains to preserve, insofar as it is still possible, the beauty of the world: human, animal, vegetable, inanimate; all beauty; to obstinately and efficiently preserve élite minorities; dedicatedly to defend them at all costs—all noble minorities, whether they be those of the Aryans of Europe, Asia, or America, conscious of the excellence of their common race; or of those splendid large felines threatened by extinction; or of those noble trees threatened by the atrocity of being uprooted by bulldozers in order to install, on their nourishing soil, invading multitudes of mammals with two legs, less beautiful and less innocent than they. It remains to take care and resist; and to aid all beautiful minorities attacked by the agents of chaos; to resist, even if that should delay only a few decades the disappearance of the last aristocrats among men, animals, or trees. There is nothing else that one can do, if not, perhaps, to curse in one’s heart, day and night, today’s humanity (apart from very rare exceptions), and to work with all one’s efforts for its destruction.

We seem afraid of the natural forces. John Burroughs puts it well, says, if the American is only dry, he is not content to take a drink of pure cold water, but must put sugar into it, or a flavor. To me, these things—the things of which these are the type—are the prominent dangers in the future of our America. The exhilaration of such freedom—the going and coming—the being master of yourself and of the road! No one who is not a walker can begin to know it! Oh! the long, long walks, way into the nights!—in the after hours—sometimes lasting till two or three in the morning! The air, the stars, the moon, the water—what a fullness of inspiration they imparted!—what exhilaration! And there were the detours, too—wanderings off into the country out of the beaten path: I remember one place in Maryland in particular to which we would go. How splendid, above all, was the moon—the full moon, the half moon: and then the wonder, the delight, of the silences.

And, even now, as he paced the streets, and listlessly looked round on the gradually increasing bustle and preparation for the day, everything appeared to yield him some new occasion for despondency. Last night, the sacrifice of a young, affectionate, and beautiful creature, to such a wretch, and in such a cause, had seemed a thing too monstrous to succeed; and the warmer he grew, the more confident he felt that some interposition must save her from his clutches. But now, when he thought how regularly things went on, from day to day, in the same unvarying round; how youth and beauty died, and ugly griping age lived tottering on; how crafty avarice grew rich, and manly honest hearts were poor and sad; how few they were who tenanted the stately houses, and how many of those who lay in noisome pens, or rose each day and laid them down each night, and lived and died, father and son, mother and child, race upon race, and generation upon generation, without a home to shelter them or the energies of one single man directed to their aid; how, in seeking, not a luxurious and splendid life, but the bare means of a most wretched and inadequate subsistence, there were women and children in that one town, divided into classes, numbered and estimated as regularly as the noble families and folks of great degree, and reared from infancy to drive most criminal and dreadful trades; how ignorance was punished and never taught; how jail-doors gaped, and gallows loomed, for thousands urged towards them by circumstances darkly curtaining their very cradles' heads, and but for which they might have earned their honest bread and lived in peace; how many died in soul, and had no chance of life; how many who could scarcely go astray, be they vicious as they would, turned haughtily from the crushed and stricken wretch who could scarce do otherwise, and who would have been a greater wonder had he or she done well, than even they had they done ill; how much injustice, misery, and wrong, there was, and yet how the world rolled on, from year to year, alike careless and indifferent, and no man seeking to remedy or redress it; when he thought of all this, and selected from the mass the one slight case on which his thoughts were bent, he felt, indeed, that there was little ground for hope, and little reason why it should not form an atom in the huge aggregate of distress and sorrow, and add one small and unimportant unit to swell the great amount.

There is a monstrous garden in the sky Nightly they sow it fresh. Nightly it springs, Luridly splendid, towards the moon on high. Red-poppy flares, and fire-bombs rosy-bright Shell-bursts like hellborn sunflowers, gold and white Lilies, long-stemmed, that search the heavens' height... They tend it well, these gardeners on wings! How rich these blossoms, hideously fair Sprawling above the shuddering citadel As though ablaze with laughter! Lord, how long Must we behold them flower, ruthless, strong Soaring like weeds the stricken worlds among Triumphant, gay, these dreadful blooms of hell? O give us back the garden that we knew Silent and cool, where silver daisies lie, The lovely stars! O garden purple-blue Where Mary trailed her skirts amidst the dew Of ageless planets, hand-in-hand with You And Sleep and Peace walked with Eternity..... But here I sit, and watch the night roll by. There is a monstrous garden in the sky! (written during an air raid, London, midnight, October 1941)

