photograph by Maria Thalassinou via Unsplash
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
The light shines in the darkness
Tag: inspiration
“You don’t ever let go of the thread”
photograph by Danica Tanjutco via Unsplash
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die: and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
— William Stafford, “The Way It Is”
“But to persevere he left it in thy power”
photograph by Elijah O’Donnell via Pexels
God made thee perfet, not immutable;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power…
— Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 5
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson) calculates orbital insertion trajectories for the Mercury program using Euler’s method in this scene from the movie Hidden Figures. Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
AL HARRISON:
You think we can get to the moon?[Katherine nods, with all the certainty in the world:]
KATHERINE:
We’re already there, sir.
— Hidden Figures (2016)
“Darkness”
photograph by Adam Winger via Unsplash
When hurrying home on a rainy night
And hearing tree-tops rubbed and tossed,
And seeing never a friendly star
And feeling your way when paths are crossed:
Stop fast and turn three times around
And try the logic of the lost.Where is the heavenly light you dreamed?
Where is your hearth and glowing ash?
Where is your love by the mellow moon?
Here is not even a lightning-flash,
And in a place no worse than this
Lost men shall wail and teeth shall gnash.Lightning is quick and perilous,
The dawn comes on too slow and pale,
Your love brings only a yellow lamp,
Yet of these lights one shall avail:
The dark shall break for one of these,
I’ve never known this thing to fail.
— John Crowe Ransom
“The Soul selects her own Society”
photograph by Haydn Golden via Unsplash
The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —
— Emily Dickinson
“my beloved, isiZulu”
photograph by Ben Koorengevel via Unsplash
I can see the house on the hill where we make our own vegetables out back
and drink warm wine out of jam jars
and sing songs in the kitchen until the sun comes up
wena you make me feel like myself again.
— Yrsa Daley-Ward, “sthandwa sami (my beloved, isiZulu)” (excerpt)
“I dare say he was alone, and had no one to love him”
photograph by RODNAE Productions via Pexels
“When I left you I found an organ-grinder in Russell Square playing to a child; and the simple fact that there was a child listening to him, that he was giving this pleasure, entitled him, according to my theory, as you know, to some money; so I put some coppers on the ledge of his organ, without so much as looking at him, and I was going on when a woman said to me: ‘Yes sir, he do look bad, don’t he? scarcely fit like to be working.’ And then I looked at the man, and O! he was so ill, so yellow and heavy-eyed and drooping. I did not like to go back somehow , and so I gave the woman a shilling and asked her to give it to him for me. I saw her do so and walked on; but the face followed me, and so when I had got to the end of the division, I turned and came back as hard as I could and filled his hand with money — ten to thirteen shillings, I should think. I was sure he was going to be ill, you know, and he was a young man; and I dare say he was alone, and had no one to love him.”
— Letter from Robert Louis Stevenson to Mrs. Sitwell, November, 1874
A Christmas Carol
photograph by Sarwer e Kainat Welfare via Pexels
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”
— Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“EACH life converges to some centre”
photograph by Hadwt via Unsplash
EACH life converges to some centre
Expressed or still;
Exists in every human nature
A goal,Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
Too fair
For credibility’s temerity
To dare.Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
To reach
Were hopeless as the rainbow’s raiment
To touch,Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
How high
Unto the saints’ slow diligence
The sky!Ungained, it may be, by a life’s low venture,
But then,
Eternity enables the endeavoring
Again.
— Emily Dickinson
The Great Gatsby
photograph by RODNAE Productions via Pexels
I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it…
— The Great Gatsby
“A Time to Talk”
photograph by Zac Ong via Unsplash
WHEN a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
— Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
photograph by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
— Robert Frost
“O despairer, here is my neck, By God, you shall not go down!”
photograph by SHVETS production via Pexels
I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
— “Song Of Myself”
“Who goes with Fergus?”
