De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Edna St. Vincent Millay werd geboren op 22 februari 1892 in Rockland, Maine. Zie ook alle tags voor Edna St. Vincent Millay op dit blog.
Well, I Have Lost You
Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that’s permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—
I shall have only good to say of you.
I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.
To The Not Impossible Him
How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?
Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose:
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?
The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel!
Edna St. Vincent Millay (22 februari 1892 – 19 oktober 1950)
Standbeeld in Camden, Maine
De Canadese schrijver Morley Callaghan werd geboren op 22 februari 1903 in Toronto. Zie ook alle tags voor Morley Callaghan op dit blog.
Uit: All the Years of Her Life
”Who is at home?”Mr. Carr asked.
”My mother, I think.”
Mr. Carr started to go to the phone. Alfred’s fears made him raise his voice. He wanted to show he was afraid of nobody. He acted this way every time he got into trouble. This had happened many times since he left school. At such times, he always spoke in a loud voice as he did tonight.
“Just a minute!” He said to Mr. Carr. “You don’t have to get anybody else into this, you don’t have to tell her.” Alfred tried to sound big, but deep down he was like a child. He hoped that someone at home would come quickly to save him. But Mr. Carr was already talking to his mother, he told her to come to the store in a hurry.
Alfred thought his mother would come rushing in, eyes burning with anger. Maybe she would be crying and would push him away when he tried to explain to her. She would made him feel so small. Yet he wanted her to come quickly before Mr. Carr called in a policeman.
Alfred and Mr. Carr waited but said nothing, at last they heard someone at the closed door. Mr. Carr opened it and said, “Come in, Mrs. Higgins.” His face was hard and serious. Alfred’s mother came in with a friendly smile on her face and put out her hand to Mr. Carr and said politely, “I am Mrs. Higgins, Alfred’s mother.”
Morley Callaghan (22 februari 1903 – 25 augustus 1990)
De Amerikaanse letterkundige en literatuurwetenschapper Wayne Clayton Booth werd geboren op 22 februari 1921 in American Fork, Utah. Zie ook alle tags voor Wayne C. Booth op dit blog.
Uit: Confessions of an Aging, Hypocritical Ex-Missionary
“Where am I now? Well, I’m still a “Mormon,” but one who puts quotation marks around most of my religious commitments the marks always translated not as “disbelief” but as “Allow me my own definitions.” The pious young believer and I have engaged in a variety of dialogues for going on seven decades. As my beliefs and unbeliefs have shifted about, the debates have, of course, changed ground. At times I’ve treated the boy as a stupid oaf, and he’s treated me as a lost soul. Sometimes he has been so shocked by my ideas, and even more by how low I rank coffee or wine drinking on the scale of sins, that he has simply and angrily cast me off, even as I have lamented his naive commitment to silly superstitions and destructive prejudices.
Now, though, as he and I face the many conflicting religious and anti-religious conflicts flooding our world, the distance between us seems to me far less, and the need to get together, in spite of his remaining conviction that that is impossible, seems ever greater. After all, I tell him, many of my admired religious friends now talk about an apocalyptical ending fully as confidently as he does. And some of them even have in mind, as he does, a second coming: if we can just probe space far enough and vigorously enough, we’ll find some planet to escape to when this one collapses. Isn’t it time, I now ask my young self, to probe beneath the superficial “verbal” differences to the true grounds of our strongest convictions? Isn’t our real assignment, as we approach the new millennium, to discover what we share and then decide, probing our differences, just what can be cast aside?”
Wayne C. Booth (22 februari 1921 – 9 oktober 2005)
Mount Timpanogos Temple, American Fork
De Franse schrijver Jules Renard werd geboren op 22 februari 1864 in Châlons-du-Maine. Zie ook alle tags voor Jules Renard op dit blog.
Uit: Journal de Jules Renard 1905-1910
« 1905.
Il veut se faire enterrer civilement.
— Faudra-t-il parler sur la tombe ?
— Parlez si vous voulez ! Je ne vous répondrai pas.
Causerie à Marigny sur Victor Hugo. Je demande s’il faut continuer. J’entends : « Oui ! oui ! Toute la nuit ! Toute la nuit ! »
Le froid. Les cartes de l’école dans l’ombre. L’unique lampe. Tous debout autour du poêle.
Le poète Ponge me présente et lit un papier. M. Roy ne me fait pas de compliments, mais il a entendu un tel « qui parle bien aussi ».
— J’ai froid.
— C’est la saison qui veut ça, dit le riche.
Hiver. Des vitres dessinées par Vallotton.
Le vent lui-même a gelé.
La glace répandue sur le pré comme des glaces brisées.
— Oh ! vous, me dit-il, vous avez vite fait de venir !
Comme si j’allais plus vite que le train.
Ils veulent voir l’âme du feu. »
Jules Renard (22 februari 1864 – 22 mei 1910)
De Amerikaanse dichter, essayist, uitgever en diplomaat James Russell Lowell werd geboren op 22 februari 1819 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zie ook alle tags voor James Russell Lowell op dit blog.
Sonnet
The Maple puts her corals on in May,
While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,
To be in tune with what the robins sing,
Plastering new log-huts ‘mid her branches gray;
But when the Autumn southward turns away,
Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring,
And every leaf, intensely blossoming,
Makes the year’s sunset pale the set of day.
O Youth unprescient, were it only so
With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined,
Thinking their drifting blooms Fate’s coldest snow,
You carve dear names upon the faithful rind,
Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow
That Age may bear, silent, yet unresigned!
Sonnet II
What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee,
If thine eyes shut me out whereby I live.
Thou, who unto my calmer soul dost give
Knowledge, and Truth, and holy Mystery,
Wherein Truth mainly lies for those who see
Beyond the earthly and the fugitive,
Who in the grandeur of the soul believe,
And only in the Infinite are free?
Without thee I were naked, bleak, and bare
As yon dead cedar on the sea-cliff’s brow;
And Nature’s teachings, which come to me now,
Common and beautiful as light and air,
Would be as fruitless as a stream which still
Slips through the wheel of some old ruined mill.
James Russell Lowell (22 februari 1819 – 12 augustus 1891)
De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Ottilie Wildermuth werd geboren op 22 februari 1817 in Rottenburg am Neckar. Zie ook alle tags voor Ottilie Wildermuth op dit blog.
Der Hausfrau Frühlingsfeier – II
Sieh, wie sie ordnet, wie sie sucht
In ihren Sachen allen,
Da ist ein alt vergessen Blatt
Ihr in die Hand gefallen.
„Was können es für Blätter sein?
Sie mögen mit den andern,
— Zum Lesen hab ich jetzt nicht Zeit –
Wohl in das Feuer wandern.”
Doch aber sieht sie sorgsam nach,
Ob es nichts Zu bedeuten.
Das ist nicht Rechnung, ist nicht Brief,
Das stammt aus jungen Zeiten!
Das ist ein scherzhaft‘ Protokoll
Von einem frohen Spiele;
Was regen sich in ihrer Brust
Für kindische Gefühle?
Sie lässt den Kasten offen stehn,
Sie liest mit Hellem Lachen,
Sie fühlt die ganze junge Zeit
In ihrer Brust erwachen.
Ihr Frau’n, vergesst den Frühling nicht!
Er lässt nicht mit sich scherzen;
Er sendet seine Boten aus
Auch in die stillsten Herzen.
Ottilie Wildermuth (22 februari 1817 – 12 juli 1877)