Dinner proceeded as if no raid were occurring. After the meal, Biddle told Churchill that he would like to see for himself “the strides which London had made in air-raid precautions.” At which point Churchill invited him and Harriman to accompany him to the roof. The raid was still in progress. Along the way, they put on steel helmets and collected John Colville and Eric Seal, so that they, too, as Colville put it, could “watch the fun.” Getting to the roof took effort. “A fantastic climb it was,” Seal said in a letter to his wife, “up ladders, a long circular stairway, & a tiny manhole right at the top of a tower.” Nearby, anti-aircraft guns blasted away. The night sky filled with spears of light as searchlight crews hunted the bombers above. Now and then aircraft appeared silhouetted against the moon and the starlit sky. Engines roared high overhead in a continuous thrum. Churchill and his helmeted entourage stayed on the roof for two hours. “All the while,” Biddle wrote, in a letter to President Roosevelt, “he received reports at various intervals from the different sections of the city hit by the bombs. It was intensely interesting.” Biddle was impressed by Churchill’s evident courage and energy. In the midst of it all, as guns fired and bombs erupted in the distance, Churchill quoted Tennyson—part of an 1842 monologue called Locksley Hall, in which the poet wrote, with prescience: Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.

A learned priest is also, needless to say, a splendid thing. An Empress taking part in an imperial procession during daylight hours. A formal expedition by the Regent, or his official pilgrimage to Kasuga Shrine.5 Grape-coloured figured silk. Violet is a splendid colour wherever it’s found – in flowers, in fabric or in paper. Snow lying thick in a garden. The Regent. The water iris is rather less fine than other violet-coloured flowers. The reason the sight of a sixth-rank Chamberlain on night watch is so delightful is because of the violet in his clothes.

Once upon a time there was a child who had a golden brain. His parents only discovered this by chance when he injured his head and gold instead of blood flowed out. They then began to look after him carefully and would not let him play with other children for fear of being robbed. When the boy was grown up and wanted to go out into the world, his mother said: “We have done so much for you,we ought to be able to share your wealth.” Then her son took a large piece of gold out of his brain and gave it to his mother. He lived in great style with a friend who, however, robbed him one night and ran away. After that the man resolved to guard his secret and to go out to work, because his reserves were visibly dwindling. One day he fell in love with a beautiful girl who loved him too, but no more than the beautiful clothes he gave her so lavishly. He married her and was very happy, but after two years she died and he spent the rest of his wealth on her funeral, which had to be splendid. Once, as he was creeping through the streets,weak,poor, and unhappy, he saw a beautiful little pair of boots that would have been perfect for his wife. He forgot that she was dead- perhaps because his emptied brain no longer worked- and entered the shop to buy the boots. But in that very moment he fell, and the shopkeeper saw a dead man lying on the ground. This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering… Does not mother love belong to the ‘smallest’, but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?

By half-past one the last drop of pleasure had evaporated, leaving nothing but headaches. We perceived that we were not splendid inhabitants of a splendid world, but a crew of underpaid workmen grown squalidly and dismally drunk. We went on swallowing the wine, but it was only from habit, and the stuff seemed suddenly nauseating... Most of my Saturday nights went in this way. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living.

But human beings must suffer, and must make suffering for themselves, and beat themselves up into spiritual frenzies, and oh death and desolation, and oh night space and horror, and oh keep my dream from me. And how very splendid it is that we can do all this to ourselves and have such a splendid and really ingenious gift for inflicting suffering upon ourselves. For suffering and strain are the gauge of life, and who wishes to live like a vegetable? But sometimes suffering measures life and ends it. And then it is not good at all. And between two people without knowing it a love may grow up, and a link may form, and no one knows or guesses.

Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clamour of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and left over halwa under a starlit sky. She mourned that she would never see Aziza grow up, would not see the beautiful young woman that she would one day become, would not get to paint her hands with henna and toss noqul candy at her wedding. She would never play with Aziza's children. She would have liked that very much, to be old and play with Aziza's children. Near the goalpost, the man behind her asked her to stop. Mariam did. Through the crisscrossing grid of the burqa, she saw his shadow arms lift his shadow Kalashnikov. Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings. Mariam's final thoughts were a few words from the Koran, which she muttered under her breath. He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night, and He has made the sun and the moon subservient; each one runs on to an assigned term; now surely He is the Mighty, the Great Forgiver. "Kneel," the Talib said O my Lord! Forgive and have mercy, for you are the best of the merciful ones. "Kneel here, hamshira and look down." One last time, Mariam did as she was told.

