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Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
--
"To Marguerite, in Returning a Volume of the Letters of Ortis" (1852), stanza 1.

 

Matthew Arnold

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Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

 

Erasmus Darwin

 

Like many people unfamiliar with the history of America's wild, free-roaming horses, I had always thought that the wild horse was a "mustang", that is, a unique breed of horse. In reality, wild horses are feral horses, the offspings of domestic horses that have been turned loose, or escaped, into the wild. By wild, I mean the animals are not owned privately, and they basically fend from themselves without any care or supervision. Moreover, they live in some of America's most remote and sparsely populated high desert country.

 

Jaime Jackson

 

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilites, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

 

C. S. Lewis

 

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

 

Mary Oliver

 

So, I was to talk about "Opera as Related to Literature", was I not? And because the subject is so vast, I have wandered here and there, trying to illuminate, as if with a candle, a vast chamber full of fascinating corners, mysterious with mirrors, and echoing with some of the loveliest music ever written. I have not succeeded on any high level, but then, I never expected to do so. But perhaps I have thrown out an idea or two which you would like to consider for yourselves.

 

Robertson Davies