Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936
Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.
Cold Mountain Buddhas Han Shan Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness be dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.
When the last sea is sailed and last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed
Grant the last prayer that I pray, Be good to me, O Lord.
Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And - when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening - nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.
Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when the abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all:
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring time has not come-
Not know that what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.
What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death.