Warren,still staring at the splendid black eye and several cuts on his face, remarked, "Hate to see what the other fellow looks like," which James supposed was a compliment of sorts, since Warren had personal experience of his fists from numerous occasions himself. "Like to congratulate the other fellow myself," Nicholas said with a smirk, which got him a kick under the table from his wife. James nodded to Reggie. "Appreciate it, m'dear. My feet wouldn't reach." To which she blushed that her kick had been noticed. And Nicholas, still wincing, managed a scowl,which turned out rather comical looking, considering the two expressions didn't mix all that well. "Is Uncle Toony still among the living?" Amy asked, probably because neither James nor his brother had returned back downstairs last night. "Give me a few more days to figure that out,puss, 'cause I bloody well ain't sure just now," Anthony said as he came slowly into the room,an arm tucked to his side as if he were protecting some broken ribs. A melodramatic groan escaped as he took the seat across from his brother. James rolled his eyes hearing it. "Give over,you ass," he sneered. "Your ife ain't here to witness your theatrics." "She's not?" Anthony glanced down the table, then made a moue and sat back in his chair-minus groaning this time. However, he did complain to James, "You did break my ribs,you know." "Devil I did, though I'll admit I considered it. And by the by, the option is still open." Anthony glared at him. "We're too bloody old to be beating on each other." "Speak for yourself, old man. One is never too old for a spot of exercise." "Ah,so that's what we were doing?" Anthony shot back dryly, as he gently fingered his own black eye. "Exercising, was it?" James raised a brow. "And that's not what you do weekly at Knighton's Hall? But I understand your confusion in the matter, since you're used to doling out the damage, rather than receiving any. Tends to give one a skewed perspective. Glad to have cleared that up for you." It was at that point that Jason walked in, took one look at his two younger brothers' battered faces, and remarked, "Good God, and at this time of the year,no less? I'll see you both in my study.

You need to get home, both of you. Louis, I’d like to keep the letters here, if you don’t mind. I want to go over them again.” I came to my feet. “And ask the stars about them?” Jesse nodded. Armand only shook his head, gloomy. There were bruises under his eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday. “Ask the-fine. Splendid. Keep them if you like. Burn them. Turn them to gold or silver or lead. In the morning I’ll wake up and none of this will have happened.” “No, lordling,” I said to him. “You’re never going to wake like that again, and you’re never going to be able to forget.” “Bugger you, waif.” “And you.” He walked past both of us without another glance or another word, opened the door, and disappeared into the night. I went to Jesse and wrapped my arms around him. After only a second’s hesitation, his arms lifted to embrace me, too. “I don’t want to go,” I whispered. I felt his chest expand beneath my cheek. “This is going to be much more difficult than I anticipated.” “Which part?” “All of it.” He brought a hand to my hair, his fingers weaving through. “Things are about to change rapidly now, Lora. He’ll come back to us stronger and stronger. He’s going to crave you more and more, and not having you will eat him raw.” I frowned up at him. “What do you mean?” Jesse tucked a strand behind my ear, his eyes emerald dark, his lashes tipped with candlelight. “It will be in his nature. He’ll feel compelled to claim you, and he won’t stop trying to do that. Ever. When that happens-“ “That is not bloody going to happen.” “When that happens,” he said again resolutely, “I want you to remember two things. One: I’ve loved you since before he even knew you lived. Two: Spare a little pity for him. This isn’t entirely his fault. He was born into his role, just as you and I were. But, Lora-of-the-moon-only a little pity, all right?” “My pity may reach as deep and wide as the ocean,” I answered. “But my heart is already claimed.” To prove it, I clutched his shirt and lifted myself to my toes and brought my lips to his. Sweeter than raspberry jam, warmer than candle flame, softer than bread. People often spoke with religious rapture of milk and honey, but if I had nothing but Jesse to consume for the rest of my days, I’d die a heathen beast, content.

