(no subject)
Do you know that overwhelming feeling you get when you're surrounded by only books and silence on a drousy sunday afternoon? I love being in our 'library'. So many books, yet not nearly enough. Noticing you stopped breathing for just a second when discovering yet another old dusty book hiding behind others, patiently waiting to be rediscovered. I always wonder who else has held that same book in his or her hands. Did they enjoy the story? Were they fascinated by the contained information? Were they swept away by the sorrowful poetry? Was it a gift, perhaps from someone special?
"To Annie with love from Kate
X mas 1900" (*)
is written inside a black book filled with Wordsworth's poetry.
I could spend whole days in this room. Being fascinated by the fact that Frank Herbert's "The Heaven Makers" is so fondled with, you can hardly read it anymore; and this copy of "Of Mice and Men" is yet to be completely undone from it's plastic wrapping.
And then this little Golden Treasury: filled with scribblings, to accompany the poems, and scraps of very old newspapers. Who put them there and why?
There is so much more to old books than just the contents itself...
Here; a
On the tombs in Westminster Abbey
Mortality, behold and fear,
What a change of flesh is here !
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones;
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strenght to stir their hands,
Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust
They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.'
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest royallest seed
that the earth did e'er suck in
Since the first man died for sin:
Here the bones of birth have cried
'Though gods they were, as men they died!'
Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings:
Here's a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.
F. Beaumount.. with two lines carefully underlined by pencil markings:
"Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings:"
Alongside is written "If all the rest of his work were forgotten his poem would still preserve his fame for he held the power in a couple of lines to bring magic into the imagination"
If only I could feel what that person felt when reading the poem, making him want to write this down. It brings a whole new mystery into the words, a whole new perspective to perceive....
(*) Notice the use of the X for Christmas? (1900!)
"To Annie with love from Kate
X mas 1900" (*)
is written inside a black book filled with Wordsworth's poetry.
I could spend whole days in this room. Being fascinated by the fact that Frank Herbert's "The Heaven Makers" is so fondled with, you can hardly read it anymore; and this copy of "Of Mice and Men" is yet to be completely undone from it's plastic wrapping.
And then this little Golden Treasury: filled with scribblings, to accompany the poems, and scraps of very old newspapers. Who put them there and why?
There is so much more to old books than just the contents itself...
Here; a
On the tombs in Westminster Abbey
Mortality, behold and fear,
What a change of flesh is here !
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones;
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strenght to stir their hands,
Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust
They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.'
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest royallest seed
that the earth did e'er suck in
Since the first man died for sin:
Here the bones of birth have cried
'Though gods they were, as men they died!'
Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings:
Here's a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.
F. Beaumount.. with two lines carefully underlined by pencil markings:
"Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings:"
Alongside is written "If all the rest of his work were forgotten his poem would still preserve his fame for he held the power in a couple of lines to bring magic into the imagination"
If only I could feel what that person felt when reading the poem, making him want to write this down. It brings a whole new mystery into the words, a whole new perspective to perceive....
(*) Notice the use of the X for Christmas? (1900!)