photograph by Tim Foster via Unsplash
Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
— W. B. Yeats
“cry I can no more”
photograph by Ryan Byrne via Unsplash
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come…
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Dreams”
photograph by Yan Krukov via Pexels
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
— Langston Hughes
“To me, fair friend, you never can be old”
photograph by Anthony Tran via Unsplash
TO me, fair friend, you never can be old
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion…
— Sonnet CIV
“Soli Deo Gloria”: Grand Central, December, 1982
Grego, Street Musician (2014)
“Soli Deo Gloria”: Grand Central, December, 1982
onrushing out into the
42nd street passage
huddled in the corner
frayed and fallen
drifted from the street
in pieces and broken-down
Yamaha nylon string guitar
the third Brandenburg
reverberated, echoed, re-echoed
transfixed and transfigured
I put all my money in his well-worn open case
It was almost Christmas
— J.S.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, BWV 1048 – III. Allegro by TXGQ
“Think Not All Is Over”
photograph by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
Think not, when the wailing winds of autumn
Drive the shivering leaflets from the tree,—
Think not all is over: spring returneth,
Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.Think not, when the earth lies cold and sealed,
And the weary birds above her mourn,—
Think not all is over: God still liveth,
Songs and sunshine shall again return.Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,
When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere,—
Think not all is over: God still loveth,
He will wipe away thy every tear.Weeping for a night alone endureth,
God at last shall bring a morning hour;
In the frozen buds of every winter
Sleep the blossoms of a future flower.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Flirtation”
photograph by Christian Lue via Unsplash
Outside the sun
has rolled up her rugsand night strewn salt
across the sky. My heartis humming a tune
I haven’t heard in years!
— Rita Dove (excerpt)
“a chainless soul with courage to endure.”
photograph by Emmeline T. via Unsplash
’Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul
With courage to endure.
— Emily Bronte, “The Old Stoic”
“Fear not, Cesario. Take thy fortunes up.”
photograph by Richard Jaimes via Unsplash
Fear not, Cesario. Take thy fortunes up.
— Twelfth Night
“I would not creep along the coast”
photograph by National Cancer Institute via Unsplash
I would not creep along the coast but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.
— Middlemarch, Epigraph to Chapter XLIV
“WHY, who makes much of a miracle?”
photograph by Jason King via Unsplash
WHY, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky…
Or talk by day with any one I love…
— Whitman, Leaves of Grass (“Miracles”)
“O, step between her and her fighting soul”
photograph by Liz Fitch via Unsplash
O, step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
I Can Help
photograph by Edward Howell via Unsplash
“Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now,
And you her father. Every gentle maid
Should have a guardian in each gentleman.”
— Epigraph to Middlemarch, Chapter VIII
“Thel’s Motto”
photograph by Mikita Yo via Unsplash
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl?
— William Blake, from “The Book of Thel”
Free Rein
Frank T. Merrill, “Hercules frees Prometheus from the rock” (1904)
Meanwhile, during the first flush of success and before the release of “Fantastic,” we’d decided that Wham!’s creative reins should rest solely with George if we were to achieve the scale of success we believed was in our reach. I had long recognized his ability… The decision still smarted a little, but it was the right one: George was so clearly developing into a writer of rare ability; indeed it was the desire to realize the potential of that gift which drove him to become a solo artist, free of our band’s constraints…
— Andrew Ridgeley, “Wham!, George Michael and Me: A Memoir”
“Convalescence”
photograph by Oveth Martinez via Unsplash
From out the dragging vastness of the sea,
Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous seaweed strands,
He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands
One moment, white and dripping, silently,
Cut like a cameo in lazuli,
Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands
Prone in the jeering water, and his hands
Clutch for support where no support can be.
So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch,
He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow
And sandflies dance their little lives away.
The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch
The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow,
And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.
— Amy Lowell
“Instructions on Not Giving Up”
photograph by Johan Godínez via Unsplash
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
— Ada Limón
“GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him—”
photograph by Jan Tinneberg via Unsplash
“GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him—
Tell him the page I did n’t write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.“Tell him it was n’t a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him—No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it,
And then you and I were silenter.“Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing ‘day!’
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended—
What could it hinder so, to say?
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow,—happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!”
— Emily Dickinson
“The better angels of our nature”
photograph by Samantha Garrote via Pexels
“…when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
— First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
Troilus and Cressida
photograph by Andrej Nihil via Unsplash
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion…
— Troilus and Cressida
“I Hear a River thro’ the Valley Wander”
photograph by Devin Avery via Unsplash
I hear a river thro’ the valley wander
Whose water runs, the song alone remaining.
A rainbow stands and summer passes under.
— Trumbull Stickney
“How to Get Riches”
photograph by Darius Bashar via Unsplash
In Things of moment, on thy self depend…
— Benjamin Franklin
“Wrong, Tony,” he said, and shook his head.
photograph by Laurent Gence via Unsplash
“Wrong, Tony,” he said, and shook his head. “My courage does not go down to zero because I have a piece of bad luck. It’s the other way on. I believe in that, and events show it.”
— Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (Tr. Lowe-Porter)
In The House Of Stone And Light
photograph by Samantha Hentosh via Unsplash
“…since you can’t sleep, and Mamma can’t either, we mustn’t go on in this stupid way; we must do something; I’ll get one of your books.” But I had none there. “Would you like me to get out the books now that your grandmother is going to give you for your birthday?”
— Proust, Swann’s Way
In The House Of Stone And Light
“a string of mercies”
photograph by Christian Holzinger via Unsplash
a string of mercies
held to heart
intercessions
and counterpart
at evenfall
— J.S.
“lux aeterna”
“Elvis” (2022)
lux aeterna
for one
lightning strike
for one
brief hallowed hour
fortune
and
fate
Heaven’s gate
hands
over
— J.S.
“Abyssus abyssum invocat”
photograph by National Cancer Institute via Unsplash
bridges burning
wilderness alone
and the night
like wavesforever onward
— J.S.
“ONCE, in a house on egypt street”
“Edward?” said Abilene.
Yes, said Edward.
“Edward,” she said again, certain this time.
Yes, said Edward, yes, yes, yes.
It’s me.
— Kate DiCamillo, The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane
All my instincts, they return
The grand façade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside…
“De consolatione philosophiae”
photograph by Khanh Tu Nguyen Huy via Unsplash
De consolatione philosophiae
I did the best that I could
— J.S.
“Middlemarch”
photograph by Ilnur Kalimullin via Unsplash
in Middlemarch
light is dark
a fire burns
skylark
— J.S.
Fern Hill
photograph by Zachary Nelson via Unsplash
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means…
— Dylan Thomas
Mental Health Awareness Month
Invictus
photograph by Free Old Photos via Unsplash
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
— William Ernest Henley
“God’s Grandeur”
photograph by Rosie Kerr via Unsplash
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
“The quality of mercy is not strained.”
photograph by Mikita Yo via Unsplash
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
— The Merchant of Venice
“Barter”
cf. video by Kindel Media via Pexels
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
—Sara Teasdale, “Barter” (excerpt)
“legato con amore in un volume”
James Jowers, Tompkins Sq. Park (1967)
Nel suo profondo vidi che s’ interna,
legato con amore in un volume…I saw within its depth how it conceives all things in a single volume bound by love…
— Dante Alighieri, “The Divine Comedy: Paradiso”
“Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere…”
photograph by Brina Blum via Unsplash
A NOISELESS patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor
hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
— Leaves of Grass
“seize the day!”
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
— A. E. Housman
The Cimmerians
photograph by Myicahel Tamburini via Pexels
…when the sun went down and darkness was over all the earth, we got into the deep waters of the river Oceanus, where lie the land and city of the Cimmerians who live enshrouded in mist and darkness which the rays of the sun never pierce neither at his rising nor as he goes down again out of the heavens…
— Odyssey
“true north”
photograph by Nathan Anderson via Unsplash
true north
ever ever spinning
your soul
encompassed
always
knowing
the way
— J.S.
“Keats, walk a hundred yards over the rim”
cf. photograph by Felix Russell-Saw via Unsplash (edited digital collage)
“Keats, walk a hundred yards over the rim”
Keats,
leave the Piazza di Spagna
walk a hundred yards over the rim
I have your penicillin
I won’t let you go
there are more poems to write
and she is still waiting for you
— J.S.
(cf. “The Twilight Zone”, Season 2, Episode 23, 1961)
“Requiem”
Requiem
a long time ago
you mailed me your copy of Ulysses
and I tried but
now
many years later
I realize
you were
summoning my muse
to sing
— J.S.
“I come no more to make you laugh…”
photograph by Andrei Tarkovsky
I come no more to make you laugh: things now,
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present…
— Henry VIII
Cry “Courage! To the field!”
photograph by National Cancer Institute via Unsplash
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,
Cry “Courage! To the field!”
— Henry IV, Part 1
“The heart comes out of hiding…”
Alicia Chen, “Girl listening to music by window” (ca. 2015)
Music—the world that might be,
and yet the world as it is. The heart
comes out of hiding, saying to us:
“Listen, you can say anything you want now.
Here is the instrument.”
— Robert Winner, The Instrument (excerpt)
This above all: to thine own self be true
— Hamlet
Perseverance
cf. video by Anna Shvets via Pexels
Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright.
— Troilus and Cressida
“Archimedes in the Pleiades”
photograph by Eren Li via Pexels
Archimedes in the Pleiades
in the autumn night sky
I saw you
shining
circles undisturbed
stand in heaven
and move the earth
— J.S.
John Sapiro 