NOVEMBER
1.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
2.
At eight o’clock, I opened the window to the woods
and an owl about the size of a vicar
tumbled across in a boned gown
3.
White owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to hoot at all: all that clamorous hooting appears to me to come from the wood kinds. The white owl does indeed snore and hiss in a tremendous manner; and these menaces well answer the intention of intimidating: for I have known a whole village up in arms on such an occasion, imagining the church-yard to be full of goblins and spectres.
4.
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
5.
‘Man,’ says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the verge of the inane, ‘man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps too of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass: but to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era.’
6.
Assiduous, in his bower, the wailing owl
Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high
Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.
Loud shrieks the soaring hern; and with wild wing
The circling seafowl cleave the flaky clouds.
7.
Beneath yon ruin’d abbey’s moss-grown piles
Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve,
Where through some western window the pale moon
Pours her long-levelled rule of streaming light;
While sullen sacred silence reigns around,
Save the lone screech-owl’s note, who builds his bow’r
Amid the mould’ring caverns dark and damp,
1.
At this unexpectedly repressing manner in her lover the girl seemed to repress herself also. ‘Of course you have seen my fire,’ she answered with languid calmness, artificially maintained. ‘Why shouldn’t I have a bonfire on the fifth of November, like other denizens of the heath?’
‘I knew it was meant for me.’
2.
The paper was heaped over this foundation of sticks and then we built up a mountain of branches dragged from the fields and the edges of the woods. When darkness came and the stars were out we lighted the vast pile, and shouted and sang as the blaze swept upwards towards the sky. Faces in the glow had a strange look, as if we were all savages, dancing round a cannibal feast.
3.
Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines, ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons,
The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray, Pyrotechny, letting off color’d fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets;
4.
It was the Fifth of November, and at every turn she had met groups of children bearing their dummy towards the bonfire, on a chair or in a handcart, and assailing her with, ‘Penny for the Guy.’ It was curiously shocking to be confronted with these effigies, stuffed with straw, bedizened in human rags, sagging forward over the string that fastened them from the waist to their conveyance.
5.
In fireworks give him leave to vent his spite,
Those are the only serpents he can write;
The height of his ambition is, we know,
But to be master of a puppet-show;
6.
“You’d have guessed if you’d been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn’t. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire—and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we’ll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.”
7.
Go on, Madame! Go on – be bright and busy
While hoax’d Astronomers look up and stare
From tall observatories, dumb and dizzy,
To see a Squib in Cassiopeia’s Chair!
A Serpent wriggling into Charles’s Wain!
A Roman Candle lighting the Great Bear!
A Rocket tangled in Diana’s train,
And Crackers stuck in Berenice’s Hair!
1.
By now, the first customers were emerging from the elevators, hesitating a moment with the bewildered, somewhat startled expressions that people always had on finding themselves in the toy department, then starting off on weaving courses.
‘Do you have the dolls that wet?’ a woman asked her.
2.
‘You are coming down to us at Easter, and you always bring the boys some toys, so that will be an excellent opportunity for you to inaugurate the new experiment. Go about in the shops and buy any little toys or models that have special bearing on civilian life in its more peaceful aspects.’
3.
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try.
4.
I had made a Prize of a Piece of very good Damask in a Mercers Shop, and went clear off myself; but had convey’d the Peice to this Companion of mine, when we went out of the Shop; and she went one way, and I went another: We had not been long out of the Shop, but the Mercer mist his Peice of Stuff, and sent his Messengers, one, one way, and one another, and they presently seiz’d her…
5.
Spending beyond their income on gifts for Christmas — Swing doors and crowded lifts and draperied jungles — What shall we buy for our husbands and sons
Different from last year?
6.
‘Now, if you are well up in your London, you will know that the office of the company is in Fresno Street, which branches out of Upper Swandam Lane, 13 where you found me tonight. Mrs St Clair had her lunch, started for the City, did some shopping, proceeded to the company’s office, got her packet, and found herself exactly at 4.35 walking through Swandam Lane on her way back to the station. Have you followed me so far?’
7.
And by-and-by Mary began to part with other superfluities at the pawn-shop. The smart tea-tray, and tea-caddy, long and carefully kept, went for bread for her father. He did not ask for it, or complain, but she saw hunger in his shrunk, fierce, animal look. Then the blankets went, for it was summer time, and they could spare them; and their sale made a fund, which Mary fancied would last till better times came.
1.
There the musick plays you into the bath, and the women that tend you, present you with a little floating wooden dish, like a bason; in which the lady puts a handkerchief, and a nosegay, of late the snuff box is added, and some patches; tho’ the bath occasioning a little perspiration, the patches do not stick as kindly as they should.
2.
Trembling, as Father Adam stood
To pull the stalk, before the Fall,
So I stand here, before the Flood,
On my own head the shock to call.
3.
It was a very hot summer, in August, 1904; and Florence had been taking the baths for a month. I don’t know how it feels to be a patient at one of those places. I never was a patient anywhere. I dare say the patients get a home feeling and some sort of anchorage in the spot. They seem to like the bath attendants, with their cheerful faces, their air of authority, their white linen.
4.
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
5.
She lay in the bath with the water touching
her all over, and remembered that not even
the most tender lover could do that. She wondered
if every molecule on the surface of her skin
was wet and what wet meant to such very
tiny matter.
6.
Bath ready—could scarcely bear it so hot. I persevered, and got in; very hot, but very acceptable. I lay still for some time.
On moving my hand above the surface of the water, I experienced the greatest fright I ever received in the whole course of my life; for imagine my horror on discovering my hand, as I thought, full of blood.
7.
She plunged on in the dark-grey tangible night. She found the side-door open, and slipped into her room unseen. As she closed the door the gong sounded, but she would take her bath all the same—she must take her bath. ‘But I won’t be late any more,’ she said to herself; ‘it’s too annoying.’
1.
It was a low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.
2.
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d Phoenix in her blood;
3.
By way of enforcing this proclamation, Mr Weller, using the watch after the manner of a president’s hammer, and remarking with great pride that nothing hurt it, and that falls and concussions of all kinds materially enhanced the excellence of the works and assisted the regulator, knocked the table a great many times, and declared the association formally constituted.
4.
“That, Father! will I gladly do:
’Tis scarcely afternoon—
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!”
5.
This instrument being several years older than Oak’s grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to.
6.
Half-way up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with its hands
From its case of massive oak,
Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
7.
Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock? — Good G..! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time, — Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?—Nothing.