Solitary Individual

What is God singing in his profound Delphi of gold and shadow? What oracle for Thebes, the sunwhipped city? Fear unjoints me, the roots of my heart tremble. Now I remember, O Healer, your power, and wonder: Will you send doom like a sudden cloud, or weave it Like nightfall of the past? Speak, speak to us, issue of holy sound: Dearest to our expectancy: be tender! [Oedipus Rex, Párodos, opening strophe]

When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold, Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold . . . . Happy Summer Solstice

Another world I have in mind, That, in one heart, doth bear, complete, Its dear grief, its bitter-sweet, Its heart’s joy, its painful breath, Its dear life, its sorrowful death, Its dear death, and sorrowful life. [Artwork by Hasan Roholamin]

There and back again.

Time was, when one creed ruled the people’s mind: Reverence for royal power Unquestioned, firm as love could bind. Now reverence has resigned Her faith; fear has his hour. Success is now men’s god, men’s more than god. Yet, though the sinner cower Long years in the half-light, Or flout time’s vengeance safe in total night; Yet when the scale turns Justice holds the rod, And Fate flies swift to find And crush the open enemies of Right. Where earth, man’s patient nurse, Has drunk and drunk again Man’s blood, and grieving sees The thick unmelted stain Which pleads for vengeance, there the relentless curse Waits unforgetful for the guilty soul To teem with foul disease That nothing can make whole. As virtue’s door unsealed Is never sealed again, So, though all streams should yield Their purity to swell one cleansing flood, Their force must fail, their power to purge be vain For hands that bear the stain Of unrequited blood. [Aeschylus, The Choephori ]

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All in vain, I will cease now My long absorption with the plough, With the tame and the wild creatures And man united with the earth. I have failed after many seasons To bring truth to birth, And nature's simple equations In the mind's precincts do not apply. But where to turn? Earth endures After the passing, necessary shame Of winter, and the old lie Of green places beckons me still From the new world, ugly and evil, That men pry for in truth's name. [from Song at the Year's Turning by R.S. Thomas; Welsh poet and priest]

To those who long only for flowers, fain would I show the full blown spring which abides in the toiling buds of snow covered hills. • Fujiwara Ietaka (1158–1237)

Zeus, whose will has marked for man The sole way where wisdom lies; Ordered one eternal plan: Man must suffer to be wise. Head-winds heavy with past ill Stray his course and cloud his heart: Sorrow takes the blind soul's part - Man grows wise against his will. For powers who rule from thrones above By ruthlessness commend their love. [Aeschylus, Agamemnon]

Ludwig van Beethoven 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827

"As to the Godwary, they are in the midst of Gardens and Rivers In an Assembly of Truth, in the Presence of a Sovereign Omnipotent."

And by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to.

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien [Letter 89, to Christopher Tolkien, 7-8 November 1944]

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien [Letter 78, to Christopher Tolkien, 12 August 1944]

Memories of the Alhambra

Autumn already!

Elsewhere in the book.

Rudyard Kipling on 1890s America. Excerpts from his autobiography, Something of Myself.