Others

I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing.

 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

 

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

 

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me.

 

Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.

 

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

 

The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

 

And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever.

 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

 

Half light, half shade, She stood, a sight to make an old man young.

 

A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair.

 

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still.

 

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes.

 

This thing you see, a bright-colored deceit, displaying all the many charms of art, with false syllogisms of tint and hue is a cunning deception of the eye…

This thing you see, a bright-colored deceit, displaying all the many charms of art, with false syllogisms of tint and hue is a cunning deception of the eye…

O reverend Chaucere, rose of rethoris all, As in oure tong ane flour imperiall, That raise in Britane evir, quho redis rycht, Thou beris of makaris the triumph riall. 3

 

O reverend Chaucere, rose of rethoris all, As in oure tong ane flour imperiall, That raise in Britane evir, quho redis rycht, Thou beris of makaris the triumph riall. 3

 

Gem of all joy, jasper of jocundity.

 

London, thou art the flower of Cities all.

 

Love is he, radiant with great splendor, And speaks to us of Thee, O Most High.

 

Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do my job for me?”

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.

My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I’m not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.

La vérité est en marche; rien ne peut plus l’arrêter .