Hope
Hope was but a timid friend;
She sat without the grated den,
Watching how my fate would tend,
Even as selfish-hearted men.
She was cruel in her fear;
Through the bars one dreary day,
I looked out to see her there,
And she turned her face away!
Like a false guard, false watch keeping,
Still, in strife, she whispered peace;
She would sing while I was weeping;
If I listened, she would cease.
False she was, and unrelenting;
When my last joys strewed the ground,
Even Sorrow saw, repenting,
Those sad relics scattered round;
Hope, whose whisper would have given
Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
Went, and ne’er returned again!
Emily Brontë
"You have bewitched me body and soul. And I love... I love... I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on." - Mr. Darcy, from Pride and Prejudice
Tags:
austen, bookish, couple, elizabeth bennet, fitzwilliam darcy
The Swan
This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.
And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall
into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Pathways
Understand, I’ll slip quietly
away from the noisy crowd
when I see the pale
stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.
I’ll pursue solitary pathways
through the pale twilit meadows,
with only this one dream:
You come too.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Again and again
Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape
and the little churchyard with its lamenting names
and the terrible reticent gorge in which the others
end: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again
among the flowers, and look up into the sky.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Tags:
again and again, anniversary, couple, life, literature
The Sanskrit words Lokah Samastah Sukinho Bhavantu comprise one of the most popular chants used in modern yoga classes. Translated into English, the words mean "May All Beings Everywhere Be Happy and Free".
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” ― Atticus Finch (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird)
Tags:
empathy, growth, harper lee, kindness, life lesson
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” ― John Lennon
Glad I Deg (Norwegian): Use to express fondness of someone you care about and cherish deeply; can be said of anyone in your life whose existence makes you happy; literally "happy in you".
Tags:
be kind, family, kindness, norway, norwegian