This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I too will go, remembering what I said to you, when any land, the first to which we came seemed that we sought, and set your hearts aflame, and all seemed won to you: but still I think, perchance years hence, the fount of life to drink, unless by some ill chance I first am slain. But boundless risk must pay for boundless gain.
Happy | Imagination | Man | Memory | Men | Mind | Past | Pleasure | Soul | Will | Wills | Work | Think |
It sprang without sowing, it grew without heeding, ye knew not its name and ye knew not its measure, ye noted it not mid your hope and your pleasure; there was pain in its blossom, despair in its seeding, but daylong your bosom now nurseth its treasure.
Beauty | Desire | Humanity | Life | Life | Man | Men | Sense | Beauty |
Meanwhile the dragon, seeing him clean gone, followed him not, but crying horribly, caught up within her jaws a block of stone and ground it into powder, then turned she, with cries that folk could hear far out at sea, and reached the treasure set apart of old, to brood above the hidden heaps of gold.
Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of defeat, and when it comes it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name
Imagination | Man | Men | Past |
Earth, left silent by the wind of night, seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.
World |
Love is enough: it grew up without heeding in the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure, and its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding, as the morning and evening passed over its treasure.
Fulfillment | World |
Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle from yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle, till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. And the shadow of the night and not love was departed; I was sore, I was weary, yet love lived to seek; so I scaled the dark mountains, and wandered sad-hearted over wearier wastes, where e'en sunlight was bleak, with no rest of the night for my soul waxen weak.
Let us speak, love, together some words of our story, that our lips as they part may remember the glory! O soft day, o calm day, made clear for our sake!
Lo, the lovers unloved that draw nigh for your blessing! For your tale makes the dreaming whereby yet they live the dreams of the day with their hopes of redressing, the dreams of the night with the kisses they give, the dreams of the dawn wherein death and hope strive.
Forsooth, ye have heard it said that ye shall do well in this world that in the world to come ye may live happily for ever; do ye well then, and have your reward both on earth and in heaven; for I say to you that earth and heaven are not two but one; and this one is that which ye know, and are each one of you a part of, to wit, the Holy Church, and in each one of you dwelleth the life of the Church, unless ye slay it.
From those thy words, I deem from some distress by deeds of mine thy dear life I might save; O then, delay not! if one ever gave his life to any, mine I give to thee; come, tell me what the price of love must be? Swift death, to be with thee a day and night and with the earliest dawning to be slain? Or better, a long year of great delight, and many years of misery and pain? Or worse, and this poor hour for all my gain? A sorry merchant am I on this day,e'en as thou willest so must I obey.
Love is enough: cherish life that abideth, lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him; for who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth, on what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth? And what is the joy of man's life that ye blame him for his bliss grown a sword, and his rest grown a fire?
Slayer of the Winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the Summer nigh! The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain, nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
World | Negotiation |
A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.
Man | Merit | Misfortune | Will | Misfortune |