Alive, Alive, Oh!

“Words more beautiful than a found fall leaf.”

“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

“

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.”

“

The last of Summer is Delight —
Deterred by Retrospect.
‘Tis Ecstasy’s revealed Review —
Enchantment’s Syndicate.

To meet it — nameless as it is —
Without celestial Mail —
Audacious as without a Knock
To walk within the Veil.

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”

“Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger on it, find the exact point where everything changed. That summer was mine.”

“Things that just keep passing by: A boat with its sail up.
People’s age.
Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter.”

“Summer evenings: festivals of swifts,
peonies erupting in the suburbs.
Streets seem abbreviated
by the heat, the ease of seeing.”

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.”