good as gold
“As good as gold.”
—Charles Dickens, from A Christmas Carol, 1843.
Sun-treader
“Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!”
—Robert Browning, from Pauline, 1833. He is referring to the poet Shelley.
the purple light of Love
“O’er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young Desire and the purple light of Love.”
—Thomas Gray, from The Progress of Poesy, 1754.
deeper than the green sea’s glass
“Eyes colored like a water-flower,
And deeper than the green sea’s glass;”
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, from F’lise, 1866.
to see feelings
“Perhaps one of the most difficult things to convey to a mind not in the hasheesh delirium . . . is the interchange of senses. . . . [T]he hasheesh-eater knows what it is . . . to smell colors, to see sounds, and, much more frequently, to see feelings. How often do I remember vibrating in the air over a floor bristling with red-hot needles, and, although I never supposed I came in contact with them, feeling the sensation of their frightful pungency through sight as distinctly as if they were entering my heart.”
—Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.
open eyes
“Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights, 1833.
No. 5
Jackson Pollock, No. 5, 1948.
ARTNET, Nov. 3, 2006. Hollywood mogul David Geffen has sold Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948, for some $140 million to David Martinez, 48, the Mexico-born founder of the London-based Fintech Advisory Ltd. The price is said to be the highest ever for a contemporary painting. . . .
Formerly owned by S.I. Newhouse, the 4 x 8 ft. work was included in the 1998 Pollock retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Speculation has Geffen, who last month reportedly sold two other blue-chip contemporary works for a total of $145.3 million, raising funds to make a bid for the Los Angeles Times.
moonlit lagoons
“Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.”
—Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.
four plain white walls
“I smiled on the four plain white walls of my bedchamber, and hailed their familair unostentatiousness with a pleasure which had no wish to transfer itself to arabesque or rainbows. It was like returning home from an eternity spent in loneliness among the palaces of strangers.”
—Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.
A comma
“A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as you should lead it.”
–Gertrude Stein, quoted in footnote to The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885-1918, by Roger Shattuck.