Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

othing but three throats beating back the world–Laurie’s radiation treatments. The scars on Christina’s arms. Kim’s brother. Molly’s grandfather. Jane’s sister. Singing to the telephone poles skimming by. Stoplights blooming green. The road, a glassy black river edged with brilliant gilded weed

hat steadfast man     knew misery. Sorrow and longing     walked beside him, wintered in him,     kept wearing him down after Nithad     hampered and restrained him,

or Beadohilde     her brother’s death weighed less heavily     than her own heartsoreness once it was clearly     understood she was bearing a child.

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe That you have something impossible up your sleeve, The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,

As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water, Ixion’s wheel stood still, the vulture ceased to tear the giant’s liver, the daughters of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is sai

Orpheus with Eurydice; but though he attended, he brought no happy omens with him. His very torch smoked and brought tears into their eyes. In coincidence with such prognostics Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, while wandering with the nymphs, her companions, was seen by the shepherd Aristaeus, who was struck with her beauty, and made advances to her. She fled, and in flying trod upon a snake in the grass, was bitten in

e dared more than any other man ever dared for his love. He took the fearsome journey to the underworld. There he struck his lyre, and at the sound all that vast multitude were charmed to stillness The dog Cerberus relaxed his guard; the wheel of Ixion stood motionless; Sisiphus sat at rest upon his stone; Tantalus forgot his thirst; for the first time the faces of the dread goddesses, the Furies, were wet with tears. The ruler of Hades dr

ext in order came a few mortals so excellent in their art that they almost equaled the divine performers. Of these by far the greatest was Orpheus. On his mother’s side he was more than mortal. He was the son of one of the Muses and a Tracian prince. His mother gave him the gift of music and Thrace where he grew up fostered it. The Thracians were the most musical of the peoples of Greece. But Orpheus had no rival there or anywhere except the gods alone. There was no limit to his power when he played and sang. No one and nothing could resist

g sweetly over his grave. The subsequent transference of his bones to Dium is evidently a local legend.26 His head was thrown upon the Hebrus, down which it rolled to the sea, and was borne across to Lesbos, where the grave in which it was interred was shown at Antissa. His lyre was also said to have been carried to Lesbos; and both traditions are simply poetical expressions of the historical fact that Lesbos was the first great seat of the music of the lyre: indeed Antissa itself was the birth-place of Terpander, the earliest historical musician.27 The astronomers taught that the lyre of Orpheu

such loss is no loss, such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls of blackness such terror is no loss;

gainst the black I have more fervour than you in all the splendour of that place, against the blackness and the stark grey I have more light; and the flowers, if I should tell you,

before I am lost, hell must open like a red rose for the dead to pass.

Each stone of jealousy, each stone Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light. No one was without a stone in his or her hand.

Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind. Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head. And once Doubt ruptured the web, All manner of demon thoughts

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages

skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you,

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,