My  Wings...

When I was a teenager I started saving in notebooks bits of

verse that touched something in me, bits that I wanted to be

sure I never lost.  I still have those notebooks and am going

to put in here some of what I entered way back then. These

are not written by me, only loved by me.  I don't even have

all the author's names...just their words. I entitled the notebooks,

"My Wings" because that's what they were to me, are to me.

Jo

*

"Stars over snow, and in the West a planet swinging below

a star.  Look for a lovely thing and you will find it. It is

not far. It never will be far."

*

"When I heard the learn'd astronomer.  When the proofs,

the figures were ranged in columns before me.  When I was

shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure

them.  When I, sitting, heard the astronomer where he lectured

with much applause in the lecture-room.  How soon, unaccountable,

I became tired and sick, till rising and gliding out, I wander'd

off by myself in the mystical, moist night-air, and from time

to time, look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."

                                                       ---Walt Whitman

*

"Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me

best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower

where I thought a flower would grow."

                                                       ---Abraham Lincoln

*

"If I had but two loaves of bread, I would sell one and buy

hyacinths, for they would feed my soul."

*

"Certain thoughts are prayers.  There are moments when, no

whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."

*

"10 most beautiful words in the English language:

-dawn

-hush

-lullaby

-murmuring

-tranquil

-mist

-luminous

-chimes

-golden

-melody"

*                       

"The twilight hours, like birds, flew by,

     As lightly and as free,

Ten thousand stars were in the sky,

     Ten thousand on the sea.

For every wave, with dimpled face,

     That leaped upon the air,

Had caught a star in its embrace,

     And held it trembling there."

*

"I meant to do my work today

But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,

And a butterfly flitted across the field,

And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,

Tossing the grasses to and fro,

And a rainbow held out its shining hand-

So what could I do but laugh and go?"

*

"When the oak is felled, the whole forest echoes with its

fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an

unnoticed breeze."

*

"It is only through the morning gate of the beautiful that

you can penetrate into the realm of knowledge.  That which

we feel here as beauty we shall one day know as truth."

                                                ---Schiller

*

"The rainbows all lie crumpled on these hills, the red dawn

scattered on their colored sills.  These hills have caught the

lightning in its flight, caught colors from the skies of day and

night and shine with shattered stars and suns; they hold dyed

yellow, red and purple, blue and gold."

*

                "I Hope

I hope that I shall never tire

Of watching colors in the fire.

I hope I shall not be too old

To see the lilac-stars unfold,

Or find the pear tree wearing white

When spring is summer over night.

When I am tired of rapture,

Let me die then.

Let me never see the frost

Or a fern again.

When songs do not delight,

When waves that lip the pier,

Or driftwood fires,

Or faces,

Are no longer dear-

Let me die quickly;

Let me not know

The eyes of friends,

Candlelight, silence, or snow."

                  ---Mildred Bowers Armstrong

*

"It is a glorious privilege to live, to know, to act, to listen,

to behold, to love.  To look up at the blue summer sky; to

see the sun sink slowly beyond the line of the horizon; to

watch the worlds come twinkling into view, first one by one,

and the myriads that no man can count, and lo! the universe

is white with them; and you and I are here."

*

"Hold fast your dreams!

Within your heart

Keep one still, secret spot

Where dreams may go,

And, sheltered so,

May thrive and grow

Where doubt and fear are not.

O keep a place apart

Within your heart

For little dreams to go!"

*

          "Immortality

And there shall come a day...in Spring

When death and winter

Loose their chill, white hold

Quite suddenly. A day of sunlit air

When winging birds return,

And earth her gentle bosoms bare

So that new, thirsty life

May nurture there.

That breathless hour...

So filled with warm, soft miracles

That faith is born anew.

On such a day...

I shall return to you!

You may not touch me...no,

For you have thought of me as dead.

But in the silence lift believing eyes

Toward the dear infinity

Of skies...and listen...

With your very soul held still...

For you will hear me on some little hill,

Advancing with the coming of the year.

Not far away...not dead...

Not even gone.

