which-shall-I-read-first-itis
Jun. 24th, 2012 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
incandescensI have acquired a new pair of plimsolls. Now I have no excuse not to brave the local gymnasium and try to take more exercise.
(Drat it.)
Picked up the new Nora Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun) at the bookshop. Also picked up the new Terry Pratchett collaboration (with Stephen Baxter), The Long Earth. Am now suffering from that well known disorder, which-shall-I-read-first-itis.
Blast. A small joining-piece just fell out of my watch strap. And I cannot find it on the floor or desk. Will have to visit an appropriate establishment on Monday. At least the watch itself is functioning perfectly well. (The watch-strap is a complicated arrangement of large circular links and small joining-pillar pieces. Pretty, but at the moment, annoying.)
Oh well. Sunday tomorrow. Plenty of reading time.
---
For truly is our cavalcade now done,
Our bead-game won, our radiant synthesis
Complete, its figures and its arabesques
Resolved below this roaring firmament.
This shining soil beyond life's mummied grip,
Far past the maul of fact, where thoughts parade.
Our direst yearnings and our fondest fears
At sport, made safe from time's iniquity.
We are the tales that soothed your infant brow,
The roles you wore for childhood's alley-play.
Did not your youth, when lust each notion seized,
See paper paramour took oft to bed?
When grown to grey responsibility,
Its disenchantments and diurnal toils,
Come each day's disappointed end were we
Not all thy consolation, thy escape?
And more, the very personality
That scrys this epilogue was once unformed,
Assembled hastily from borrowed scraps,
From traits admired in others, from ideals.
Did fictional examples not prevail?
Holmes' intellect? The might of Hercules?
Our virtues, our intoxicating vice:
While fashioning thyself, were these not clay?
If we mere insubstantial fancies be,
How more so thee, who from us substance stole?
Not thou alone, but all humanity
Doth in its progress fable emulate.
Whence came thy rocket-ships and submarines
If not from Nautilus, from Cavorite?
Your trustiest companions since the cave,
We apparitions guided mankind's tread,
Our planet, unseen counterpart to thine,
As permanent, as ven'rable, as true.
On dream's foundations matter's mudyards rests.
Two sketching hands, each one the other draws:
The fantasies thou've fashioned fashion thee.
Intangible, we are life's secret soul.
Its guiding lantern principle, its best.
Untarnished by all subterfuge or spies,
Unshackled from mundane authorities.
Life's certainties erode, yet we endure.
Whilst tyrants topple, yet Quixote rides
With the companions of thy cradle nights
In glorious pasture Coleridge never glimpsed.
Rejoice! Imagination's quenchless pyre
Burns on, a beacon to eternity,
Its triumphs culture's proudest pinnacles
When great wars are ingloriously forgot.
Here is our narrative made paradise,
Brief tales made glorious continuity.
Here champions and lovers are made safe
From bowdlerizer's quill, or fad, or fact.
Here are brave banners of romance unfurled,
To blaze forever in a blazing world!
-- Prospero, in the epilogue to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, by Alan Moore
(Drat it.)
Picked up the new Nora Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun) at the bookshop. Also picked up the new Terry Pratchett collaboration (with Stephen Baxter), The Long Earth. Am now suffering from that well known disorder, which-shall-I-read-first-itis.
Blast. A small joining-piece just fell out of my watch strap. And I cannot find it on the floor or desk. Will have to visit an appropriate establishment on Monday. At least the watch itself is functioning perfectly well. (The watch-strap is a complicated arrangement of large circular links and small joining-pillar pieces. Pretty, but at the moment, annoying.)
Oh well. Sunday tomorrow. Plenty of reading time.
---
For truly is our cavalcade now done,
Our bead-game won, our radiant synthesis
Complete, its figures and its arabesques
Resolved below this roaring firmament.
This shining soil beyond life's mummied grip,
Far past the maul of fact, where thoughts parade.
Our direst yearnings and our fondest fears
At sport, made safe from time's iniquity.
We are the tales that soothed your infant brow,
The roles you wore for childhood's alley-play.
Did not your youth, when lust each notion seized,
See paper paramour took oft to bed?
When grown to grey responsibility,
Its disenchantments and diurnal toils,
Come each day's disappointed end were we
Not all thy consolation, thy escape?
And more, the very personality
That scrys this epilogue was once unformed,
Assembled hastily from borrowed scraps,
From traits admired in others, from ideals.
Did fictional examples not prevail?
Holmes' intellect? The might of Hercules?
Our virtues, our intoxicating vice:
While fashioning thyself, were these not clay?
If we mere insubstantial fancies be,
How more so thee, who from us substance stole?
Not thou alone, but all humanity
Doth in its progress fable emulate.
Whence came thy rocket-ships and submarines
If not from Nautilus, from Cavorite?
Your trustiest companions since the cave,
We apparitions guided mankind's tread,
Our planet, unseen counterpart to thine,
As permanent, as ven'rable, as true.
On dream's foundations matter's mudyards rests.
Two sketching hands, each one the other draws:
The fantasies thou've fashioned fashion thee.
Intangible, we are life's secret soul.
Its guiding lantern principle, its best.
Untarnished by all subterfuge or spies,
Unshackled from mundane authorities.
Life's certainties erode, yet we endure.
Whilst tyrants topple, yet Quixote rides
With the companions of thy cradle nights
In glorious pasture Coleridge never glimpsed.
Rejoice! Imagination's quenchless pyre
Burns on, a beacon to eternity,
Its triumphs culture's proudest pinnacles
When great wars are ingloriously forgot.
Here is our narrative made paradise,
Brief tales made glorious continuity.
Here champions and lovers are made safe
From bowdlerizer's quill, or fad, or fact.
Here are brave banners of romance unfurled,
To blaze forever in a blazing world!
-- Prospero, in the epilogue to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, by Alan Moore
