Blank

“ In the eighteenth century tradition is the very preference for blank verse as the instrument for large and serious thought, and the lifelong preference itself for large and serious thought on Death, History, Destiny. ”

“ Is it not pleasant to think of the children having those words to read—painted in pretty colours, too—rather than looking at a blank wall? Sometimes I think we might even hope to carry with us the hearts of people by setting up for them deliberately very solemn and beautiful words indeed, coloured richly in lasting tiles. ”

“ His next work is the translation of the Art of Poetry; which has received, in my opinion, not less praise than it deserves. Blank verse, left merely to its numbers, has little operation on the ear or mind: it can hardly support itself without bold figures and striking images. A poem frigidly didactick, without rhyme, is so near to prose, that the reader only scorns it for pretending to be verse. ”

“ This name might be applied to our blank verse; there is no harmony of sound, no dignity of movement, no swiftness, no subtlety of languid sweetness, no brevity, no force of emphasis, beyond its scope." (Blank Verse, pp. 16, 17.)
"It seems adapted specially for thought in evolution; it requires progression and sustained effort. As a consequence of this, its melody is determined by the sense which it contains, and depends more upon proportion and harmony of sounds than upon recurrences and regularities of structure.... Another point about blank verse is that it admits of no mediocrity ”

“ Yet brief and slight as these remembrances have been, they have assured me of one great truth, namely—that the state of blank never actually exists. Some part of us—the part that alone retains consciousness—is extracted and borne far away from the actual material body ”

“ Thorns, Rifts, Clouds, Flaws, Blemishes, Etc.
[“The attitude of mind I have always believed in, is to answer, when anybody says how ugly Mrs. Blank’s nose is, ‘Yes, but hasn’t she a lovely complexion?’”—Kate Douglas Wiggin.] ”

“ The poetry is admirable in its kind—intentionally charged, to raise it to the second stage-level, above the blank verse, that is, of the drama in which it is set, as that blank verse is raised above the ordinary level of speech. ”

“ The turn of them should always be natural and easy, for they are an image of private and familiar conversation. I mention this with respect to the four or five first lines of yours, which have an air of poetry, and do therefore naturally resolve themselves into blank verses. I send you your letter again, that you may make the same observation. But you took the hint of that thought from a poem, and it is no wonder therefore, that you heightened the phrase a little when you were expressing it. ”

“ Blank verse, said an ingenious critick, seems to be verse only to the eye. ”

“ It will be seen, that he combined with his rhymes much of the freedom and force of blank verse. He never allows the absence of good strong sense nor the presence of unmeaning or useless words in order to make out the rhyme. ”

“ Although we have no words to express, nor indeed minds to grasp, the wonders and glories of that which is behind the Veil, it is possible for some of us to get a glimpse of it through our Window, and to those the following pages may be helpful, but to others the Wall will remain blank ”

“ W'y, "Blarst!" 'e sez. . . . Yes, "Blarst the'r blanky 'ides!"
⁠ (Oh, you may well throw up your 'ands an' stare)
⁠Yes—"Blarst" 'e sez, "the'r blanky 'ides an' 'air!
I'll cut the blanky skin clean off the'r sides! ”

“ But the blanks did not fill and though behind them he could not look, yet the subconscious self that registers and retains everything we do and hear and say prompted him dumbly that behind the blanks there lurked the dismal and, perhaps, the dire. ”

“ Animal in the first blank, his or its in the second blank, and size in the third blank. 12. Man in the first blank, with carried or carries in the second blank, and wore or wears in the third blank. 13. ”

“ Tom and Jim rolled in their blankets by the fire, close together so they could talk in low whispers. The light wind stirred the flames and sent them reaching high into the air. A moment more and they died down to smouldering embers. Silence gradually settled down over the tents and those two Indian-like figures on the ground.
The camp was asleep or so it seemed. Not one occupant of the tents or Tom or Jim saw the two figures that stood on the outer edge of the circle of light and smiled over the serenity which gripped the camp. Big, burly men they were, used to hard riding and hard living. ”

“ The sun dropped from sight, leaving a trail of glorious colors in his wake. From the east, night like a pearly gray blanket covered the sky.
Virginia sliced bacon in the frying pan over the fire. Gale made coffee and soon inviting aromas of their supper drifted on the air.
52 “The smell of food will bring Tom if nothing else does,” Virginia declared laughingly.
But it grew later. Darkness with its impenetrable shadows closed down. The girls huddled about the campfire, watching the fantastic shadows the flames threw over the tents. ”

“ Bruce declared, on his knees coaxing a flame into life in the dark fireplace.
“That feels good!” Gale shivered, holding her hands out to the blaze, after wrapping herself in a blanket. “How are we going to get home?”
“I don’t think we will—tonight,” Bruce said, frowning. “No one knows where we are for one thing. I’ll sleep in the canoe house on the cot tonight and you can have the bunk in here. Pleasant dreams!” and he was gone. He knew the struggle in the water had tired Gale and it was best to let her rest. ”

“ She fell silent and Gale, too, pulled her blanket closer for a cool wind had sprung up. The last thing she remembered before Tom brought them all wide awake with a loud banging on the frying pan was the wild, untamed howl of a coyote.
With the first dancing rays of the sun, the riders were up and about their business. Packs securely fastened on the pack horses and the girls mounted, they started on their way. As always when riding their spirits rose with the sun. ”

“ In fact the great difficulty in studying the Reality underlying Nature is analogous to our inability to isolate and study the different sounds themselves which fall upon the ear, if our own language is being uttered, without being forced to consider the meaning we have always attached to those sounds. ”