The day will suddenly be filled

With immortality...and song,

And without stirring from your quiet place,

Your love will welcome mine...

Across the little space,

And we will talk of every lovely thing...

When I return...in Spring."

                   ---Francesca Falk Miller

*

"...And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the

joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something

far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light

of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air,

and the blue sky, and in the mind of man; a motion and

a spirit that impels all thinking things, all object of

thought, and rolls through all things."

*

"All suddenly the wind comes soft,

And Spring is here again;

And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds

And my heart puts forth its pain."

                                ---Rupert Brooke

*

"Ah God! To see the branches stir

Across the moon at Grantchester!

To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten,

Unforgettable, unforgotten

River-smell, and hear the breeze

Sobbing in the little trees."

                              ---Rupert Brooke

*

                 "Pressed Leaves

Between the pages of old books I find

Forgotten autumn days that once were bright

October afternoons, time out of mind;

November sundowns, with their paling light.

I do not know whose hands designed to keep

The outline of lost days safe and secure;

I only know those hands are clasped in sleep,

The trees long felled.  But this lone fact is sure,

That someone brought sweet plunder to this shelf

And smoothed it carefully against the page,

A gesture I have often made myself,

As if to seize upon a makeshift cage

For beauty transient as the human frame.

New eyes may see, nor ever know my name."

                                ---Minnie Hite Moody

*

"I shall let the thought go forth to find the word.

I shall let the wild dream seek reality.

I shall not doubt. I shall not deny the force

That rises with the fervor of the ocean

And bathes the rugged coasts of my mind with beauty.

I shall not reject the flowing tides of moonlight

That rise and fall in the basins on the hills.

I shall not evade the meaning that descends

In cascades of delight upon my soul.

Life is for living.  Beauty is for seeing,

Music for hearing.  Ecstasy finds the heart

That waits for ecstasy, and Truth will find

The mind that welcomes Truth and longs for it."

*

Some quotes from Rabindranath Tagore:

"Some unseen fingers, like an idle breeze, are playing

upon my heart the music of the ripples."

"My heart beats her waves at the shore of the world and

writes upon it her signature in tears with the words, "I

love thee."

"Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away.

And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and

fall there with a sigh."

"Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among

the silent trees."

"The infant flower opens its bud and cries, 'Dear World, please

do not fade.'"

"The mist, like love, plays upon the heart of the hills and brings out

surprises of beauty."

"Your voice, my friend, wanders in my heart like the muffled sound

of the sea among these listening pines."

"This rainy evening the wind is restless. I look at the swaying branches

and ponder over the greatness of all things."

"I have dipped the vessel of my heart into this silent hour; it has

filled with love."

"Let my doing nothing when I have nothing to do become untroubled in

its depth of peace like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent."

"The bow whispers to the arrow before it speeds forth--'Your freedom

is mine.'"

"Those who have everything but Thee, my God, laugh at those who have

nothing but Thyself."

"In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height; in the lake,

movement stands still to contemplate its own depth."

"I touch God in my song as the hill touches the far-away sea with its

waterfall."

"The same sun is newly born in new lands in a ring of endless dawns."

"The burden of self is lightened when I laugh at myself."

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."

"In its swelling pride, the bubble doubts the truth of the sea, and laughs

and bursts into emptiness."

"An unknown flower in a strange land speaks to the poet: 'Are we not

of the same soil, my lover?'"

"The sigh of the shore follows in vain the breeze that hastens the ship

across the sea."

"Let your love see me even through the barrier of nearness."

"Between the shores of Me and Thee there is the loud ocean, my own

surging self, which I long to cross."

"Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is

still dark."

"My soul tonight loses itself in the silent heart of a tree standing alone

among the whispers of immensity."

"I have met thee where the night touches the edge of the day; where the

light startles the darkness into dawn, and the waves carry the kiss of

the one shore to the other.  From the heart of the fathomless blue comes

one golden call, and across the dusk of tears I try to gaze at thy face

and know not for certain if thou art seen."

"Your speech is simple, my Master, but not theirs who talk of you. I

understand the voice of your stars and the silence of your trees. I know

that my heart would open like a flower; that my life has filled itself at

a hidden fountain."

