Parterre

“ A chain of rose upon his wings,
Whose guardian was a dark-eyed Maid.
They lived in sweet companionship:
Enough for him one smile so bright;
Enough for her to live for him,
To watch his chain, to keep it light. ”

“ Let us imagine, as an example, a large crowd in a public garden; I will soon classify it for you. I shall put the men on one side and the women on the other. Then—to begin with the women—I shall subdivide them into married and single. ”

“ You should establish the circle:
You should melt the world
In a circle of lovers!
Heart burn, voice lull, raise me, lower me,
With the flame of the flagrant love I awaken:
That red flames stop-flowing through the lands,
Cheeks begin to redden in fraternal receiving,
And brotherly, in a solemn circle, through the world
The wave of the song of Understanding begins to bellow... ”

“ To the North its hundred branches.
Whosoe'er a branch has taken,
Has obtained eternal welfare;
Who secures himself a tree-top,
He has gained the master magic;
Who the foliage has gathered,
Has delight that never ceases. ”

“ The first shot may well be an accident, the second may possibly be, but as the third inexorably follows, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and sons, look at each other with blanched faces, and instantly a hundred scenes of quiet preparation for meeting, are transformed into the confusion of a very different kind of preparation. ”

“ A part of my comrades I had now got well equipped; by degrees, the rest were likewise furbished up, though on a thriftier plan; and so a very seemly corps at length was mustered. We marched about the courtyards and gardens, smote fearfully upon each other's shields and heads: many flaws of discord rose among us, but none that lasted. ”

“ Side by side as it was always, each one with a word of cheer
For the other, and for his sake bravely choking back the tear.
Side by side, their pain or pastime never yet seemed good for one;
But whenever pain came, each in secret wished the other gone. ”

“ Fathers of families form an inner circle round it. An outer circle is formed by the young men and maidens, who, singing Easter hymns, march round and round the fire in the direction of the sun, till the blaze dies down. ”

“ I long for the meeting with my Beloved, and my father's house gives me pleasure no more.
The gates of the sky are opened, the temple is revealed:
I meet my husband, and leave at His feet the offering of my body and my mind. ”

“ Leave the town to crumble down and let the women marry.
"Twelve of us or five," he says, "we know the night is on us now:
Five while we last, and we may as well be thinking now:
Thinking each his own thought, knowing, when the light comes,
Five left or none left, the game will not be lost. ”

“ Here is the partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side. Are we ever coming up again together? I think not; the partition and I are so long about it that I really do believe we have overdone it this time. Heavens, what a scoop! What a deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long scoop! Will it ever end, and can we bear the heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and which has let loose all the table furniture in the officers’ mess, and has beaten open the door of the little passage between the purser and me, and is swashing about, even there and even here? ”

“ The couples did not walk round in a circle, but in a square, with the men on the inside. The fine points to be considered were the bearing of the men, the precision with which they turned the corners, the grace of the women, and the ease with which they swung around the pivots. ”

“ Sometimes, in a scene which employs the ‘Let us in!’ formula, or on other ground looks like a threshold scene, we are suddenly pulled up either by a suggestion of the host that we are ‘in’ his house or under his roof, or by an indication that persons outside are to be brought ‘in’. ”

“ It was a manner of passing the time that rather replaced conversation, but the air at the end none the less, before they separated, had a way of seeming full of the echoes of talk. They separated, in the hushed house, not quite easily, yet not quite awkwardly either, with tapers that twinkled in the large dark spaces, and for the most part so late that the last solemn servant had been dismissed for the night. ”

“ In farm and field through all the shire The eye beholds the heart's desire; Ah, let not only mine be vain, For lovers should be loved again. XI On your midnight pallet lying Listen, and undo the door: Lads that waste the light in sighing In the dark should sigh no more; Night should ease a lover's sorrow ”

“ Passing through all these—passing barrier after barrier, and circle after circle, our party at last found themselves upon the fine breezy and commanding hill, which was comparatively free from the crowd, and occupied only by the carriages of the nobility and gentry, filled with fair women and well-behaved men. ”

“ Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbours' lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness. ”

“ Order moulded the planets, and every star that gems the evening sky; it launched them forth in their orbits, and guides their glorious way, producing "the music of the spheres." Order stretched the very layers of the everlasting rocks like ribs around the earth, and shaped the crystals of the cavern. ”

“ They were, in their strange, final union—if union it could be called—very natural and very touching; but he was visibly stricken—he had his ailment in his eyes. She moved about him like a sister of charity—at all events like a sister. ”

“ In any circle, the nearer the points of the circumference are to the centre, the closer they will necessarily be to one another. As we draw nearer, each for himself, to our Centre, we shall feel that we have approximated to all those who stand round the same centre, and draw from it the same life. ”

“ The third circle from the centre is that which contains uncles and aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers, and the children of brothers and sisters. After this is the circle which comprehends the remaining relatives. Next to this is that which contains the common people, then that which comprehends those of the same tribe, afterwards that which contains the citizens; and then two other circles follow, one being the circle of those that dwell in the vicinity of the city, and the other, of those of the same province. ”

“ Unto this house (the heart of all the shire)
Does bid thee hearty welcome, and would speak it
In higher notes, but extreme joy doth break it.
He makes his guest most welcome, in whose eyes
Love-tears do sit,—not he that shouts and cries. ”

“ Throughout the whole period, however, I can safely say that two out of three of my evenings, so far as enjoyment goes, have been marred by my neighbour. Are all theatre-goers equally afflicted, or is it a special ban upon me? ”

