Month: July 2012

O Sacred Night!

~ themista

From Astronomy for Amateurs, by Camille Flammarion (1910).

O Night, mysterious, sublime, and infinite! withdrawing from our eyes the veil spread above us by the light of day, giving back transparency to the Heavens, showing us the prodigious reality, the shining casket of the celestial diamonds, the innumerable stars that succeed each other interminably in immeasurable space! Without Night we should know nothing. Without it our eyes would never have divined the sidereal population, our intellects would never have pierced the harmony of the Heavens, and we should have remained the blind, deaf parasites of a world isolated from the rest of the universe. O Sacred Night! If on the one hand it rests upon the heights of Truth beyond the day’s illusions, on the other its invisible urns pour down a silent and tranquil peace, a penetrating calm, upon our souls that weary of Life’s fever. It makes us forget the struggles, perfidies, intrigues, the miseries of the hours of toil and noisy activity, all the conventionalities of civilization. Its domain is that of rest and dreams. We love it for its peace and calm tranquility. We love it because it is true. We love it because it places us in communication with the other worlds, because it gives us the presage of Life, Universal and Eternal, because it brings us Hope, because it proclaims us citizens of Heaven.

Accidental Happiness

~ themista

From The Enchanted Woods: and Other Essays on the Genius of Places (1905), by Vernon Lee:

There is no folly more vain or fruitless than to manipulate one’s own happiness! My growing belief is that the journeys richest in pleasant memories are those undertaken accidentally, or under the stress of necessity; moreover, that the most interesting places are those which we stray into, or just deflect towards, as we wander for the sake of friends or work, or even in humbler quest of cheapness of living or economy of health. This belief that the best travel is not for travelling’s sake goes hand in hand with a certain philosophy of life, very vague, difficult to define, but perhaps the deeper down and more inevitable, forcing itself upon one with every added year of experience. As we continue to live, and see more of our own and other folks’ lives behind, or alongside of us, there arises a dim comprehension of some mysterious law by which the good things of life, all the happiness–nay, the very power of being happy–are not life’s aims but life’s furtherance, and their true possession depends on willing and uncalculating response to life’s multifold and changing beckonings and behests. Life itself is a journey from an unknown starting point to an unknown goal. We who move along its tracks cannot overlook the roads which cross and recross one another in endless intricacy; and the maps we make for ourselves are the mere scrawlings of fanciful children. All we can do, while thus travelling we know neither whence nor whither, is to keep our eyes clear, our feet undefiled, to drop as much useless baggage as possible, and fill our hands with the fruits and herbs, sweet or salutary, of the roadside. But if we imagine that we can bend our course to the hidden Temples of Sais, or the Gardens of Armida, or the Heavenly Jerusalem, why! there is no mischief in hoping; only, methinks we shall be disappointed. For wisdom, beauty–nay, holiness itself–are not regions of the soul, attainable and separate kingdoms; but rather, methinks, modes in which the soul carries itself, or not, along the mysterious journey to which it is elected or condemned.

The Vanity of Glory

~ themista

Sic Vita, by Henry King, 1592-1669.

Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring’s gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to night.

The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entombed in autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot;
The flight is past, and man forgot.

The Power of Trees

~ themista

From The Trees of Old England (1868), by Leo H. Grindon:

For a tree is not merely an oak, or an ash, or an elm. It has qualities for the imagination and the heart, moving men in its own way, and vindicating prerogatives that are peculiar to it. The mind of the man who in his youth was accustomed to contemplate oaks, grows up very differently from that of one whose boyhood was spent near pines and firs. Where evergreen trees prevail, and are a daily spectacle, a very different frame of mind is induced compared with that which exists where the branches are leafless throughout the winter. As the stars and planets, from the inaccessible altitude of their sweet lustre, make the heart great by the contemplation of them; so, after the same manner, imposing and magnificent trees, whose branches, when we go beneath, seem the clouds of a green heaven, have power to ennoble and elevate the soul, such as all who have lived among them are more or less clearly conscious of, and which is totally unpossessed by small ones.

Garden of Serenity

~ themista

From A Chinese Garden of Serenity (1959), by Hung Tzu-ch’eng, translated by Chao Tze-chiang:

To check the evils of the time within their drift is like the dispersing of summer heat by the gentle breezes. To mingle with the vulgar and yet retain decency is like the reflection upon the fleecy clouds of pallid moonlight.