Later in the ceremony, Churchill rose and gave an impromptu speech. “Many of those here today have been all night at their posts,” he said, “and all have been under the fire of the enemy in heavy and protracted bombardment. That you should gather in this way is a mark of fortitude and phlegm, of a courage and detachment from material affairs worthy of all that we have learned to believe of Ancient Rome or of modern Greece.” He told the audience that he tried to get away from “headquarters” as much as possible to visit bombed areas, “and I see the damage done by the enemy attacks; but I also see side by side with the devastation and amid the ruins quiet, confident, bright and smiling eyes, beaming with a consciousness of being associated with a cause

The Clipper pulled away from its moorage, entered Long Island Sound off Queens, and began its takeoff run, bumping across a mile-long fetch of open water before at last lifting off, shedding water like a breaching whale. With a cruising speed of 145 miles per hour, the plane would need about six hours to reach its first stop, Bermuda. It flew at eight thousand feet, which pretty much ensured that it would encounter every cloud and storm in its path. There would be turbulence but also luxury. White-jacketed stewards served full meals on china in a dining compartment with tables, chairs, and tablecloths. At dinner men wore suits, women dresses; at night the stewards made up beds in curtained berths. Honeymooners could book a private suite in the plane’s tail and swoon at the moonglade on the sea below.

First Churchill and company went to the city’s Grand Hotel. The building had survived the night’s raid unscathed, but prior raids had inflicted considerable damage. “It had a sense of lean to it, as if it needed shoring up in order to stay in business,” wrote Inspector Thompson. Churchill requested a bath. “Yes, sir!” the desk manager said brightly, as if this posed no challenge whatsoever—when, in fact, prior raids had left the hotel with no hot water. “But somehow, somewhere, in but a few minutes,” Thompson said, “an amused procession of guests, clerks, cooks, maids, soldiers, and walking wounded materialized out of some mystery in the back part of the building, and went up the stairs with hot water in all types of containers, including a garden sprinkler, and filled the tub in the Prime Minister’s room.

Mathias remembered that once when he was a boy, he'd gone up to a pile of red apples that lay in the market cart, in the market near Stolberg where his father often took him. He'd always loved apples, and he couldn't resist the temptation of grabbing one out of the pile. He chose the closest, a splendid red piece of fruit that he would never forget because of his overwhelming desire to take it and hide it in the folds of his clothing. A moment after Mathias reached out and snatched it, the pile slid and applies tumbled down all around him. The farmer, who knew his father, would have been satisfied with an apology. But his father, a successful craftsman who was well-known and respected in the town, had insisted on purchasing an entire basketful of apples, because of the trouble Mathias had caused. Mathias got the worst scolding his father had ever given him. Not because of the money, but for the small act of petty thievery, which an upright man like his father would never tolerate. He shouldered his punishment, and in the end was only allowed to eat as single apple from the basket. He spent the night thinking about the pile. He had to remove only one and the whole thing had come down. He wondered if the same thing might happen with any tower, no matter how majestic and imposing it might seem, were someone to remove the right stone from the base. The thought stayed with him throughout his life. Venice now seemed a lot like that pile of apples. If three murders truly represented an irresistible opportunity, then which nobleman would have seized it, knowing that such a thing would cause La Serenissima and everything it represented to come crashing down?

and, amongst others, my breviary with the gold corners, which I beg he will preserve in remembrance of his affectionate uncle.' "The heirs sought everywhere, admired the breviary, laid hands on the furniture, and were greatly astonished that Spada, the rich man, was really the most miserable of uncles — no treasures — unless they were those of science, contained in the library and laboratories. That was all. Caesar and his father searched, examined, scrutinized, but found nothing, or at least very little; not exceeding a few thousand crowns in plate, and about the same in ready money; but the nephew had time to say to his wife before he expired: `Look well among my uncle's papers; there is a will.' "They sought even more thoroughly than the august heirs had done, but it was fruitless. There were two palaces and a vineyard behind the Palatine Hill; but in these days landed property had not much value, and the two palaces and the vineyard remained to the family since they were beneath the rapacity of the pope and his son. Months and years rolled on. Alexander VI. died, poisoned, — you know by what mistake. Caesar, poisoned at the same time, escaped by shedding his skin like a snake; but the new skin was spotted by the poison till it looked like a tiger's. Then, compelled to quit Rome, he went and got himself obscurely killed in a night skirmish, scarcely noticed in history. After the pope's death and his son's exile, it was supposed that the Spada family would resume the splendid position they had held before the cardinal's time; but this was not the case. The Spadas remained in doubtful ease, a mystery hung over this dark affair, and the public rumor was, that Caesar, a better politician than his father, had carried off from the pope the fortune of the two cardinals. I say the two, because Cardinal Rospigliosi, who had not taken any precaution, was completely despoiled. "Up to this point," said Faria, interrupting the thread of his narrative, "this seems to you very meaningless, no doubt, eh?" "Oh, my friend," cried Dantes, "on the contrary, it seems as if I were

