(no subject)

from Epipsychidion, Shelley

But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know:
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;--
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.

Just belatedly remembered this while trying to think of anticipations of Thoreau's nature house, in turn anticipating Crowley's Little Bel Aire, Edgewood and to some extent Blackberry Jams. But of course Crowley wrote a play about Shelley and Byron around the time Engine Summer was germinating - someday need to go break into wherever one can read that.

Shelley wrote a few of these - the one in his prose fragment "The Assassins" may vie with this one as his best. Though the backwards boat in Prometheus Bound, one of his absolute moments, isn't so different.

An outdoors that is itself your home, Thoreau's most wistful dream. A non-stepmother nature. A place where matter and consciousness (Earth, Ocean?) don't even know they're two.

(no subject)

Oh dear:

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
and for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -


And "One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted" ... and there's plenty of bits of imaginary architecture in others - planks giving way, floorboards in brains, households under graves.

(no subject)

And just because I love it, esp. stanza 4:


The Soul has Bandaged moments -
When too appalled to stir -
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her -

Salute her - with long fingers -
Caress her freezing hair -
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover - hovered - o'er -
Unworthy, that a thought so mean
Accost a Theme - so - fair -

The soul has moments of Escape -
When bursting all the doors -
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings upon the Hours,

As do the Bee - delirious borne -
Long Dungeoned from his Rose -
Touch Liberty - then know no more,
But Noon, and Paradise -

The Soul's retaken moments -
When, Felon led along,
With shackles on the plumed feet,
And staples, in the Song,

The Horror welcomes her, again,
These, are not brayed of Tongue -

(no subject)

Funny transcription error in the Hitchens/Blair debate on religion:

RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Okay, let's - we like the applauding, so please continue that throughout the debate. Let's take a written question, my producers are telling me we have a written question, we'll get that on the screen, Christopher this is for you to start with, interesting one: America is both one of the most religious countries in the world and also one of the most democratic and pluralistic, both now and arguably through much of its history. How do you explain that seeming paradox?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Relatively simply, the United States has uniquely a constitution that forbids the government to take sides in any religious matter, or to sponsor the church, or to adopt any form of faith itself. As a result of which, anyone who wants to practise their religion in America has to do it as a volunteer. It's what Dick Hotfield wrote about so well in his democracy in America, ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptists of Connecticut during his tenure of president, you'll be familiar with the phrase I'm sure - they had Britain [appeal] to him out of their fear of persecution in Connecticut: rest assured there will ever be a wall of separation between the church and the state in this country, but the maintenance of that wall, which people like me have to defend every day, against those who want garbage taught in schools and pseudo science in the name of Christ and other atrocities, the maintenance of that wall is the guarantee of the democracy.

I'm going to use this name in life somehow.

(no subject)

Kafka's Diaries, July or August 1912:

The invention of the devil. If we are possessed by the devil, it cannot be by one, for then we should live, at least here on earth, quietly, as with God, in unity, without contradiction, without reflection, always sure of the man behind us. His face would not frighten us, for as diabolical beings we would, if somewhat sensitive to the sight, be clever enough to prefer to sacrifice a hand in order to keep his face covered with it. If we were possessed by only a single devil, one who had a calm untroubled view of our whole nature, and freedom to dispose of us at any moment, then that devil would also have enough power to hold us for the length of a human life high above the spirit of God in us and even swing us to and fro, so that we should never get a glimmer of it, and therefore should not be troubled from that quarter. Only a crowd of devils could account for our earthly misfortunes. Why don't they exterminate one another until only a single one is left, or why don't they subordinate themselves to one great devil? Either way would be in accord with the diabolical principle of deceiving us as completely as possible. With unity lacking, what good is the scrupulous attention all the devils pay us? It simply goes without saying that the falling of a human hair must matter more to the devil than to God, since the devil really loses that hair and God does not. But we still do not arrive at any state of well-being so long as the devils are within us.