The Truth of Imagination
Posts tagged Victorian
John Ruskin, 1819-1900. Portrait in black and white chalk circa 1857 by George Richmond
Victorian essayist, historian, art theorist, literature and art critic, poet and social reformer. In short, a genius.
“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”
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A Dream Within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
A desperately sad poem, written at the end of Poe’s life and published in 1850. Combining many smaller fragments it becomes whole as a poem of despair, frustration and forlorn hope, recognising missed opportunities and the impossibility of learning answers to the mysteries of life.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
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Drinking Coffee and Reading in the Garden
by Edward Killingworth Johnson.
6 notes (via treselegant)