If talking pictures could be said to have a father, it was Lee De Forest, a brilliant but erratic inventor of electrical devices of all types. (He had 216 patents.) In 1907, while searching for ways to boost telephone signals, De Forest invented something called the thermionic triode detector. De Forest’s patent described it as “a System for Amplifying Feeble Electric Currents” and it would play a pivotal role in the development of broadcast radio and much else involving the delivery of sound, but the real developments would come from others. De Forest, unfortunately, was forever distracted by business problems. Several companies he founded went bankrupt, twice he was swindled by his backers, and constantly he was in court fighting over money or patents. For these reasons, he didn’t follow through on his invention. Meanwhile, other hopeful inventors demonstrated various sound-and-image systems—Cinematophone, Cameraphone, Synchroscope—but in every case the only really original thing about them was their name. All produced sounds that were faint or muddy, or required impossibly perfect timing on the part of the projectionist. Getting a projector and sound system to run in perfect tandem was basically impossible. Moving pictures were filmed with hand-cranked cameras, which introduced a slight variability in speed that no sound system could adjust to. Projectionists also commonly repaired damaged film by cutting out a few frames and resplicing what remained, which clearly would throw out any recording. Even perfect film sometimes skipped or momentarily stuttered in the projector. All these things confounded synchronization. De Forest came up with the idea of imprinting the sound directly onto the film. That meant that no matter what happened with the film, sound and image would always be perfectly aligned. Failing to find backers in America, he moved to Berlin in the early 1920s and there developed a system that he called Phonofilm. De Forest made his first Phonofilm movie in 1921 and by 1923 he was back in America giving public demonstrations. He filmed Calvin Coolidge making a speech, Eddie Cantor singing, George Bernard Shaw pontificating, and DeWolf Hopper reciting “Casey at the Bat.” By any measure, these were the first talking pictures. However, no Hollywood studio would invest in them. The sound quality still wasn’t ideal, and the recording system couldn’t quite cope with multiple voices and movement of a type necessary for any meaningful dramatic presentation. One invention De Forest couldn’t make use of was his own triode detector tube, because the patents now resided with Western Electric, a subsidiary of AT&T. Western Electric had been using the triode to develop public address systems for conveying speeches to large crowds or announcements to fans at baseball stadiums and the like. But in the 1920s it occurred to some forgotten engineer at the company that the triode detector could be used to project sound in theaters as well. The upshot was that in 1925 Warner Bros. bought the system from Western Electric and dubbed it Vitaphone. By the time of The Jazz Singer, it had already featured in theatrical presentations several times. Indeed, the Roxy on its opening night in March 1927 played a Vitaphone feature of songs from Carmen sung by Giovanni Martinelli. “His voice burst from the screen with splendid synchronization with the movements of his lips,” marveled the critic Mordaunt Hall in the Times. “It rang through the great theatre as if he had himself been on the stage.

I felt the sense of time and self drop away from me. No now, no to-morrow, no yesterday, no I! Only eternity, one vast whole—sun-shot, star-sprent, love-filled, changeless. And in it all, one spot of consciousness more acute than other spots; and that was the something that had eaten hugely, and that now felt the inward-flung glory of it all; the swooning, half-voluptuous sense of awe and wonder, the rippling, shimmering, universal joy. And then suddenly and without shock—like the shifting of the wood smoke—the mood veered, and there was nothing but I. Space and eternity were I—vast projections of myself, tingling with my consciousness to the remotest fringe of the outward swinging atom-drift; through immeasurable night, pierced capriciously with shafts of paradoxic day; through and beyond the awful circle of yearless duration, my ego lived and knew itself and thrilled with the glory of being. The slowly revolving Milky Way was only a glory within me; the great woman-star jeweling the summit of a cliff, was only an ecstasy within me; the murmuring of the river out in the dark was only the singing of my heart; and the deep, deep blue of the heavens was only the splendid color of my soul.

