One may know the world without
    going out of doors.
One may see the Way of Heaven without
    looking through the Windows.

-Lao Tzu, The Way of Lao Tzu,
Sixth Century B.C.





Window to Storm (Olympic, WA)

Under this window in stormy weather

-Jonathan Swift,
Marriage Service from
His Chamber Window
, 1733





The Gap (Mono Lake)

The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.

-Robert Frost, Mending Wall





Glimpses of Sea (Redwood)

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

-William Wordsworth,
The World Is Too Much with Us, 1807





Between the Light and Me (Paris)

Between the light--and me--
And then the Windows failed--and then
I could not see to see--

-Emily Dickinson,
I Heard a Fly Buzz





Through Windows (Paris)

            Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

-John Donne, The Sun Rising





Window Niche (Rodin Museum, Paris)

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand,

-Edgar Allan Poe,
To Helen, 1831





Good-morrow (Ceillac, French Alps)

Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;

-John Milton,
L'Allegro, 1631





Old Stones That Cannot be Deciphered
(Ceillac, French Alps)

But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

-Thomas Stearns Eliot,
Four Quartets. Easter Coker, V, 1940





Come to the Window (Mont-Dauphin, French Alps)

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

-Matthew Arnold,
Dover Beach, 1867





In the Window Niche (St.-Véran, French Alps)

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand,

-Edgar Allan Poe,
To Helen, 1831





Calm Sail (Baja)

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-W. H. Auden,
Musee Des Beaux Arts





Possibilities (Washington, D.C.)

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

-Emily Dickinson,
The Complete Poems of
Emily Dickinson, No. 657
,
1862





I Remember (Utah)

The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn.

-Thomas Hood,
I Remember, I Remember, 1827






images © 1998 by Randy Wang
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