Oscar Wilde

I have the glorious privilege of taking a class entirely focused on Oscar Wilde this quarter. Wilde is one of the most skillful wordsmiths who has ever lived (and not just in my opinion). He could write about folding laundry, and it would be exquisite. I'm not sure why I'm posting this passage, but I just found it marvelously beautiful. The context is mostly irrelevant, although I HIGHLY recommend reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, because I'm only on the second chapter, and I'm completely enthralled. So here's a fairly random sampling of this beautiful book:

Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the fretted purple of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion, for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time it flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.

Morning Mist

Levertov is still blowing my mind daily:

The mountain absent,
a remote folk-memory.

The peninsula
vanished, hill, trees -
gone, shoreline
a rumour.

And we equate
God with these absences -
Deus absconditus.
But God

is imaged
as well or better
in the white stillness

resting everywhere,

giving to all things
an hour of Sabbath,

no leaf stirring,
the hidden places

tranquil in solitude.