love the light

“You must love the light so well
That no darkness will seem fell,
Love it so you could accost
Fellowly a livid ghost.”

—George Meredith, from The Woods of Westermain, 1883.

white soul

“Without offence to your modesty be it spoken, I have a burning desire to see your Soul stark naked, for I am confident ’tis the prettiest kind of white Soul, in the universe . . . . But if I must be content with seeing your body only, God send it to come quickly: I honor it more than the Diamond-Casket that held Homer’s Illiads. For in the very twinkle of one eye of it, there is more Wit; and in the very dimple of one cheek of it, there is more Meaning, than in all the Souls that ever were casually put into Women.”

—Alexander Pope, from On the Knowledge and Characters of Men.

the diamond blaze

“Tho’ the same Sun with all-diffusive rays
Blush in the Rose, and in the Diamond blaze,
We prize the stronger effort of his pow’r,
And justly set the Gem above the Flow’r.”

—Alexander Pope, from On the Knowledge and Characters of Men.

the beautiful deformed

“It is like looking through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference; where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed.”

—William Hazlitt, commenting on what I call the “trippiness” of the Rape in 1818. Found in The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope, edited by Cynthia Wall, 1998.

miniature microscopes

“In the early eighteenth century the microscope was just beginning to become popularized; ladies wore miniature microscopes on their wrists and amateur scientists . . . were frequently satirized in poems and plays. Both the simple act of looking through the microscope and its larger implications for use in research showed that to be miniaturized in the eighteenth century was not merely to be reduced. On the contrary, the miniature became magnified.”

—Cynthia Wall, from The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope , 1998, a wonderful anthology concerning the famous “heroi-comical” poem.

a perfect and absolute blank

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply,
“They are merely conventional signs!”

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank”
(So the crew would protest) “that he bought us the best—-
A perfect and absolute blank!”

—Lewis Carroll, from The Hunting of the Snark.

the knave of diamonds

“The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily Arts,
And wins (oh shameful Chance!) the Queen of Hearts.”

—Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock, 1714.

locks will turn to grey

“But since, alas! frail Beauty must decay,
Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to grey,
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid;
What then remains, but well our Pow’r to use,
And keep good Humour still whate’er we lose”

—Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock, 1714.

diamond flat

“A secret party of surveyors [was taken] to lay out the 3,000 acre future Brilliant City, complete with neighborhoods: Discovery Claim, Ruby Gulch, Diamond Flat, Sapphire Hollow. On this trip there were of course more diamonds. Alfred Rubery, a rich Englishman, found one of the fabled anthills. At first he couldnt believe his eyes. It was a sure-enough anthillnatural to this area . . . a foot or two high, made of coarse rock and mineral grains. But this one was sprinkled with many red and white stones of uniform size. Looking closer, he realized they were rubies and diamonds. Practically screaming with ecstasy, he shoveled the whole thing into a sack, ants and all.”

—Kevin Krajick, from Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic, 2002. Watch out, Alfred, the anthill was real, but the overall scheme is a hoax!

black gold

“You old black gold you’ve taken my lung,
Your dust has darkened my home.
And now I am old and you’ve turned your back,
Where else can an old miner go”

—Blue Diamond Mines by Jean Ritchie, 1964.