(no subject)
The opening to Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood is one of the loveliest sentences:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
Oh Lord. I heard this poem on CD before I ever read it, and I could hear something interesting was going on with that "sloeblack, slow, black" but the orthography didn't slide into place until I finally saw it written down. Jesus that is good though, you can say it to yourself ten times in a row and it just keeps getting better.
My favourite opening to an essay - and the whole essay is one of the all-time perfect pieces of English prose - is Sir Thomas Browne's ‘On Dreams’. He begins:
Half our dayes wee passe in the shadowe of the earth, and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.
Nails it. You only have to read it and you're half-dreaming already. His sentences are so beautifully paced and balanced, just see how easy it would be to write this out as poetry.
I should be working. Where is everyone today?