magiadoreal

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.  Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.  In time the curtain-edges will grow light.  Till then I see what’s really always there:  Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,  Making all thought impossible but how  And where and when I shall myself die.  Arid interrogation: yet the dread  Of dying, and being dead,  Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.  The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse  —The good not done, the love not given, time  Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because  An only life can take so long to climb  Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;  But at the total emptiness for ever,  The sure extinction that we travel to  And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,  Not to be anywhere,  And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.  This is a special way of being afraid  No trick dispels. Religion used to try,  That vast moth-eaten musical brocade  Created to pretend we never die,  And specious stuff that says No

T o and fro, to and fro In my little boat I go Sailing far across the sea All alone , just little me. And the sea is big and strong And the journey very long. To and fro, to and fro In my little boat I go. Sea and sky, sea and sky, Quietly on the deck I lie, Having just a little rest. I have really done my best In an awful pirate fight, But we cdaptured them all right. Sea and sky, sea and sky, Quietly on the deck I lie-- Far away, far away From my home and from my play, On a journey without end Only with the sea for friend And the fishes in the sea. But they swim away from me Far away, far away From my home and from my play. Then he cried "O Mother dear." And he woke and sat upright, They were in the rocking chair, Mother's arms around him--tight.

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because ’tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not towers About the soil they trod, Lads, we’ll remember friends of ours Who shared the work with God. To skies that knit their heartstrings right, To fields that bred them brave, The saviours come not home to-night: Themselves they could not save. It dawns in Asia, tombstones show And Shropshire names are read; And the Nile spills his overflow Beside the Severn’s dead. We pledge in peace by farm and town The Queen they served in war, And fire the beacons up and down The land they perished for. “God save the Queen” we living sing, From height to height ’tis heard; And with the rest your voices ring, Lads of the Fifty-third. Oh, God will save

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,­where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? Yes, but not for this alone. Is it to feel our strength— Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more weakly strung? Yes, this, and more! but not, Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow, A golden day's decline! 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, The years that are no more! It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young. It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel: Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emot

IN THIS fair stranger’s eyes of grey Thine eyes, my love, I see. I shudder: for the passing day Had borne me far from thee. This is the curse of life: that not A nobler calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain; But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok’d souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will. I struggle towards the light; and ye, Once-long’d-for storms of love! If with the light ye cannot be, I bear that ye remove. I struggle towards the light; but oh, While yet the night is chill, Upon Time’s barren, stormy flow, Stay with me, Marguerite, still!

JABBERWOCKY Lewis Carroll (from  Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There , 1872) `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves,   And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun   The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand:   Long time the manxome foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree,   And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood,   The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,   And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through   The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head   He went galumphing back. "And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?   Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'   He chortled in his joy. `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves   Did g