My bookshelves look like a fighter’s mouth, full of painful and surprising gaps. Even books I thought I could not do without, books that shaped my taste and who I am, are gone.
Let me explain. When we decided to move abroad I knew, of course, that most1 of the books would have to be sold. [...]
cf.
She schools the flighty pupils of her eyes,
With levell’d lashes stilling their disquiet;
And puts in leash her pair’d lips lest surprise
Bare the condition of a realm at riot.
If he suspect that she has ought to sigh at
His injury she’ll avenge with raging shame.
She kept her love-thoughts on most lenten diet,
And learnt her not to startle [...]
a Turkish winter
…for certainly Life is so Pretious, as it ought not to be Ventured, where there is no Honour to be Gain’d in the Hazard, for Death seems Terrible, I am sure it doth to Me, there is nothing I Dread more than Death, I do not mean the Strokes of Death, nor the Pains, but [...]
a love-song, a love-song.
For the words and facts of the ancients are as bricks, from which we build the fortresses of our arguments, ever quarreling over the lines of the walls. These walls are torn down and rebuilt with such haste and such fury, that it does not seem strange when they are torn down again, or prove [...]
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ego hoc feci mm–mmviii
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