| Quotes from the beginning of each book |
|
| Quotes from the beginning of each book |
|
Northern Lights
Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
| Pondering his voyage... | John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book 1 |
The Amber Spyglass
O tell of his might, O sing of his grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space;
His chariots of wrath the deep thunder clouds form,
| And dark is his path on the wings of the storm. | Robert Grant, from Hymns Ancient and Modern |
O stars,
isn't it from you that the lover's desire for the face
of his beloved arises? Doesn't his secret insight
| into her pure features come from the pure constellations? | From The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (transl. Stephen Mitchell) |
Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living.
The night is cold and delicate and full of angels
Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up,
The chime goes unheard.
| We are together at last, though far apart. | John Ashbery, The Ecclesiast. From River and Mountains |
