Forsyte monostichs

 

The sunlight  played through the leaves

on that little party of three generations

grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree,

which had long   borne   no fruit.

-- John Galsworthy, The Man of Property (1906)

 

The little garden had fallen into shade,

the sun now only reached the wall,

whereon basked  a crouching cat.

-- ibid

 

the pear-tree, with its

  top

  branches 

still gilded by the sun …

-- ibid

 

Love is no hot-house flower,

but a wild plant,

born of a wet night.

A wild plant that,

when it blooms within the hedge of our gardens,

we call a flower;

and when it blooms outside

we call a weed.

-- ibid

 

for the swarming stars

the night sky

had hardly space.

-- ibid

 

The glow  died

above the river;

the singing  ceased.

The young moon  hid

behind a tree,

and all was dark.

-- ibid

 

Along the pathway of sky

between the hedges of the tree-tops,

the stars  clustered forth.

-- ibid

 

The fog  was worse than ever --

crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,

haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light

that seemed to drown in vapour

before it reached the pavement…

-- ibid

 

On Irene’s face, a smile wandered up,

and died out

like a flicker of firelight.

-- ibid

 

The wind had got into the sou’west, too --

a delicious air,  sappy!

-- ibid

 

 

Standoff in a railway carriage: Shared Air

London, 1880’s:

 

He had secured the corner seat  next the conductor, where his long legs made it difficult for anyone to get in;  and at all who passed him, he looked resentfully, as if they had no business to be using up his air.

-- John Galsworthy, The Man of Property (1906)

 

(For a contemporaneous picture from Vienna, try this:

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/03/late-arrivals.html )

Barnabystichs

 

Home itself

was but another bead

in the long rosary

of his regrets.

-- Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, (1841)

 

The sun went down,

and night came on,

and he was still

quite tranquil.

-- ibid

 

He looked back, once, before he left the street:

a sight    not     easily  to be   erased,

even from his remembrance,

so long as he had life.

-- ibid

 

every light shadow

thrown by the passing clouds

upon the daisied ground.

-- ibid

 

the cat sat moping

on the ashy forge

-- ibid

 

as day   deepened into evening,

and darkness   crept into the nooks.

-- ibid

 

Illumination from the Cuckoo’s Nest

 

 

Except for the white powder of light from the Nurses’ station

 out in the hall,

the dorm is dark.

-- Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

 

 The white tubes in the ceiling

begin to pump  their refrigerated light.

-- ibid

 

There was a cold moon at the window,

pouring light into the dorm

like skim milk.

-- ibid

 

~ ~ ~

 

The wind lay down  and the sun got higher,

chrome-plating the east side  of the deep green swells.

George  aimed the boat  straight out to sea.

-- ibid

 

George told the doctor he’d have to land his fish

or cut it loose,

because there was a bad sky coming down on us.

-- ibid

 

Batches ‘n’ Bunches

 

Pendant quelque temps  fonctionna le système des « fournées », qui permettait, grâce à des fêtes sur lesquelles on faisait le silence, de convier les réprouvés à venir se divertir entre eux, ce qui dispensait de les inviter avec les gens bien.

-- Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe

 

[Scott-Moncrieff renders:

For some time the 'batch' system was in operation, which enabled her, thanks to parties over which a veil of silence was drawn, to summon the ineligibles separately to entertain one another, which dispensed her from having to invite them with the nice people.]

 

Depuis ces beaux jours, ce mot de … a fait fortune -- ou plutôt infortune, dans l’arène politique hexagonale.  A propos de laquelle, motus;  sauf dans ce coin obscure, de philologie appliquée :

 

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/f-word-of-day-fournee.html

 

Light, Losing it

 

a     wan   sun

  appeared

in the   gray  sky

 

-- Janet Malcolm,

 

 

From gaol:

 

Outside,

the day may be blue and gold,

 

but the light that creeps down

through the thickly muffled glass

of the small iron-barred window

beneath which one sits,

 

is grey and niggard.

It is always  twilight  in one’s cell.

-- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1897)

 

 

The Reading Room of the British Museum:

 

Some of the fog had seeped into the great domed space, increasing the gloom, so that the desk lamps seemed like so many street lamps in a miniature city of crecents and circuses  as he prowled in search of Amber.

… gaslamps, each with a halo  of irradiated fog.

-- David Lodge, A Man of Parts (2011), p. 241-3

 

 

Atom-bomb test:

 

A hundred-times-sun-sized sun

mottled itself with lesser whiteness,

 

bulked up,

became the perfect sphere…

 

Tumors of light   more brilliant than the sun

sprang up on the mathematical sphere;

yet these,  less blazing than the fireball,

appeared as blacknesses.

-- Philip Wylie, “The Answer”

 

Light in Flight

 

Transmitted light:

 

 

He talked on,

raising and lowering his glass

to admire the light  through it ..

 

-- James Gould Cozzens,  Ask Me Tomorrow (1940), ch.5

 

 

light   

sliced

 

through thinning trees.

 

--- Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001)

 

 

The sun was beaming  through the window

in   bright  squares

 

-- Zona Gale, “Bill’s Little Girl”

 

-------

 

Probing light:

 

The sun was pouring in,

creeping   in stealthily-lengthening squares

across his desk.

 

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The I.O.U.” (1920)

 

 

The cell door opened and

blinding bars of light

burst in …

 

-- David McCloskey, Damascus Station (2021)

 

 

Now and then     a searchlight

fingered the bellies of the clouds

 

-- James Jones, From Here to Eternity (1951)

 

 

A la recherche des aperçus

 

Des sentences ou maximes:  Ce fut la forme où s’arrêta La Rochefoucault, pour y ramasser son expérience.

-- Gustave Lanson, Histoire de la littérature française (1894)

Time was, this blog tried deep dives, in a variety of ponds worth plumbing.

Or -- en ces jours, moi  veuf et retraité, rien de tout cela;  rien que de “sentences et maximes” -- et même pas les miennes!  Mais qu’y puis-je.  Donc je continue, de temps à autre, de citer telle phrase, telle image, d’autrui, disposé en guise de monostique.  Des amuse-gueules quoi;  bon appétit.

 

 ~   ~   ~

 

A propos de Corfu: 

 

The port is dark, and alive with the lick and slap of dark water.

-- Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell (1945)

 

The sun rises  like a ball of blood.

-- Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell (1945)

 

The wind   

moans

on the promontory.

-- Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell (1945)