— Robert Frost (via thisheartofstone)
I want to put flowers in your hair. But what flowers? There are none with touching enough simplicity. And from what May would I fetch them? But I’m convinced now that you always have a wreath in your hair…or a crown… I’ve never seen you in any other way.
I’ve never seen you without wanting to pray to you. I’ve never heard you without wanting to place my faith in you. I’ve never longed for you without wanting to suffer for your sake. I’ve never desired you without wanting to be able to kneel before you.
I am yours as the staff is the pilgrim’s—only I don’t support you. I am yours as the scepter is the queen’s—only I don’t enrich you. I am yours as the last little star is the night’s, even though the night may be scarcely aware of it and have no knowledge of its glimmer.
”— Rainier Maria Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salomé
Catlin Flanagan’s article in The Atlantic on US college admissions, its fashions, fads and quirks, provides many parallels to UK universities; especially the shifting pack of fashionable universities for the mass of Oxbridge rejects.
—
Wolfgang Rihm
Music is probably only experienced in the form of devotion.
The Nunc Dimitis from The Gloucester Service by Herbert Howells. Recorded by the BBC as part of Choral Evensong from Gloucester Cathedral, 9 February 2011.
Whilst I’m still unsure of the exact composition of the perfect Evensong—I keep on discovering new anthems, introits and responses—, I am certain that it would be based around Howell’s supreme Gloucester Service.
Ah, that old friend unrequited love. The Guardian Film Blog reminds us what it feels like to reject or be rejected.
— From a friend’s Facebook status. Hopeless romantics, the lot of us.
Durham Cathedral
Building Date: 1093-1128
Photograph date: ca. 1865-ca. 1895
My maternal grandparents lived on The College, right next to the cathedral, for many years. Childhood memories are full of Christmas at Durham in the snow; of the vast drawing room in their house; and Heineken tours over the roofs and up the towers of the cathedral with my Grandfather, the Chapter Clerk — “Reaching the places other tours cannot reach.”
