Eleanor Farjeon (1881 – 1965)
English author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire.
Bugsby's reach is long as time,
His reach is wide as wind is,
He can pick you nettles in Greenwich Marsh
And docks in the East Indies.
From the blood of Medusa
Pegasus sprang.
His hoof of heaven
Like melody rang.
Out upon you, Jerry! Jerry, you're a pity!
Jerry, turn about and plant a garden in the City!
Water, Loo! water, Loo! fetch me some water!
There isn't a drop for a mile and a quarter!
The ground is so hard and the ground is so dry
I'm frightened my little red rose-bush will die.
Of troubles know I none,
Of pleasures know I many —
I rove beneath the sun
Without a single penny.
Upon your shattered ruins where
This vine will flourish still, as rare,
As fresh, as fragrant as of old.
Love will not crumble.
Dropt tears have hastened your decay
And brought you one step nigher death;
And you have heard, unthrilled, unmoved,
The music of Love's golden breath
And seen the light in eyes that loved.
You think you hold the core and kernel
Of all the world beneath your crust,
Old dial? But when you lie in dust,
This vine will bloom, strong, green, and proved.
Love is eternal.
He loved her, both for her fault and her redemption of it, more than he had ever thought that he could love her; for he had believed that in their kiss love had reached its uttermost. But love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.
No love-story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning.
Romance gathers round an old story like lichen on an old branch. And the story of Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard is so old now — some say a year old, some say even two. How can the children be expected to remember?
King's Cross!
What shall we do?
His Purple Robe
Is rent in two!
Every man's life (and ... every woman's life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal ... love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy.
O evanescent temples built of man
To deities he honoured and dethroned!
Earth shoots a trail of her eternal vine
To crown the head that men have ceased to honour.
Beneath the coronal of leaf and lichen
The mocking smile upon the lips derides
Pan's lost dominion; but the pointed ears
Are keen and prick'd with old remember'd sounds.
All my breast aches with longing for the past!
Thou God of stone, I have a craving in me
For knowledge of thee as thou wert in old
Enchanted twilights in Arcadia.
'In love there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received.' And he bent his head and kissed her long and deeply, and in that kiss neither knew themselves, or even each other, but something beyond all consciousness that was both of them.
In Fleet Street, in Fleet Street, the People are so fleet
They barely touch the cobble-stones with their nimble feet!
In Arcady there lies a crystal spring
Ring'd all about with green melodious reeds
Swaying seal'd music up and down the wind.
Here on its time-defaced pedestal
The image of a half-forgotten God
Crumbles to its complete oblivion.
I was a little overworked. I had been reading a great number of manuscripts in the preceding weeks, and the mere sight of typescript was a burden to me. But before I had read five pages of Martin Pippin, I had forgotten that it was a manuscript submitted for my judgment. I had forgotten who I was and where I lived. I was transported into a world of sunlight, of gay inconsequence, of emotional surprise, a world of poetry, delight, and humor. And I lived and took my joy in that rare world, until all too soon my reading was done.
My most earnest wish is that there may be many minds and imaginations among the American people who will be able to share that pleasure with me. For every one who finds delight in this book I can claim as a kindred spirit.
It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing.
My harp and I a-wandering
Went over Snowdon Mountain,
From Anglesey to Swansea Bay
It sang like any fountain.
The world never knows, and cannot for the life of it imagine, what this man sees in that maid and that maid in this man. The world cannot think why they fell in love with each other. But they have their reason, their beautiful secret, that never gets told to more than one person; and what they see in each other is what they show to each other; and it is the truth. Only they kept it hidden in their hearts until the time came. And though you and I may never know why this lane is called Shelley's, to us both it will always be the greenest lane in Sussex, because it leads to the special secret I spoke of.