If anything, it made his appointment all the more exquisite. In the fading light, Inspector Thompson saw tears begin to slip down Churchill’s cheeks. Thompson, too, found himself near tears. — LATE THAT NIGHT CHURCHILL lay in bed, alive with a thrilling sense of challenge and opportunity. “In my long political experience,” he wrote, “I had held most of the great offices of State, but I readily admit that the post which had now fallen to me was the one I liked the best.” Coveting power for power’s sake was a “base” pursuit, he wrote, adding, “But power in a national crisis, when a man believes he knows what orders should be given, is a blessing.” He felt great relief. “At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial….Although impatient for the morning I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.” Despite the doubts he had expressed to Inspector Thompson, Churchill brought to No. 10 Downing Street a naked confidence that under his leadership Britain would win the war, even though any objective appraisal would have said he did not have a chance. Churchill

A team of Mass-Observation researchers, experienced in chronicling the effects of air raids, had arrived on Friday afternoon. In their subsequent report they wrote of having found “more open signs of hysteria, terror, neurosis” than they had seen over the prior two months of chronicling air-raid effects. “The overwhelmingly dominant feeling on Friday was the feeling of utter helplessness.” (The italics were theirs.) The observers noted a widespread sense of dislocation and depression. “The dislocation is so total in the town that people feel that the town itself is killed.” In order to help stem the surge of rumors arising from the raid, the BBC invited Tom Harrisson, the twenty-nine-year-old director of Mass-Observation, to do a broadcast on Saturday night, at nine o’clock, during its prime Home Service news slot, to talk about what he had seen in the city. “The strangest sight of all,” Harrisson told his vast audience, “was the Cathedral. At each end the bare frames of the great windows still have a kind of beauty without their glass; but in between them is an incredible chaos of bricks, pillars, girders, memorial tablets.” He spoke of the absolute silence in the city on Friday night as he drove around it in his car, threading his way past bomb craters and mounds of broken glass. He slept in the car that night. “I think this is one of the weirdest experiences of my whole life,” he said, “driving in a lonely, silent desolation and drizzling rain in that great industrial town.

AFTER THE DELUGE AS SOON as the idea of the Deluge had subsided, A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flower-bells, and said a prayer to the rainbow, through the spider’s web. Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,—and the flowers that already looked around. In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea, high tiered as in old prints. Blood flowed at Blue Beard’s,—through slaughterhouses, in circuses, where the windows were blanched by God’s seal. Blood and milk flowed. Beavers built. “Mazagrans” smoked in the little bars. In the big glass house, still dripping, children in mourning looked at the marvelous pictures. A door banged; and in the village square the little boy waved his arms, understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the bursting shower. Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral. Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and of the polar night. Ever after the moon heard jackals howling across the deserts of thyme, and eclogues in wooden shoes growling in the orchard. Then in the violet and budding forest, Eucharis told me it was spring. Gush, pond,—Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods;—black palls and organs, lightning and thunder, rise and roll;—waters and sorrows rise and launch the Floods again. For since they have been dissipated—oh! the precious stones being buried and the opened flowers!—it’s unbearable! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her fire in the earthen pot will never tell us what she knows, and what we do not know.

The arrival of winter made the matter even more acute, for it multiplied the daily hardships imposed by the German air campaign. Winter brought rain, snow, cold, and wind. Asked by Mass-Observation to keep track of the factors that most depressed them, people replied that weather topped the list. Rain dripped through roofs pierced by shrapnel; wind tore past broken windows. There was no glass to repair them. Frequent interruptions in the supply of electricity, fuel, and water left homes without heat and their residents without a means of getting clean each day. People still had to get to work; their children still needed to go to school. Bombs knocked out telephone service for days on end. What most disrupted their lives, however, was the blackout. It made everything harder, especially now, in winter, when England’s northern latitude brought the usual expansion of night. Every December, Mass-Observation also asked its panel of diarists to send in a ranked list of the inconveniences caused by the bombings that most bothered them. The blackout invariably ranked first, with transport second, though these two factors were often linked. Bomb damage turned simple commutes into hours-long ordeals, and forced workers to get up even earlier in the darkness, where they stumbled around by candlelight to prepare for work. Workers raced home at the end of the day to darken their windows before the designated start of the nightly blackout period, a wholly new class of chore. It took time: an estimated half hour each evening—more if you had a lot of windows, and depending on how you went about it. The blackout made the Christmas season even bleaker. Christmas lights were banned. Churches with windows that could not easily be darkened canceled their night services.

