I can see nothing
“‘I’ve got as far as page thirty without coming across a single colour or a single word that makes a picture. He speaks of a woman and I don’t know whether her dress was red or blue. As far as I’m concerned, if there are no colours, it’s useless, I can see nothing.’ And feeling that the less he was taken in earnest, the more he must exaggerate, he repeated: ‘—absolutely nothing!’”
—André Gide, The Counterfeiters, translated by Dorothy Bussy, 1927.
Basketball Jones
the brilliancy of the room
“Anne saw nothing, thought nothing of the brilliancy of the room. Her happiness was from within. Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks glowed,—but she knew nothing about it. She was thinking only of the last half hour. . . .”
—Jane Austen, Persuasion, 1817.
And I have reflected its colours
“The sea has been breeze-serene sapphire,
And blue-tipped birds have rippled it,
And the sun has smoothed it with quiet fire,
And I have reflected its colours in the peace of my eyes;”
—Dylan Thomas, “Idyll of Unforgetfulness”, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, 1971.
Know the green good
“The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood”
—Dylan Thomas, “In country sleep”, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, 1971.
The New Dollar
Lift up the blinds
“Lift up your head, let
Comfort come through the devil’s clouds,
The nightmare’s mist
Suspended from the devil’s precipice,
Let comfort come slowly, lift
Up your hand to stroke the light,
Its honeyed cheek, soft-talking mouth,
Lift up the blinds over the blind eyes.”
—Dylan Thomas, “Lift up your face”, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, 1971.
The circular world
“(Turn the sea-spindle lateral,
The grooved land rotating, that the stylus of lightning
Dazzle this face of voices on the moon-turned table,
Let the wax disk babble
Shames and the damp dishonours, the relic scraping.
These are your years’ recorders. The circular world stands still.)”
—Dylan Thomas, “I, in my intricate image”, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, 1971.