"I will utter your name, sitting alone among the shadows of my silent

thoughts.  I will utter it without words, I will utter it without purpose.

For I am like a child that calls its mother a hundred times, glad that

it can say 'Mother'."

*

"The trees in the streets are old trees, used to living with people, family

trees that remember your grandfather's name."

*

"Every life is many days, day after day.  We walk through ourselves,

meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widowns,

brothers-in-love.  But always meeting ourselves."

                                              ---James Joyce

*

"I love to think her like a blessed candle burning through life's long

night; quietly useful, simple, gentle tender, and always giving light."

*

"Out of the scabbard of the night,

By God's hand drawn,

Flashes his shining sword of light,

And lo---the dawn!"

*

"Here in their bright metropolis of flowers the banker bees are

busy with their gold."

*

"He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse

and rode madly off in all directions."

*

"This minute, too, is part of eternity."

*

"There are few disguises harder to penetrate than the all-enveloping

cloak of simplicity."

*

"We suppose there is hardly a man who has not an apple orchard

tucked away in his heart somewhere."

*

Some quotes from Gibran:

"Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far

over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of

his soul."

"Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets,

and too many are the children of my longing that walk naken among

these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and

an ache."

"And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour

of separation."

"He alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made

sweeter by his own loving."

"The cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of

the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears."

"Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights...

but your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge. You

would know in words that which you have always known in thought.

You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams."

"In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness; and that

longing is in all of you.  But in some of you that longing is a torrent

rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and

the songs of the forest."

"You pray in your distress and your need; would that you might

pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance."

"He to whom worshipping is a window to open but also to shut, has

not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn."

"In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the

beyond; and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of

spring.  Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity."

"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the

sun?  And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its

restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?"

*

"Softly, gently in the secret night

Down from the North came the quiet white.

Drifting, sifting, silent flight,

Softly, gently in the secret night.

White snow, bright snow, smooth and deep.

Light snow, night snow, quiet as sleep.

Down, down, without a sound;

Down, down, to the frozen ground.

Covering roads and hiding fences,

Sifting in cracks and filling up trenches.

Millions of snowflakes, tiny and light,

Softly, gently, in the secret night."

*

"The revolutions of the human mind happen in secret and in isolation,

while the sun moves across the sky, and the brooks run on, and other

people are making love or wondering what there will be for supper."

*

"I will not wish thee riches nor the glow of greatness, but that wherever

thou go some weary heart shall gladden at thy smile, or shadowed life

know sunshine for a while.  And so thy path shall be a track of light,

like angels' footsteps passing through the night."

*

I came to loveYou late,

O Beauty so ancient and new

I came to love You late.

You were within me

      and I was outside;

You were with me

      but I was not with You.

You called me

You shouted to me

You bathed me in Your light

You wrapped me in Your splendor

You sent my blindness reeling.

You touched me

And I learned to know

Your peace."

*

"Never fear shadows.  They simply mean there's a light shining

somewhere nearby."

*

"From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with

my eyes...and I mean to make the most of my chance."

*

"'Honesty' without compassion and understanding is not honesty,

but subtle hostility."

*

"The fireside is the tulip bed of a winter day."

                                   ---Persian proverb

*

"Now as I pause on the blue promontory

By the lush currents of infinity--

Sudden revelation breaks in glory,

The terrible strange splendor of To Be.

Out of the chaos and the dark and the thunder,

Flung to new glamor in the earth's diagram,

I stand upon the citadel of wonder

And shout the miracle---I am! I AM!"

*

From "The Ivy Tree"  by Mary Stewart:

"I sat there by the open window, with the scent from the climbing

roses unbearably sweet in the dusk, and my mind went round and

round over the events of the day like some small creature padding

its cage.

  The light was fading rapidly.  The long flushed clouds of sunset

had darkened and grown cool.  Below them the sky lay still and clear,

for a few moments rinsed to a pale eggshell green, fragile a blown

glass.  The dusk leaned down slowly, as soft as a bird coming in to

brood.  Later, there would be a moon.

