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Post by snowfyre on Feb 21, 2016 18:36:48 GMT
A place for randomly encountered (or carefully sought out) works that - for some reason or other - recall moments, characters, or themes in ASOIAF.
And I'll just kick the thread off with the classic (and obvious).
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost (1920)
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to know that for destruction ice is also great, and would suffice.
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Post by Maester Flagons on Feb 26, 2016 14:10:13 GMT
-Moment of inner freedom when the mind is opened & the infinite universe revealed & the soul is left to wander dazed & confus’d searching here & there for teachers & friends. ~~~~~~~~~~~~
Moment of Freedom as the prisoner blinks in the sun like a mole from his hole
a child’s 1st trip away from home
That moment of Freedom
-James Morrison
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Post by Weasel Pie on Feb 27, 2016 19:33:38 GMT
And a wolf stole back -- and a wolf stole back To carry the word to the waiting Pack; And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track Once, twice, and again!
- From Kipling's Jungle Book
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Post by snowfyre on May 28, 2016 15:03:18 GMT
High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air... Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark or even eagle flew -- And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
(Magee was an American son of Episcopal missionaries to China. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force because his own country had not yet entered World War 2. Magee was killed in a mid-air collision over Lincolnshire, England on June 9, 1941, at the age of 19. President Reagan quoted from this poem his January 28, 1986 speech, following the loss of the space shuttle Challenger.)
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Post by snowfyre on Jun 8, 2016 16:32:32 GMT
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost (1923)
Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
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Post by snowfyre on Jun 8, 2016 16:35:37 GMT
Mending Wall by Robert Frost (1914)
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.' Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'
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Post by snowfyre on Jun 8, 2016 17:32:47 GMT
My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.' "Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors' cattle to go at large because they don't want their ill will, — are afraid to anger them. They are abettors of the ill-doers." -- Henry David Thoreau, November 20, 1858
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Post by snowfyre on Jul 2, 2016 20:32:54 GMT
RIP, Elie Wiesel.
September 30, 1928 - July 2, 2016.
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Post by Ser Duncan on Jul 2, 2016 22:10:58 GMT
I truly hope he's found his God, and is giving Him a good strong talking to.
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Post by snowfyre on Jul 15, 2016 11:20:41 GMT
Conrad Siever by Edgar Lee Masters
Not in that wasted garden Where bodies are drawn into grass That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens That bear no fruit— There where along the shaded walks Vain sighs are heard, And vainer dreams are dreamed Of close communion with departed souls— But here under the apple tree I loved and watched and pruned With gnarled hands In the long, long years; Here under the roots of this northern-spy To move in the chemic change and circle of life, Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree, And into the living epitaphs Of redder apples!
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Post by snowfyre on Jul 23, 2016 23:25:57 GMT
January by Helen Hunt Jackson
O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire, What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire The streams than under ice. June could not hire Her roses to forego the strength they learn In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn The bridges thou dost lay where men desire In vain to build. O Heart, when Love’s sun goes To northward, and the sounds of singing cease, Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace. Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose. Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows, The winter is the winter’s own release.
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Post by Maester Flagons on Jul 24, 2016 2:57:15 GMT
January by Helen Hunt Jackson O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire, What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire The streams than under ice. June could not hire Her roses to forego the strength they learn In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn The bridges thou dost lay where men desire In vain to build. O Heart, when Love’s sun goes To northward, and the sounds of singing cease, Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace. Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose. Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows, The winter is the winter’s own release. Very nice.
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Jul 24, 2016 14:40:19 GMT
RIP, Elie Wiesel.
September 30, 1928 - July 2, 2016. Whaaaaat? How did I miss this? This never showed up in any of my news feeds, are you kidding me? Funny but true - as I was dejunking the master bedroom in preparation for company - right around that first week of July - I jostled a cabinet and a book fell off the highest bookshelf. I was too lazy to bring up the tall ladder and put it back so I just left it sitting on my dresser. The book? Elie Wiesel's Night Trilogy.
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Post by snowfyre on Jul 26, 2016 0:51:50 GMT
-- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, philosopher of science, and (secret) greenseer, on the occasion of the death of his friend Michele Besso in 1955.
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Post by snowfyre on Aug 8, 2016 15:28:08 GMT
Born Brothers by Mark Van Doren
Equality is absolute or no.
Nothing between can stand. We are the sons Of the same sire, or madness breaks and runs Through the rude world. Ridiculous our woe If single pity does not love it. So Our separate fathers love us. No man shuns His poorest child's embrace. We are the sons Of such, or ground and sky are soon to go.
Nor do born brothers judge, as good or ill, Their being. Each consents and is the same, Or suddenly sweet winds turn into flame And floods are on us--fire, earth, water, air All hideously parted, as his will Withdraws, no longer fatherly and there.
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