“aslant”

“Let It GoIt is this deep blankness is the real thing strange. The more things happen to you the more you can't Tell or remember even what they were.The contradictions cover such a range. The talk would talk and go so far aslant. You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.”

“To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book — to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor — to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire — to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower — to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind — to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in — Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation.”

“There is a willow grows aslant the brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; therewith fantastic garlands did she make of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples that the liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke; when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide and, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and indued unto that element; but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death.”

“Every inch of space was used. As the road narrowed, signs receded upwards and changed to the vertical. Businesses simply soared from ground level and hung out vaster, more fascinatingly illuminated shingles than competitors. We were still in a traffic tangle, but now the road curved. Shops crowded the pavements and became homelier. Vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats adangle - as always, my ultimate ghastliness - and here and there among the crowds the alarming spectacle of an armed Sikh, shotgun aslant, casually sitting at a bank entrance. And markets everywhere. To the right, cramped streets sloped down to the harbor. To the left, as we meandered along the tramlines through sudden dense markets of hawkers' barrows, the streets turned abruptly into flights of steps careering upwards into a bluish mist of domestic smoke, clouds of washing on poles, and climbing. Hong Kong had the knack of building where others wouldn't dare.”

“I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South,No wraith, but utterly—as still more aloneThe Southern Cross takes nightAnd lifts her girdles from her, one by one—High, cool, wide from the slowly smoldering fireOf lower heavens,— vaporous scars!Eve! Magdalene! or Mary, you?Whatever call—falls vainly on the wave.O simian Venus, homeless Eve,Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieveWindswept guitars on lonely decks forever;Finally to answer all within one grave!And this long wake of phosphor, iridescentFurrow of all our travel—trailed derision!Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spellIncites a yell. Slid on that backward visionThe mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell.I wanted you . . . The embers of the CrossClimbed by aslant and huddling aromatically.It is blood to remember; it is fireTo stammer back . . . It isGod—your namelessness. And the wash— All night the water combed you with blackInsolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished.Water rattled that stinging coil, yourRehearsed hair—docile, alas, from many arms.Yes, Eve—wraith of my unloved seed!The Cross, a phantom, buckled—dropped below the dawn.Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.”