"the landless gull,
that at sunset folds her wings
and is rocked to sleep"
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (Chapter 14)
"horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise,
proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones
of congregated blossoms"
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (Chapter 6)
"the magnanimity
of the sea which will permit
no records."
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (Chapter 13)
In the rice-field
can be seen today a hide and seek game
between sunlight and shade
-- Tagore (Songs)
most melancholy!
All noble things
are touched with that.
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (Chapter 16)
purse-seiners waddle
heavily into the bay
blowing their whistles
-- Steinbeck, Cannery Row, Chapter 1
boats rise higher
and higher in the water
until they are empty.
-- Steinbeck, Cannery Row, Chapter 1
"Only the tops
of the Gabilan mountains flamed
with the light of the sun"
-- John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (Chapter 1)
"like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool.
His mind broke the surface
and fell back several times."
-- Steinbeck, Cannery Row (Chapter 32)
"These are nothing but
islands of memory afloat
in a sea of vagueness"
-- Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Chapter I)
"They sang to the stars,
to the waning moon,
to the waving grasses."
-- Steinbeck, Cannery Row (Chapter 15)
"Little girls studying their catechism
suddenly looked up and giggled
for no reason at all."
-- Steinbeck, Cannery Row (Chapter 25)
fishing from a boat
by moonlight, serenaded
by owls and foxes
-- Thoreau, Walden ("The Ponds")
stars that oversprinkle
all the heavens seem to twinkle
with a crystalline delight
-- Poe, "The Bells"
for a few dollars more
mr. smith goes to washington
the great escape
-- 112th, 113th, 114th titles on IMDB Top 250 movie list
a spring-source rises
under everything, a moon
sliding from the shadows
-- Rumi, "Spring"
a mutable cloud
which is always and never
the same.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Essays, First Series", 'History')
With one note
the nightingale
indicates the rose.
-- Rumi, "Spring"
If you die in an
elevator, be sure to
push the Up button.
-- Sam Levenson
lightly dance
on the edges of Time
like dew on the tip of a leaf
-- Rabindranath Tagore
A sprawling, humpbacked mountain
frowned on us and blotted out
a smouldering sunset cloud
-- Louis Untermeyer, "The Banquet of the Bards"
The Higgs field
is everywhere around us, and
all particles are moving
-- CBC News item: "Why the Higgs boson 'God particle' matters" 13/03/19
a single rose
and a hoe left abandoned
in a vast, bare flower bed
— Yan Lianke, “Serve The People,” Chapter I
a wild pagoda tree
is oblivious to the scent
of a garden-bound peony
— Yan Lianke, “Serve The People,” Chapter I
her shadow disappeared
like a tree’s evaporating
at sundown
— Yan Lianke, “Serve The People,” Chapter I
a cloud of vapor,
white and tenuous,
congealed by the cold
-- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Chapt I, "The Tryst"
A sprawling, humpbacked mountain
frowned on us and blotted out
a smouldering sunset cloud.
— Louis Untermeyer, “Robert Frost Relates
The Death of the Tired Man”
deer silently crossed
the fields, half hidden in the mists
of the fall morning
-- Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring
Who am I
standing in the midst
of this thought-traffic?
-- Rumi
in old-fashioned chairs
which were tipped on their hind legs
back against the wall.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
You feel a oneness
with whatever you perceive
in and through stillness.
-- Eckhart Tolle (Stillness Speaks)
pigeons fly
and papers lie
waiting to blow away
-- Joni Mitchell (Chelsea Morning)
gray slanting lines
and splash and stream
down the window-panes
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)
breathing unfurled itself
as a thicker fog upon
the still and heavy air.
-- Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure)
a child dressed in black
wanderin' about
like a lost soul
Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)
see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied
with the wanton wind
-- Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
There's man all over
for you, blaming on his boots
the faults of his feet.
-- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (Act I)
the subterranean laugh
died away; the winds blew on;
the sails filled out
-- Moby Dick (Chapter 36, “The Quarter Deck”)
incommunicable
trees begin to persuade us
to live with them
-- Ralph Waldo Emersin, "Nature"
[on aging cousins uncorsetted]
wobbly as custard
under pale print dresses
and damp aprons
-- Alice Munro, "Connection" in The Moons of Jupiter
someone listening
to a millstone falls asleep...
the stone keeps turning.
-- "Two Friends", in The Essential Rumi
into a landscape
of scrub hollows, frog ponds,
cattails and nettles
— Alice Munro (“Royal Beatings”)
2 means of refuge
from the miseries of life:
music and cats.
-- Albert Schweitzer
The monotony
of a quiet life stimulates
the creative mind.
—Albert Einstein --- From Civilization and Science, October 3, 1933
put away the lists,
sit back, breathe, and listen with
a finely tuned ear…
— Charlotte Kasl, If the Buddha Dated, Chapter 46
vision of the night.
I stand among the shadows
in a moonlit road.
— in the Statement of Caspar Grattan, “The Moonlit Road”, by Ambrose Bierce, in his short story collection, Can Such Things Be?
anxious and sleepless.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
Meanings elude us.
— Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science,
Prologue: Maps to the Real World
this chaotic time.
We cannot hope to make sense
using our old maps.
— Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science,
Prologue: Maps to the Real World
light glared through the windows,
hungrily seeking
some draped lay figure
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Chapt 1)
a mote of dust
suspended
in a sunbeam
— transcribed from the narrative in
"The Pale Blue Dot" from “The Sagan Series”
enchanted garden,
where no wind dared to stir,
unless on tiptoe
— Edgar Allan Poe, “To Helen”