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Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden

Midsummer Night's Dream - Act III Scene I

Snout: O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?

Bottom: What do you see? you see an ass-head of your own, do you?

Quince: Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated.

Bottom: I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.

The ousel cock so black of hue,

    With orange-tawny bill,

The throstle with his note so true,

    The wren with little quill;

Titania [Awaking]: What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

Bottom [Sings]:

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,

    The plain-song cuckoo gray,

Whose note full many a man doth mark,

    And dares not answer nay: -

for indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry "cuckoo" never so?

Titania: I pray thee gentle mortal,sing again:
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

Sharing Eve's Apple - John Keats

I

O blush not so! O blush not so!

    Or I shall think you knowing;

And if you smile the blushing while,

    Then maidenheads are going.

II

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't,

    And a blush for having done it:

There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught,

    And a blush for just begun it.

III

O sigh not so! O sigh not so!

    For it sounds of Eve's sweet pippin;

By these loosen'd lips you have tasted the pips

    And fought in an amorous nipping.

IV

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,

    For it only will last our youth out,

And we have the prime of the kissing time,

    We have not one sweet tooth out.

V

There's a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,

    And a sigh for I can't bear it!

O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

    O cut the sweet apple and share it!