Mortality

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
There was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of like,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

~Billy Collins, "On Turning Ten"


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The Highwayman

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding,
The highwayman came riding up to the old inn door.

~Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman"



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Hark, the footsteps of the night
Fade in silence long.
Quiet chirps my reading light
Like a cricket's song.

Books inviting us to read
On the bookshelves stand.
Piers for bridges that will lead
Into fairyland.

~Ranier Maria Rilke, "Vigels III," from Sacrifice to the Lares



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I Am...

I am the song that sings the bird.
I am the leaf that grows the land.
I am the tide that moves the moon.
I am the stream that halts the sand.
I am the cloud that drives the storm.
I am the earth that lights the sun.
I am the fire that strikes the stone.
I am the clay that shapes the hand.
I am the word that speaks the man.


~Charles Causley, "I Am the Song"


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Yet Bastien knew he couldn't leave without the book. It was clear to him that he had only come to the shop because of this book. It had called to him in some mysterious way, because it wanted to be his, because it had somehow always belonged to him.

~Michael Ende, The Neverending Story


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In books I meet the dead as if they were alive,
in books I see what is yet to come...
All things decay and pass with time...
all fame would fall victim to oblivion
if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.

~Richard de Bury, The Philobiblon



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She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.

Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in faeries.

~J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan


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For the good of all

"If I were to be made a knight," said Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, "I should....pray to God to let me encounter all teh evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it."

"That would be extremely presumptuous of you," said Merlin, "and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it."

T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone


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Adventures

She spoke to the King, hoping he would forbid his son to go, but he said: "Well, dear, it's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get into a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them."

~Eva Ibbotson, The Secret of Platform 13


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My library was dukedom large enough.

~Shakespeare, The Tempest


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