... with Byron

Refuge

It's time for this
Your kiss; don't delay
My spirit's home-call.
Slipping to your feet
I find myself;
I am a place to hide.
Now you know who I am -
I see it dawn on you,
for the first time.
Sunrise! - come over all lovers!
And make amends.

From Don Juan Canto II
Stanza 186

A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love,
And beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus, kindled from above;
Such kisses as belong to early days,
Where heart, and soul, and sense, in concert move,
And the blood's lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake, - for a kiss's strength,
I think, it must be reckon'd by its length.
Epistle to Augusta - Stanza 9

Oh that thou wert but with me! - but I grow
The fool of my own wishes - and I forget
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise in this but one regret -
There may be others which I less may show
I am not of the plaintive mood - and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy
And the tide rising in my altered eye.

-Written 1816. Published 1830.

Gustav Klimt
In his own words

"No self portrait of me exists. I am not interested in myself as material for a picture, but rather in other people, especially women, and even more in other phenomena. I am convinced that as a person I am not especially interesting. There's nothing remarkable to be seen in me. I am a painter, one who paints every day from morning till evening. Figures, landscapes occasionally portraits. Words, spoken or written, do not come easily to me, especially when I'm supposed to say something about myself or my work...So people will have to do without an artistic or literary self portrait-which is just as well. Anyone who wants to find out about me-as an artist, which is all that is of interst-should look attentively at my pictures and try to learn from them what I am and what I want."-Gustav Klimt.

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