Ned Hayes's Blog, page 65
December 18, 2014
BOOK QUOTE:"April comes to us with her showers sweet. I wake to...
BOOK QUOTE:
"April comes to us with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries of little birds before the light comes across the heath. I turn back the rich brocaded cloth of gold on my bed and walk to my glazed casement window. I imagine my mother calling to me in the plaintive voice of the wood fowl, her words echoing across the years. I wrap myself in a Moorish robe of intricate design and gaze beyond my solitary window. Raindrops speckle the costly glass."
December 17, 2014
BOOK QUOTE:
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal...
BOOK QUOTE:
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a watery sky. Light seeps across the forest as the reedy shrieks of wood fowl echo in the trees. The path from our village to the King’s Highway is no road at all. To the east, that faint track leads up through the forest until it reaches, finally, the open country and paths that lead to other places. Hob is taking us beyond the bounds of the known world.”
"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh...
"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh sweep of white iron, smooth as glass and cold enough to freeze any uncovered inch of flesh to the surface. Hillocks and haystacks rise up, isles in a smoking brume. Here and there snow has blown aside, revealing the line of the great white stone road that slices through the hills."
PHOTO: astasiaabasia
December 16, 2014
BOOK QUOTE:
"Night birds warble, and small creatures rustle in...
BOOK QUOTE:
"Night birds warble, and small creatures rustle in the snow. The darkness around us presses down, as if to listen. The music of the wind rises and falls with the swirls of the snow, the creaking of the sea of branches in the darkness above us.”
"And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone."
- W. B. Yeats, from “The Wanderings of Oisin,” in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (Kegan Paul and Co., 1889)
December 15, 2014
Books are a uniquely portable magic
Books are a uniquely portable magic
Book quote:
“Fog lifts in the valley, rising as mist through the...
Book quote:
“Fog lifts in the valley, rising as mist through the bare-limbed trees. Far below lies the deeping combe with our village in the heart of it. My whole world for nearly a decade has been contained in that place—and now the village of Duns looks so small. This is the very place at which I first saw the village ten years ago. The line of trees here on the ridge is unchanged, as if I came here only yesterday. I waited in the quiet vale of Duns far too long.”
December 14, 2014
BOOK QUOTE:
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal...
BOOK QUOTE:
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a watery sky. Light seeps across the forest as the reedy shrieks of wood fowl echo in the trees. The path from our village to the King’s Highway is a crooked line of mud rutted with cart tracks, a rough trough where the dirty snow is stabbed through by the hooves of feral sheep. To the east, that faint track leads up through the forest until it reaches, finally, the open country."
PHOTO: by Herr Olsen
