Читать книгу My Commonplace Book онлайн

98 страница из 124

Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young ones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure, which we men don’t understand, which accompanies the pain of being scarified.

Thackeray (Pendennis).

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

George Eliot (Felix Holt).

LET IT BE THERE.

Not there, not there!

Not in that nook, that ye deem so fair;—

Little reck I of the bright, blue sky,

And the stream that floweth so murmuringly,

And the bending boughs, and the breezy air—

Not there, good friends, not there!

In the city churchyard, where the grass

Groweth rank and black, and where never a ray

Of that self-same sun doth find its way

Through the heaped-up houses’ serried mass—

Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng,

And the clatter of wheels as they rush along—

Or the plash of the rain, or the wind’s hoarse cry,