   It was very still.  Close overhead I heard the scratch and rustle

of small feet on the sloping roof tiles, then, the throaty murmurs as

the pigeons settled back again to sleep.  From the garden below came

the smell of lilac.  A moth fluttered past my cheek, and a bat cut the

clear sky like a knife."

*

"A philosopher is a person who doesn't care which side his bread is

buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway."

*

               "Amanda

Great-aunt Amanda never was wed-

Her captain rode away

Tall and young and proud to wear

His uniform of gray.

Her lovely lavender-scented gowns

To by-gone patterns were made;

'Wait, my sweet, just as you are,

Till I come for you.'  he'd said.

I remember the stately shadowed hall

And the clock at the foot of the stair

With hands stayed at noon on its patient face

To show that time waited there.

I do not recall how old she was

Nor yet the year and the day,

When, 'Dearest!' she said, and smiling, died...

At last, he had come, they say."

*

   "Dust of Snow

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued."

                  ---Robert Frost

*

"Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all."

*

   "To One Leaf Falling

I was there when you fell

Under the gently cold October moon

Rising above the Polish graveyard.

Grave little leaflet with no name,

Simply you join your fellows on the ground

Where already they've grown brown.

You were still green--a young one

Meeting the autumn.

I cam seeking solace and solitude;

You fell seeking company in death.

Somehow I gained a solace seeing you,

But I lost solitude, and I am glad.

Now you are in your fellows' company,

And yet, you are a leaf alone...

The only leaf

I ever watched to fall."

*

        "Violin

Oh, heart, I have lost something I would not recapture!

Some vital part of me has sped away in rapture

And hovers on the fingers of my mortal being

To hold me only with a breath too frail for seeing.

Will people look upon me now without surmising,

Or shall I in their glances be surprising

A vague attempt to question why my spirit darted

After a melody that soul and body parted?"

*

"From cell to cell, from heart to heart,

Within, without, beneath, above,

Invisible strands of consciousness

Join life to life with links of love.

I am not lonely in this place,

I am no stranger where I stand--

The cloud is brother to my breath,

The breeze comes friendly to my hand.

In bird and insect, stream and tree,

In summer's rose and winter's snow,

There is something akin to me,

A witness to the truth I know:

That all are one within the One

Whose nature and whose laws are love

And good is present everywhere;

Within, without, beneath, above."

*

"I have thought of beaches, fields,

Tears, laughter.

I have thought of homes put up--

And blown away.

I have thought of meetings and for

Every meeting a good-bye.

I have thought of stars going alone,

Orioles in pairs, sunsets in blundering

Wistful deaths.

I have wanted to let go and cross over

To a next star, a last star.

I have asked to be left a few tears

And some laughter."

*

"The poetry of love is truer than legal, military, or scientific

history.  We think we know little about the 300 years ago world,

but we know what it is to be in love.  It was the same then."

*

"We have built houses for beauty, and costly shrines,

And a throne in all men's view:

But she was far on a hill where the morning shines

And her steps were lost in the dew."

*

"Who shall hear of us in the time to come?  Let him say there

was a burst of fragrance from black branches."

*

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at

least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

                                                  ---Descartes

*

"How much easier it is to please a great man than a little one."

                                                  ---G. B. Shaw

*

"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the

written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before

all, to make you SEE.  That--and no more--and it is everything."

                                                 ---E. Hemingway

*

"If I were sure God would pardon me, and men would not know my

sin, yet I should be ashamed to sin because of its essential baseness."

                                                ---Plato

*

"It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting

is to wait and see if it lasts.  The right reader of a good poem can

tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound--

that he will never get over it."

*

"They said, 'You have a blue guitar...

You do not play things as they are.'

The man replied, 'Things as they are,

Are changed upon the blue guitar.'"

*

"It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too,

than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it."

                                             ---Henry Van Dyke

*

"Give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love."

                                            ---Tagore

*

"The longer one lives, the less importance one attaches to things, and

also the less importance to importance."

