Man Will Endure

"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past."

~Excerpt from William Faulkner's 1950 acceptance speech for the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain-- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right,
I have been one acquainted with the night.

~Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night

Because They're Cute

I've been MIA from my blog and when I finally get around to posting here's what I have for ya:

Why?  Because they're cute and the pictures make me happy.  Here's one last one for you:

As Dreams Are Made On

You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

~Prospero, Act 4, Scene 1, William Shakespeare's The Tempest

You Have Never Talked to a Mere Mortal

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."


~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Wondrous Love

There is a great old American hymn that sounds like astonishment itself, and I mention it... because even its title speaks more powerfully of the meaning of our narrative than whole shelves of books.  It is called "Wondrous Love." "What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss/ to bear the dreadful cross for my soul?"  If we have entertained the questions we moderns must pose to ourselves about the plausibility of incarnation, if we have sometimes paused to consider the other ancient stories of miraculous birth, this is not great matter.  But if we let these things distract us, we have lost the main point of the narrative, which is that God is of a kind to love the world extravagantly, wondrously, and the world is a kind to be worth, which is to say worthy of, this pained and rapturous love.  This is the essence of the story that forever eludes the telling.  It lives in the world not as myth or history but as a saturating light, a light so brilliant that hides its source, to borrow an image from another good old hymn.

~Wondrous Love, from Marilynne Robinson's collection of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books 

Upon the Wings of Song

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges,

Herzliebchen, trag ich dich fort,
Fort nach den Fluren des Ganges,
Dort weiß ich den schönsten Ort;

Dort liegt ein rotblühender Garten
Im stillen Mondenschein,
Die Lotosblumen erwarten
Ihr trautes Schwesterlein.

Die Veilchen kichern und kosen,
Und schaun nach den Sternen empor,
Heimlich erzählen die Rosen
Sich duftende Märchen ins Ohr.

Es hüpfen herbei und lauschen
Die frommen, klugen Gazelln,
Und in der Ferne rauschen
Des [heiligen]2 Stromes Well'n.

Dort wollen wir niedersinken
Unter dem Palmenbaum,
Und Liebe und Ruhe trinken,
Und träumen seligen Traum.

On wings of song,
my love, I'll carry you away
to the fields of the Ganges
Where I know the most beautiful place.

There lies a red-flowering garden,
in the serene moonlight,
the lotus-flowers await
Their beloved sister.

The violets giggle and cherish,
and look up at the stars,
The roses tell each other secretly
Their fragant fairy-tales.

The gentle, bright gazelles,
pass and listen;
and in the distance murmurs
The waves of the holy stream.

There we will lay down,
under the palm-tree,
and drink of love and peacefulnes
And dream our blessed dream.
~Auf Flügeln des Gesanges (On Wings of Song), Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
I particularly like the line about the violets giggling.  

Easily torn, not easily mended

"Every secret of the body was rendered up-- bone risen through flesh, sacrilegious glimpses of an intestine or an optic nerve.  From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended."

~Ian McEwan, Atonement