Strong Is...

[greenstorm]

...going towards the morning.

Good things: cherry-lemon juice, creation of space and ownership thereof, respect enough to let it be.

And Peter Beagle wrote in The Last Unicorn:

When I was a young man and very well thought of
I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied
I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins
And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied

But I said to myself "Ah, they none of them know
The secret I shelter and savor and save
I wait for the one who will see through my seeming
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave"

The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens
The ladies went by me like snow on the wind
I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled
And I sinned and I sinned and I sinned and I sinned

But I said to myself, "Ah, they none of them see
There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave
My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave"

At last came a lady both knowing and tender
Saying you're not at all what they take you to be
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea

And I say to myself when there's time for a word
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved
"Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved"

Comments

ah, Yeats...

[greensinger.livejournal.com]

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

(typed from memory, but I had to look it up for punctuation)