*

Picturesque speech:

--"Little hamlets going to sleep, window by window."

--"Revolving doors chopping a crowd into people."

--"A river stapled with bridges."

--"An old fence staggering down the road."

*

         "Memory

Out of the past

That cannot die,

From a great evening

I descry

Two hawks to a hill

Through a red, red sky,

Two wild doves homing,

As wild mates fly,

A bright tear brimming

In a beautiful eyes,

One of us saying

We must not cry--

Long, long ago

As we said good-bye."

*

"Love always loses everything it keeps.

Love's final giving is love's final proof."

*

"Deep in Your Being

Deep in your garden

You let my love go.

There by the roses

The founts overflow.

There wild azaleas

Are softly aflame;

And all your violets

Call me by name.

Into your wildwoods

In rapture I roam,

Where all is beauty

To welcome me home.

Into your blue sky

My being takes wing;

In lyric concert

We soar and we sing.

Then by  your white waves

I dream, and am blest,

Your spirit hushing

My longing to rest.

For on your waters

I sail with delight;

Into your harbor

I come for the night."

                      ---Archibald Rutledge

*

"The hungry heart seeks far and wide to find a kindred soul...

to find another hungry heart."

                      ---Hill

*

More Gibran:

"My soul counseled me and taught me to see beauty veiled by form and

color.  My soul charged me to gaze steadfastly upon all that is deemed

ugly until it appears lovely.  My soul counseled me and charged me to

listen for voices that rise neither from the tongue nor the throat. I have

learned to listen to silence, to hear its choirs singing the songs of the ages,

chanting the hymns of space and disclosing the secrets of eternity.  My

soul counseled me and admonished me to measure time with this saying:

'There was a yesterday and there shall be a tomorrow.'  Unto that hour

I deemed the past an epoch that is lost and shall be forgotten and the

future I deemed an era that I may not attain; but now I have learned

this:  that in the brief present all time, with all that is in time, is achieved

and come true.  My soul counseled me and charged me lest I be exalted

because of overpraise and lest I be distressed for fear of blame. Until

that day I doubted the worth of my own handiwork; but not I have

learned this: that the trees blossom in spring and bear their fruit in

summer, and drop their leaves in autumn to become utterly naked in

winter without exaltation and without fear or shame.  My soul counseled

me and instructed me to see that the light which I carry is not my light,

that my song was not created within me; for though I travel with the

light, I am not the light, and though I am a lute fastened with strings,

I am not the lute-player.  My soul counseled me, my brother, and

enlightened me. And oftentimes has your soul counseled and enlightened

you.  For you are like me and there is no difference between us save that

I speak of what I have heard in my silence, and you guard what is

within you, and your guardianship is as goodly as my much speaking."

"And when he left us we did not feel that a guest had departed but rather

that one of us was still out in the garden and had not yet come in."

"Upon a day Beauty and Ugliness met on the shore of a sea, and they

said to one another, 'Let us bathe in the sea.'  Then they disrobed and swam

in the waters. And after a while Ugliness came back to the shore and garmented

himself with the garments of Beauty and walked his way.  And Beauty, too,

came out of the sea and found not her raiment, and she was too shy to be

naked, therefore she dressed herself with the raiment of Ugliness.  And

Beauty walked her way.  And to this very day men and women mistake the

one for the other.  Yet some there are who have beheld the face of Beauty and

they know her notwithstanding her garments.  And some there be who know the

face of Ugliness, and the cloth conceals him not from their eyes."

*

"With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always--

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one."

                           ---T. S. Eliot

*

"This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be

of no possible use to him."

*

From "The Child From the Sea" by Elizabeth Goudge

"In the silence that followed it was as though his mind, like a great gun,

swung slowly into a fresh position."

"Peace, she supposed, was contingent upon a certain disposition of the

soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made

possible.  Some had the inner strength to wrestle for that detachment, others

had not, and the strength, too, was a gift."

"It was a place both enchanted and enclosed, the windless warmth giving

to all it pervaded a dreamlike eternal quality.  All things had reached

their fruition and were contented with it.  The voices of the sheep in the

fields, and the humming of the bees in the wild flowers that grew along

the hedges, seemed not so much sound as the gentle breathing in and out of

this contentment."