“ While you refuse to descend and ascend with these men, you walk to and from the pit, walk in and out bye with them—nay, sometimes work with them. You mingle with them at home over your glass of beer, in your chapels, and side by side you pray with them in your prayer meeting. ”

“ In all this great world, with every chance against it, fate had ordained that the little provincial city in which he had planned to play, for one night only, another man's part, should also contain one of that man's friends, and they two had met. ”

“ It seems to me, sir, if we would invite from the locality in which we want to introduce a circle, one or two persons to visit our own circle and see the work we are doing, we might thus incite and be enabled to form a circle, taking the one or two members whom we have invited as the nucleus. ”

“ I have stood with one foot in a rivulet the waters of which reached the Pacific, and the other in one which reached the Atlantic. The marital divide is even finer than that. It is all in the habit of mind. If one determines that he, she, will guide, boss, direct, control the other, one of two or three things is sure to occur. ”

“ The “ first parallel ” is opened at a convenient distance from the fortress, by numerous working parties, who dig (under cover of night) a continuous line of entrenchments facing the point or points of attack. ”

“ A more joyous scene, adds the diarist, cannot be imagined than that afforded by those hill-sides and woods thronged with eager sportsmen, and resounding far and near with the notes of the horns, the halloes of the hunters, the barking of the dogs, and the voices of singing and rejoicing. ”

“ We proceed to illustrate this hasty sketch of the Dynamics of a Parti-cle, by demonstrating the great Proposition on which the whole theory of Representation depends, namely:—"To remove a given Tangent from a given Circle, and to bring another given Line into contact with It." ”

“ Frequently were they gathered together in groups, around some of the larger trees, or at the corners of the streets, or at the entrance of some conspicuous shop, to listen to the news which one had to tell, or to arguments upon the all-engrossing theme with which another sought to bring over those who would listen, to one or another side of the great question. ”

“ But in civilization generally when we part we either look forward to meeting again at some not remote period, or we have so many varied occupations, or so many friends around us, that if the partings are welded together, so also are the meetings. ”

“ For the Second Unity, which is that of PLACE; the Ancients meant by it, That the scene [locality] ought to be continued, through the Play, in the same place, where it was laid in the beginning. For the Stage, on which it is represented, being but one, and the same place; it isunnatural to conceive it many, and those far distant from one another. ”

“ But the deliberate and relentlessly-planned assemblage of such distinctly diverse types of men and women as prodded by unusual conditions of weather, domicile, and propinquity, will best act and re-act upon each other in terms inevitably dramatic, though most naively unrehearsed! ”

“ This mingling was a mere mechanical aggregation or agglutination of the different elements, so that all objects were, in themselves, fire, air, earth, and water, whatever might be the appearance which they presented to us. And, Thirdly, This process of mingling and separating was set in motion and governed by two principles, φιλία and νεῖκος; φιλία, friendship or love ”

“ No one can be insensible to the delicate peace and sweetness of a twilight like that of Plate 52, or the vigorous life of wide sea spaces in Plate 53, or the heavy hush of nightfall over the snow-covered village of Plate 54. ”

“ On one side, a little crowd has collected round a couple of ladies, who having imbibed the contents of various ‘three-outs’ of gin and bitters in the course of the morning, have at length differed on some point of domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling the quarrel satisfactorily, by an appeal to blows, greatly to the interest of other ladies who live in the same house, and tenements adjoining, and who are all partisans on one side or other. ”

“ The coming together either of men or of women from regions widely separate from each other naturally gives occasion for comparison. So far as I have known, the comparisons elicited by our meetings have more and more tended to resolve imagined discords into prevailing harmony. The sympathy of feeling aroused by our unity of object has always risen above the distinctions of section and belonging. ”

“ Universal merriment is the rule to-night. Six or seven gentlemen are on their legs at once making speeches, which are listened to about as respectfully as the "toast of the evening" at a public dinner. ”

“ When they had tired themselves with acclamations all about his pavilion, and night was now come, wherever friends or fellow-citizens met, they joyfully saluted and embraced each other, and went home to feast and carouse together. ”

“ A certain band of men, who, however numerous, are always called "a Pair," generally undertake the working of a particular Level. These subdivide themselves into smaller bodies, [188] which, by relieving each other at the end of every six or eight hours, keep up the work uninterruptedly, except on Sunday. ”

“ During the winter, a circle of six, eight, or ten families form themselves into a society, and agree to visit each other; each chooses a week, and during each week the circle assembles every evening at the same house; they take chocolate before going out, and sup when they return; the entertainment is entirely intellectual ”

“ Some persons observed a very different order in arranging their guests, grouping those together whom they considered suited by age or temper to each other, in order by this contrivance to produce general harmony,—the vehement and impetuous being placed beside the meek and gentle, the silent beside the talkative, the ripe and full and expansive minds beside those who were ready to receive instruction. ”

“ Across on the opposite corner there will be a company of strange people who also descended suddenly, and upon whom the eyes of the entire block are turned with absorbing interest. They consist of half-a-dozen men and women seemingly bound together only by ties of conviviality. ”

“ The first city at the lower end of the map is New Friendship. Now, inasmuch as love may be due to esteem, to gratitude, or to inclination, there are three cities called Tenderness, each situated on one of three different rivers that are approached by three distinct routes. ”

“ But a cluster of festivals, standing in a proximate order of succession, at once throwing light upon each other and illustrated by a varied and numerous host of customs, traditions, and ceremonies,—of which, as in a similar cluster of stars, the occasional obscuration of any one or more would not prevent their memory being suggested and their place distinctly indicated by the others,—present greatly multiplied probabilities against their existence being ever entirely forgotten or their observation wholly discontinued. ”