“ Let me give a simple example of Creation by a "word," which even our finite minds can grasp. When I utter the word Cat, it starts a practically instantaneous thought in [Pg 169] your minds, the power of that thought being dependent upon the knowledge you have gained. ”

“ It was almost like standing on the edge of the world. Behind her towered high and mighty mountains, before her lay a sea of moon-swept valley. Born and brought up in the little town of Marchton, Gale had known some outdoor life, but never the breathless beauty and limitless quiet of a night in Arizona. Quiet had she thought? Far away a coyote howled and yet another. ”

“ Gale was staring at the dark little shanty that Tom had said was doubtless the entrance to the old miner’s mine. She wondered if the man had ever realized his dream of great wealth, the dream he doubtless had when he settled here and began to dig. A shadow, a moving shadow, had detached itself from the spot of darkness which was the shanty and was going toward a thick clump of trees. ”

“ Phyllis felt as if she would never again get the smell of smoke out of her system.
One—two—three—she counted the horses neighing and rearing at their posts. Nine! There should be ten! With a sinking of heart she looked at them all again. White Star was not there! White Star! The best of the group! How could she possibly have missed him?
Without another thought but that of her favorite mount Phyllis dashed back into the stables. One—two—three—stalls empty. Nothing but silence and the crackling of flames—flames creeping closer, destroying, and smoke. ”

“ What a miserable instrumentality is language! A tone of satiny flesh, a luminous shadow on a bare shoulder, a flickering light on floating silk, attract, recall, and retain the eye for a long time, and yet there is but a vague phrase with which to express the charm.... ”

“ It was only that they had found words too blundering a vehicle to express emotions so strong and complex. But where the tongue fails, the glance of the eye and the pressure of a hand says in a moment what many words only darken and confuse. ”

“ One gives out light and warmth as some divine orb. The other lives in the shadow of a devilish, dead sun, and therefore it exhales darkness. The luminosity and the warmth of the one, the darkness and the woe of the other, express themselves in slang. Nothing could be more mysterious; for from some inexplicable synthesis of the two, genius is born. ”

“ How pitiful and base if a shadow were to be cast on the name she has left, or her character were still exposed to the slightest misconception, by any false delicacy to the living, or any flinching from the truth, however painful, on the part of one whom she had in solemn terms charged with the task of recording the successes and sorrows of her life. ”

“ The incorporation of men of letters may serve to lend a touch of ceremonial colour to the close of a lonely life; but it can never control the mysterious processes of language which blossoms in the market-place, or of thought which germinates in the darkness. ”

“ In the pages of a picture-book, and he
Sometimes screamed, in sudden rages,
"I must jump out from these pages,
For this life's a much too humdrum one for me!
Fiddle-dee!
Yes, this life's a quite too quiet one for me!" ”

“ The truth is that you see in each word and even in each member of a phrase only some letters or even some characteristic marks, just enough to permit you to divine the rest. All of the rest, that you think you see, you really give yourself as an hallucination. ”

“ Gale stepped out into the world red with the glow from the setting sun and thought what a grand person Dean Travis was. She had a personality that made one immediately want to be the best sort of person one could. That she would in a short time win all the girls over to her side, Gale did not doubt. She was so pleasant, so easy to approach, so interested in the girls, that they could not resent her for any length of time no matter how much they missed their former Dean. ”

“ But the shade of the envelope—it was of a peculiar greenish tint—gave that unconscious spur to the memory which was needed to bring back the very look of the writing which had been on the letter I had so carelessly handled; and I found, as others have found before me, that there is no real forgetfulness in this world; that the most superficial glance may serve to imprint images upon the mind, which only await time and occasion to reappear before us with startling distinctness. ”

“ When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. ”

“ She says—‘I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!’ I always thought—maybe—I should love someone like that some day.” Gale was so thankful for the darkness here against the hangar. He couldn’t see how her cheeks were burning. Never, never, had she thought she would ever talk to anyone like this!
Brent Stockton thoughtfully brushed an imaginary bit of dust from his jacket sleeve. “You are right,” he said. “You should love someone like that. You are young and—quite lovely.” He grinned down at her. “There will be a great many boys in love with you, Gale.” ”

“ Why can't you look at life through a plain sheet of glass—if you must look at it through something—instead of choosing the red and the yellow and the purples—anything but the plain, the untinted reality. ”

“ Gale, in the rear cockpit, could have no inkling of the turmoil that was going on in Brent’s mind. She was nervously clinging to the edge of the seat, wiping the rain from her face, and endeavoring at the same time to get a glimpse of the ground below them. The lights, now, were gone from sight. No more did they twinkle on and off like stars. She looked above and around her. Even the heavens were black—no friendly star or moon. She wished for one second that she had insisted on staying with her father in Quebec or rather still that she had never come to Canada at all! ”

“ For all that vast ambition I have not even a complete alphabet to show, much less one single illustration of how to read the letters of nature in their myriad intricacies of form, colour and sound in the world we live in. ”

“ Form, cold and compact, is a sepulchre of snow.... And the heavy word stifles the fragile Idea which, like perfume and light, flew glittering about. Who can find the mould in which to cast expression? Ah! who can speak the infinite anxieties of our dreams? The heavens that flee from the hand that is raised? ”

“ There she turned in the direction of the bay. At the tiny wharf she seated herself on a deserted soap box and gazed out over the gentle swell of waves. A huge blot in the darkness was the island. Beyond that lashed the heavy ocean waves. She could hear the roar of the surf even at this distance. She sniffed appreciatively and felt the spell of depression that had enveloped her lifting.
Suddenly she heard a sound in the stillness. It was a footfall and quite abruptly a man was outlined against the line of water and sky as he stood at the opposite end of the wharf from her. ”