"...and today more than most days it was good to rest against the serene

strength of an old woman who has weathered all the storms and not been

broken by them."

"For all its length the day was grey, cool, and quiet, and the rain-washed

distances opened out to long perspectives of sea, sky and mountains,

speaking of parting and of time."

"He spoke English well, giving to it that special charm that any language

has when a foreigner speaks it, lighting up the music of it with the freshness

of contrasting stress and intonation."

"...a sea-sound of silken skirts in motion."

"...was well aware that truth is invariably more extraordinary than

anything a man's imagination can conceive since a man's mind is

limited and truth is not."

"...for sometimes a chance phrase, if it is well made to hold the truth,

will sink to the deeps of a mind and find lodging there, floating to the

surface again in time of need on the buoyancy of its own shapeliness."

"If our life is the whole of our life, then the whole person is the child

and the boy, and the young man growing into the old man, who gropes

his way through the shadows of the last wood to find the child laughing

on the sands."

*

"The fire of April leaps from forest to forest, flashing up in leaves and

flowers from all nooks and corners.  The sky is thriftless with colors, the

air delirious with songs.  The wind-tossed branches of the woodland spread

their unrest in our blood.  The air is filled with bewilderment of mirth; and

the breeze rushes from flower to flower, asking their names."

                                                    ---Tagore

*

"Sunshine cannot bleach the snow

Nor Time unmake what poets know."

*

"A fortress impregnable

Is esteemed, for the simple reason

Of its difficulty."

*

"Immortal beauty has your love conferred;

Always I seem to be where we have been,

Hearing forever all that we have heard,

Becoming one with all that we have seen;

I am the shore...your love, the eternal sea,

In everlasting music breaks on me."

*

   "The Song Was Yours

A melody of kindliness

From God's own songbook torn,

Fell earthward to possess your soul

When you were born;

And from your spirit's granite drew

Deep clouds that echo strong

Above the shouting of the way

We walked along.

And God I thank, whose song was yours,

That once before its end

You shared your path with me a space

And called me friend."          

                                   ---Hodding Carter

*

More Gibran:

"She drew near to him and embraced him, and closed his eyes that he

might behold her with the eyes of his spirit."

"And the poor man smiled the smile of a withered flower after the rain

and departed hastily."

"On her lips was the smile of a flower and in her eyes the hidden things

of life."

"Beauty is that which draws your spirit.  It is that which you see and

makes you to give rather than receive.  It is that thing you feel when hands

are stretched forth from your depths to clasp it to your depths.  It is the

link between joy and sorrow.  It is all that you perceive hidden and know

unknown and hear silent.  It is a force that begins in the holy of holies of

your being and ends in that place beyond your visions."

"The business of art is to understand nature and to reveal her meanings

to those unable to understand.  It is to convey the soul of a tree rather

than to produce a faithful likeness of the tree.  It is to reveal the conscience

of the sea, not to portray so many foaming waves or so much blue water.

The mission of art is to bring out the unfamiliar from the most familiar."

"There are two kinds of submissiveness: that of the ignorant, which is

slavery, and that of the understanding, which is freedom."

"Yet I feel that someday I shall dip my pen to the very bottom of my

silent depths, and shall make it speak a part--if not all--of the things

that live in my depths."

"When God threw me, a pebble, into this wondrous lake, I disturbed its

surface with countless circles.  But when I reached the depths, I became

very still."

"At dawn she was still standing among us like a lone banner in the

wilderness wherein there are no hosts."

"In my heart are shadows that move, and stroll, and spread like mist;

but I am unable to put them in words."

"We are all vessels for Truth; but we can contain no more of it than we

make room for in our souls.  You cannot fill with wine a jar you have

already filled with vinegar.  Likewise, the heart stocked with earth passions,

unless emptied first, cannot be stocked with heavenly desires."

*

From "Jerusalem" by Colin Thubron:

"The past has grown too massive for its people, who live in it as birds</