Famous literary last words

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “More light!”

Voltaire: “Let me die in peace.”

Saki: “Put that bloody cigarette out.”

Lady Mary Montague: “It has all been most interesting.”

O. Henry: “Turn up the lights; I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond: e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond 

any experience,your eyes have their silence: 

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, 

or which i cannot touch because they are too near 


your slightest look will easily unclose me 

though i have closed myself as fingers, 

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens 

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose 


or if your wish be to close me, i and 

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, 

as when the heart of this flower imagines 

the snow carefully everywhere descending; 

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals 

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture 

compels me with the color of its countries, 

rendering death and forever with each breathing 


 

(i do not know what it is about you that closes 

and opens;only something in me understands 

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

Spring is like a perhaps hand- e.e. cummings

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

A quote

The tragedy of love is indifference.

-Maugham

I Am Going to Sleep by Alfonsina Storni

Teeth of flowers, hairnet of dew,
hands of herbs, you, perfect wet nurse,
prepare the earthly sheets for me
and the down quilt of weeded moss.

I am going to sleep, my nurse, put me to bed.
Set a lamp at my headboard;
a constellation; whatever you like;
all are good: lower it a bit.

Leave me alone: you hear the buds breaking through . . .
a celestial foot rocks you from above
and a bird traces a pattern for you

so you’ll forget . . . Thank you. Oh, one request:
if he telephones again
tell him not to keep trying for I have left . . .

February 21, 1903

Autumn- by Stevie Smith

He told his life story to Mrs. Courtly
Who was a widow. “Let us get married shortly,”
He said. “I am no longer passionate,
But we can have some conversation before it is too late.”

And Spring Again

Such things I remember now it is spring and you are gone!

Daily…unnoticed-till-absent things,

like air or heart’s beating –

words that would pass neither for wit nor wisdom… or acts for grace,

pebbles underfoot the polishing of years makes jewels of.

You might as well be here.

After the sterile loneliness of winter

he sunned earth has flowered out with dark Paleozoic fertility.

Remember the longstemmed tiger

and lemon lilies in the regenerated stripmined backyards of Joplin,

the ever wilting daisies and violets we vowed never to pick,

the barbed lavender thistles you loved … but I had to carry –

the dew the blossoms and the leaves

imparted to your arms, emphasizing their pubescent softness?

You were wary of bees, mostly…I, of ivy and sumac,

as we trespassed, field to field, until you tired and grew gently

will-less –

glad of my arms each time a fence or an excavation challenged us.

Then I was strong… and always held you longer than it took

to help you over.

O it was good feeling you mine completely… certain that all was yes

and no was inarticulate in your lips and limbs.

Who Translates a Poet Badly… (Mal traductor de poeta…)

Who translates a poet badly
Plays a lackey’s role
Grotesquely garbed
In his master’s clothes.

Gonzalez Prada
Translated from the Spanish
by William M. Davis

Happy Valentine’s Day!