The Lake Isle of Innisfree I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the… Continue reading W.B. Yeats
Kiss her foot or her lovely hand; tell her (let your kiss be heard as words): — Petrarch, from Rime sparse’s “Poem 208,” Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, transl. & ed. Robert M. Durling (Harvard University Press, 2011)
The glow and beauty of the starsare nothing near the splendid moonwhen in her roundness she burns silverabout the world. — Sappho, “133, FULL MOON,” The Classical Greek Reader. Trans. Willis Barnstone. (Oxford University Press; 1 edition, August 13, 1998)
When I see and think how much air separates me from that lovely face that is always so near to me and so distant. Then to myself softly: ‘What do you know, wretch? perhaps off there someone is sighing now because of your absence.’ And in this thought my soul breathes more easily. — Petrarch,… Continue reading Petrarch
Softer than rainfall at twilight, Bringing the fields benediction And the hills quiet and greyness, Are my long thoughts of you. — Sappho, Selections: One Hundred Lyrics. Trans. Bliss Carman (1907)
Leave the rest to the gods. – Horace
Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death. – Horace
The Vale of Soul-Making 