The Floating Library

By John Shade . CANTO 1 . I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the [...]

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Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul, knowing about you. Where are the days of Tobias, when one of you, veiling his radiance, stood at the front ……door, slightly disguised for the journey, no longer appalling; (a young man like the one who curiously peeked through [...]

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Do not be troubled, God, though they say “mine” of all things that permit it patiently. they are like wind that lightly strokes the boughs and says: MY tree. They hardly see how all things glow that their hands seize upon, so that they cannot touch even the utmost fringe and not be singed. They [...]

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Already ripening barberries grow red, the aging asters scarce breathe in their bed. Who is not rich, with summer nearly done, will never find a self that is his own. Who is unable now to close his eyes, certain that many visages within wait slumbering until night shall begin and in the darkness of his [...]

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All will grow great and powerful again: the seas be wrinkled and the land be plain, the trees gigantic and the walls be low; and in the valleys, strong and multiform, a race of herdsmen and of farmers grow. No churches to encircle God as though he were a fugitive, and then bewail him as [...]

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Whoever you may be: step into the evening. Step out of the room where everything is known. Whoever you are, your house is the last before the far-off. With your eyes, which are almost too tired to free themselves from the familiar, you slowly take one black tree and set it against the sky: slender, [...]

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The sovereigns of the world are old and they will have no heirs at all. Death took their sons when they were small, and their pale daughters soon resigned to force frail crowns they could not hold. The mob breaks these to bits of gold that the world’s master, shrewd and bold, melts in the [...]

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The last house of this village stands as alone as if it were the last house in the world. The road, that the little village cannot hold, moves on slowly out into the night. The little village is but a place of transition, expectant and afraid, between two distances, a passageway along houses instead of [...]

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It’s possible I’m moving through the hard veins of heavy mountains, like the ore does, alone; I’m already so deep inside, I see no end in sight, and no distance: everything is getting near and everything getting near is turning to stone. I still can’t see very far yet into suffering,— so this vast darkness [...]

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I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every hour holy. I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough just to stand before you like a thing, dark and shrewd. I want my will, and I want to be with my will as it moves [...]

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I live my life in growing rings which move out over the things around me. Perhaps I’ll never complete the last, but that’s what I mean to try. I’m circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I’ve been circling thousands years; and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm or a [...]

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You are the future, the great sunrise red above the broad plains of eternity. You are the cock-crow when time’s night has fled, You are the dew, the matins, and the maid, the stranger and the mother, you are death. You are the changeful shape that out of Fate rears up in everlasting solitude, the [...]

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Although, as from a prison walled with hate, each from his own self labors to be free, the world yet holds a wonder, and how great! ALL LIFE IS LIVED: now this comes home to me. But who, then, lives it? Things that patiently stand there, like some unfingered melody that sleeps within a harp [...]

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Put out my eyes, and I can see you still; slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet; and without any feet can go to you; and tongueless, I can conjure you at will. Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you and grasp you with my heart as with a [...]

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The light shouts in your tree-top, and the face of all things becomes radiant and vain; only at dusk do they find you again. The twilight hour, the tenderness of space, lays on a thousand heads a thousand hands, and strangeness grows devout where they have lain. With this gentlest of gestures you would hold [...]

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