The insensitivity of Roosevelt’s reply startled Churchill. The subtext seemed clear: Roosevelt was concerned only about assistance that would directly help sustain the safety of the United States from German attack, and cared little whether the Middle East fell or not. Churchill wrote to Anthony Eden, “It seems to me as if there has been a considerable recession across the Atlantic, and that quite unconsciously we are being left very much to our fate.” Colville noted how the accumulation of bad news that night left Churchill “in worse gloom than I have ever seen him.” Churchill dictated a reply to Roosevelt in which he sought to frame the importance of the Middle East in terms of the long-range interests of the United States itself. “We must not be too sure that the consequences of the loss of Egypt and the Middle East would not be grave,” he told Roosevelt. “It would seriously increase the hazards of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and could hardly fail to prolong the war, with all the suffering and military dangers that this would entail.” Churchill was growing weary of Roosevelt’s reluctance to commit America to war. He had hoped that by now the United States and Britain would be fighting side by side, but always Roosevelt’s actions fell short of Churchill’s needs and expectations. It was true that the destroyers had been an important symbolic gift, and that the lend-lease program and Harriman’s efficient execution of its mandate were a godsend; but it had become clear to Churchill that none of it was enough—only America’s entry into the war would guarantee victory in any reasonable period of time. One result of Churchill’s long courtship of Roosevelt, however, was that now at least the prime minister felt able to express his concerns and wishes with more candor, directly, without fear of driving America away altogether.

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb—on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost—climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!—for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,—behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;—than this furnace of music,—than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,—than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra,—than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.

Much to Sophie’s extreme lack of surprise, Benedict showed up at his mother’s home the following morning for breakfast. Sophie should have been able to avoid him completely, except that he was loitering in the hall as she tried to make her way down to the kitchen, where she planned to take her morning meal with the rest of the servants. “And how was your first night at Number Five, Bruton Street?” he inquired, his smile lazy and masculine. “Splendid,” Sophie replied, stepping aside so that she might make a clean half circle around him. But as she stepped to her left, he stepped to his right, effectively blocking her path. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself,” he said smoothly. Sophie stepped back to her right. “I was,” she said pointedly. Benedict was far too debonair to step back to his left, but he somehow managed to turn and lean against a table in just the right way to once again block her movement. “Have you been given a tour of the house?” he asked. “By the housekeeper.” “And of the grounds?” “There are no grounds.” He smiled, his brown eyes warm and melting. “There’s a garden.” “About the size of a pound note,” she retorted. “Nonetheless . . .” “Nonetheless,” Sophie cut in, “I have to eat breakfast.” He stepped gallantly aside. “Until next time,” he murmured. And Sophie had the sinking feeling that next time would come quickly indeed. Thirty minutes later, Sophie edged slowly out of the kitchen, half-expecting Benedict to jump out at her from around a corner. Well, maybe not half-expecting. Judging from the way she couldn’t quite breathe, she was probably whole-expecting. But he wasn’t there. She inched forward. Surely he would come bounding down the stairs at any moment, ambushing her with his very presence. Still no Benedict. Sophie opened her mouth, then bit her tongue when she realized she’d been about to call out his name. “Stupid girl,” she muttered. “Who’s stupid?” Benedict asked. “Surely not you.” Sophie nearly jumped a foot. “Where did you come from?” she demanded, once she’d almost caught her breath. He pointed to an open doorway. “Right there,” he answered, his voice all innocence. “So now you’re jumping out at me from closets?” “Of course not.” He looked affronted. “That was a staircase.” Sophie peered around him. It was the side staircase. The servants’ staircase. Certainly not anyplace a family member would just happen to be walking. “Do you often creep down the side staircase?” she asked, crossing her arms. He leaned forward, just close enough to make her slightly uncomfortable, and, although she would never admit it to anyone, barely even herself, slightly excited. “Only when I want to sneak up on someone.” -Benedict & Sophie