Belphœbe

Rob Roy

Mashkioya — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:04:54 +0000

‘You are a kind-hearted and an honourable youth, and understand, doubtless, that which is due to the feelings of a man of honour. – But the heather that I have trod upon when living, must bloom ower me when I am dead – my heart would sink, and my arm would shrink and wither like fern in the frost, were I to lose sight of my native hills; nor has the world a scene that would console me for the loss of the rocks and cairns, wild as they are, that you see around us.’

Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy

Rob Roy

Mashkioya — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:53:58 +0000

‘Young man,’ she said, presenting me with a ring, which I well remembered as one of the few ornaments that Miss Vernon sometimes wore, ‘this comes from one whom you will never see more. If it is a joyless token, it is well fitted to pass through the hands of one to whom joy can never be known. Her last words were – Let him forget me forever.’

Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy

The Fashionable American Letter Writer

Mashkioya — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:22:12 +0000

These different kinds of allusion are but so many different manners of similitude; and, that they may please the imagination, the likeness ought to be very exact or very agreeable, as we love to see a picture where the resemblance is just, or the posture and air graceful. But we often find eminent writers very faulty in this respect: great scholars are apt to fetch their comparisons and allusions from the sciences in which they are most conversant, so that a man may see the compass of their learning in a treatise on the most indifferent subject. I have read a discourse upon love, which none but a profound chemist could understand, and have heard many a sermon that should only have been preached before a congregation of Cartesians.

The Fashionable American Letter Writer: or, The Art of Polite Correspondence (1833).

Waverley

Mashkioya — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:45:25 +0000

With an aching heart, as may well be imagined, Edward viewed this wreck of a mansion so respected. But his anxiety to learn the fate of the proprietors, and his fears as to what that fate might be, increased with every step. When he entered upon the terrace, new scenes of desolation were visible. The balustrade was broken down, the walls destroyed, the borders overgrown with weeds, and the fruit-trees cut down or grubbed up.

Sir Walter Scott, Waverley

Unfinished Tales

Mashkioya — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:21:03 +0000

‘Great heart!’ said Turambar. ‘Happy was the choice that took you for a helper!’ But even as he spoke, a great stone hurtled from above and smote Hunthor on the head, and he fell into the water, and so ended; not the least valient in the House of Haleth. Then Turambar cried: ‘Alas! It is ill to walk in my shadow! Why did I seek aid? For now you are alone, O Master of Doom, as you should have known it must be. Now conquer alone!’

Then he summoned to him all his will, and all his hatred of the Dragon and his Master, and it seemed that suddenly he found a strength of heart and body that he had not known before; and he climbed the cliff, from stone to stone, and root to root, until he seized at last a tender tree that grew a little beneath the lip of the chasm, and though its top was blasted, it held still fast by its roots. And even as he steadied himself in a fork of its boughs, the midmost parts of the Dragon came above him, and swayed down with their weight almost upon his head, ere Glaurung could heave them up. Pale and wrinkled was their underside, and all dank with a grey slime, to which clung all manner of dropping filth; and it stank of death. Then Turambar drew the Black Sword of Beleg and stabbed upwards with all the might of his arm, and of his hate, and the deadly blade, long and greedy, went into the belly even to its hilts.

J. R. R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales (Narn i Chîn Húrin)

The Betrothed

Mashkioya — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:19:30 +0000

‘The bakery! Let’s go to the bakery!’ was the cry.

In the street called the Corsia de’ Servi, there is still today a bakery which bears the same name that it did then. In Tuscan it would be called the ‘Forno delle Grucce’; but in the Milanese dialect its name is made up of such strange, uncouth and barbarous sounds that our alphabet has no symbols to represent them. The crowd hurried off in that direction. The shop people were questioning the delivery boy, who had returned without his basket, looking very frightened and tousled.

The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni

The Story of Language

Mashkioya — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:51:28 +0000

Historical linguists usually make much of place names, and rightly. When a given territory changes hands, the spoken language of the former inhabitants may completely give way to that of the newcomers, but the place names normally remain as a perennial monument to the people who first lived there, though they may change to the point where they are practically unrecognizable, like the Celtic or pre-Celtic Eboracum that ultimately became York.

Mario Pei, The Story of Language

Don Quixote

Mashkioya — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:08:29 +0000

“Surely these must be poetry, and not books of knighthood,” said the priest, and opening one he saw that it was La Diana by Jorge de Montemayor. Supposing that all the rest were of the same kind, he said “These don’t deserve to be burned like the rest, because they do not and will not cause harm as the books of knighthood have done; moreover they are only books of amusement, and do not prejudice anyone else.”

“Oh, sir!” said Don Quixote’s niece, “you may very well burn them with the rest of the books, because it’s likely that, once my uncle is cured of his knight-illness, he will read them and then decide to become a shepherd, and wander the forests and meadows singing and playing an instrument; and what would be worse, he might become a poet, which they say is an incurable and contagious disease.”

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha

(This passage translated from the Spanish by Benjamin Bruce)

The Song of Hiawatha

Mashkioya — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:09:33 +0000

Most beloved by Hiawatha
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
He the best of all musicians,
He the sweetest of all singers.
Beautiful and childlike was he,
Brave as man is, soft as woman,
Pliant as a wand of willow,
Stately as a deer with antlers.

When he sang, the village listened;
All the warriors gathered round him,
All the women came to hear him;
Now he stirred their souls to passion,
Now he melted them to pity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha

Paradise Lost

Mashkioya — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:28:12 +0000

All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air
With orient colors waving; with them rose
A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised
To highth of noblest temper heroes old…

John Milton, Paradise Lost