“Peering from some high window, at the gold of November sunset and feeling that if day has to become night, this is a beautiful way.” — E. E. Cummings
Photo: Manistee, Michigan
@shutterandsentence / shutterandsentence.tumblr.com
“Peering from some high window, at the gold of November sunset and feeling that if day has to become night, this is a beautiful way.” — E. E. Cummings
Photo: Manistee, Michigan
“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
— Henry James
Photo: Berlin, Germany
by Mark Strand
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
A New Year's Poem
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow; The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rimes But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.
“And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...” ― Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems
Photo: Minnesota
“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” ― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Photo: Split Rock Lighthouse, Minnesota
F. Scott Fitzgerald
When the world is crazy, the snow is blowing, and the skies are dark and gray, it’s time to turn off the Internet and open up a good book.
Photo: Savannah, GA
What are you reading this spooky season?
Photo: Illinois
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
William Blake
You Can Fly
Photo: UK Pavilion, EPCOT CENTER, Walt Disney World
Remember how I used to read books? I need to do more of that!
"He said to his friend 'If the British march/By land or sea from the town tonight/ Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch/Of the North Church tower as a signal light/One if by land, two if by sea; and I on the opposite shore will be/Ready to ride and sound the alarm/Through every Middlesex village and farm/For the country folk to be up and in arm."
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Paul Revere's Ride"
Photo: Old North Church, Boston, MA
"The discoveries don't come when you're looking for them. They come when for some reason you've given up all control."
-Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light
Photo: Cape Cod, Massachussetts
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
#LiteraryAmerica
Photo: Plymouth, MA