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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
my dear Mr Bingley, made available to me me, a small paragraph from Northanger Abbey, (chapter 20) and what a jem it was!
here for your enjoyment--
A sudden scud of rain, driving full in her face, made it impossible for her to observe anything further, and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of her new straw bonnet; and she was actually under the abbey walls, was springing, with Henry's assistance, from the arriage, was beneath the shelter of the old porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her friend and the general were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one awful foreboding of future misery to herself, or one moment's suspicion of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice. The breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murderer to her; it had wafted nothing worse than a thick mizzling rain; and having given a good shake to her habit, she was ready to be shown into the common drawing-room, and capable of considering where she was.
what wonderfull words are crammed into this small paragraph!
some like habit-- we have fallen out of habit, and almost never use it to describe clothes except when talking about a nun's habit.
and scud.. i know, its a yart, but a old one.. and it was really only touch upon when we did scuttle.
and mizzling.. crossing threads, some one started a post about rain words, but i like the rain, especially since its raining today, and we've had a long dry spell, and can use all the rain that comes this way.. but today is hardly rainy.. its is a soft day.. the air is all soggy and soft.. and what moisture the is is mizzling.. misty, drizzle, miserly rain!
do you have favorite paragraphs,one that jump out and grab you, or the at shine and sparkle like polished jems, that your return to, to take pleasure in them? are they filled with wonderful, simple words.. that provide a feast for you?
will you share them?
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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
That's a good one, but needs some thought. Didn't want to leave you hanging with such a good question. I'll have a think.....I feel there's something in Dorothy Sayers' "Nine Taylors".
dxb
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Joined: Nov 2000
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veteran
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Possibly you were thinking of:
One after another, the bells jangled into silence. Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity and Batty Thomas lowered their shouting mouths and were at peace, and in their sudden stillness, Tailor Paul tolled out the Nine Tailors for two souls passed in the night. The notes of the organ rose solemnly.
Wimsey crept down from the tower. Into the ringing chamber, where old Hezekiah still stood to his bell, streamed light and sound from the crowded church. The Rector's voice, musical and small, came floating up, past the wings of the floating cherubim:
"Lighten our darkness ..."
That is one of my favorite books and my absolute all-time top mystery novel. Thanks for mentioning it. Now, your go.
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veteran
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Before dxb lured me aside by an irresistable allusion, I was about to offer this favorite of mine, from the opening chapter of Justine, the first book of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartette.
These are the memories which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time and time again in memory, or use them as a fund upon which to build the part of one's life which is writing. One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them. In this context too, I recover another such moment, lying beside a sleeping woman in a cheap room near the mosque. In that early spring dawn, with its dense dew, sketched upon the silence which engulfs a whole city before the birds awaken it, I caught the sweet voice of the blind muezzin from the mosque reciting the Ebed -- a voice hanging like a hair in the palm-cooled upper airs of Alexandria. "I praise the perfection of God, the Forever existing" (this repeated thrice, ever more slowly, in a high sweet register). "The perfection of God, the Desired, the Existing, the Single, the Supreme: the perfection of God, the One, the Sole: the perfection of Him who taketh unto himself no male or female partner, nor any like Him, not any that is disobedient, not any deputy, equal or offspring. His perfection be extolled."
The great prayer wound its way into my sleepy consciousness like a serpent, coil after shining coil of words -- the voice of the muezzin sinking from register to register of gravity -- until the whole morning seemed dense with its marvellous healing powers, the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing as lightly as a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendour of a language she would never know.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing as lightly as a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendour of a language she would never know
Delicious Boby - years since I read that, and that brings back a taste for a timely revisit - thank you for that, and for this HoT topic, Helen
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320 |
Here is Henry David Thoreau on the coming of spring, in Walden, one of those books you don't just read, but live with for a lifetime:
At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.
Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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For me it would have to be passages out of Joseph Conrad and Ray Bradbury...such luscious language each! Yet two distinctive styles.  The Only WO'N!
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A monumental 4 paragraphs -- the meat of the Declaration of Independence. To those of our non-USn brothers and sisters who have never read this, or read it only as a required piece in school, I recommend attention to the language of it, laying aside the history and politics.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among thse are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becones destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
[follows the bill of particulars]
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.
Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
[conclusion]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Sorry, Max. I'll eschew the revolutionary color for large pieces in future.
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