For brief as water falling will be death,
and brief as flower falling, or a leaf,
brief as the taking, and the giving, breath;
thus natural, thus brief, my love, is grief.
-Conrad Aiken,
And in the Human Heart, 1940
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Fire and Water
(Yosemite)
We went through fire and through water. -The Bible, Psalms 66:12 |
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Water and Wind
(Yosemite)
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd-- "I came like Water, and like Wind I go." -Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam |
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Wild Cataract
(Yosemite)
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Spendor Falls |
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Castle Walls
(Yosemite)
The splendor falls on castle walls -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Spendor Falls |
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A Celestial Thought
(Yosemite)
Happy those early days! when I Shined in my angel-infancy. Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, celestial thought, When yet I had not walked above A mile or two, from my first love, And looking back (at that short space) Could see a glimpse of his bright face; -Henry Vaughan, The Retreat |
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Subtle Will
(Yosemite)
In the world there is nothing more submissive and weaker than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it. -Lao-Tzu, Tao-te-ching, 6th Century B.C. |
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Soft Murmur
(French Alps)
and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. -William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798 |
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Haunted Spring
(French Alps)
From haunted spring and dale Edg'd with poplar pale The parting genius is with sighing sent. -John Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 1629 |
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Melting Remembrance
(French Alps)
Cold in the earth -- and fifteen wild Decembers From those brown hills have melted into spring. -Emily Brontë, Remembrance, 1846 |
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Secret Springs
(Cornell)
The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom-- Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters--with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume, In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc, 1817 |