H.D.

“We are voyagers, discoverersof the not-known,the unrecorded;we have no map;possibly we will reach haven,heaven.”

“Could beauty be caught and hurtthey had done her to death with their sneersin ages and ages past,could beauty be sacrificedfor a thrust of a sword,for a piece of thin moneytossed up to fall half alloy—then beauty were deadlong, long before we saw her face.”

“I first tasted under Apollo’s lips,love and love sweetness,I, Evadne;my hair is made of crisp violetsor hyacinth which the wind combs backacross some rock shelf;I, Evadne,was made of the god of light.His hair was crisp to my mouth,as the flower of the crocus,across my cheek,cool as the silver-cresson Erotos bank;between my chin and throat,his mouth slipped over and over.Still between my arm and shoulder,I feel the brush of his hair,and my hands keep the gold they took,as they wandered over and over,that great arm-full of yellow flowers.”

“I mean seeing the Elgin marbles this morning gave me the same feeling and I didn’t know, don’t know whether I’m in Rome or Paris. I mean the Louvre and the British Museum hold one together, keep one from going to bits.”

“She knew herself the heart of a king buried in a sepulchre (in the land of his love) while the body of the king is elsewhere. My heart lies buried in there like Coeur de Lion (or whoever it was) who had his heart buried at Havre (or wherever it was) and the rest of him buried somewhere else.”

“run run run Hermione. You have in your hands a message and a token...run and run and run and run Hermione. You know running and running and running that the messenger will take (lampadephoros) your message in its fervour and you will sink down exhausted...run,run, Hermione. For the message-bearer next in line has turned against you...dead, dead or forgotten. Hecate at crossroads, a destruction...”

“The thing she realised in that moment, that fraction of waiting, was lost. Nothing could bring the thing back, no words could make the thing solid and visible and therefore to be coped with. Solid and visible form was what she had been seeking. I will put this into visible language.”

“I am not Undine for Undine or the Little Mermaid sold her glory for feet. Undine (or the Little Mermaid) couldn't speak after she sold her glory. I will not sell my glory.”

“Some plants, some small water creatures give a sort of jellyfish sort of birth by breaking apart, by separating themselves from themselves.”

“I have tasted words, I have seen them. Never had her hands reached out in darkness and felt the texture of pure marble, never had her forehead bent forward and, as against a stone altar, felt safety. I am now saved. Her mind could not then so specifically have seen it, could not have said, "Now I will reveal myself in words, words may now supercede a scheme of mathematical-biological definition. Words may be my heritage and with words...A lady will be set back in the sky....there was hope in a block of unsubstantiated marble, words could carve and set up solid altars...Thought followed the wing that beat its silver into seven-branched larch boughs.”

“She didn't know that all her life would be spent gambling with the stark rigidity of words, words that were coin: save, spend and all the time George with his own counter had found her a way out.”

“Hermione looked far and far and George was a midge and a leaf was the size of a house and an acorn-cup would shelter herself...for...I am a tree planted by the river of water...I am in the word tree. I am tree exactly.”

“She wanted George with some uncorrelated sector of Her Gart, she wanted George to correlate for her, life here, there. She wanted George to define and to make definable a mirage, a reflection of some lost incarnation, a wood maniac, a tree demon, a neuropathic dendrophile...She wanted George to make the thing an integral, herself integrity. She wanted George to make one of his drastic statements that would dynamite her world away for her. She wanted this, but even as she wanted it she let herself sink further, further, she saw that her two hands reached toward George like the hands of a drowned girl. She knew she was not drowned. Where others would drown-lost, suffocated in this element-she knew that she lived. She had no complete right yet to this element, hands struggled to be pulled out. White hands waved above the water like sea spume or inland-growing pond flowers...She wanted George to pull her out, she wanted George to push her in, let Her be drowned utterly.”

“There was a zone she had not explored. She could use the same counter, the same sort of password that she used with all these people, but she had passed over in the twinkling of an eye into another forest. This forest was reality. There, the very speaking of the words, conjured up answering sigil, house and barn and terrace and castle and river and little plum tree. A whole world was open. She looked in through a wide doorway.”

“Nothing held her, she was nothing holding to this thing: I am Hermione Gart, a failure.”

“Pompeii has nothing to teach us,we know crack of volcanic fissure,slow flow of terrible lava,pressure on heart, lungs, the brainabout to burst its brittle case(what the skull can endure!)”

“She did not look at the daffodils. They didn't mean anything. She looked at the daffodils. She said, 'Thank you for the daffodils.”