" You are too hasty, Sir..."

"You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who would make you so.... I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart."

--Elizabeth Bennet to Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice

Back again

Is there more than one of you?
Of course there's not; it isn't true.
But the name is yours, and his words
remind me of the warbling birds.
So much like you in many ways--
reminding me of early days
when you would write so many things
about yourself to me;
How long ago it seems,
but now you're back again.
Not really,
though for all the world
you remind me of him.
No, that isn't true.
He reminds me of you.

I sing to use the waiting

I sing to use the waiting,
My bonnet but to tie,
And shut the door unto my house:
No more to do have I,

Till, his best step approaching,
We journey to the day,
And tell each other how we sang
To keep the dark away.

--Emily Dickinson

Something

I should write to you;
it's only polite,
but what to say
between everything and
nothing?
I know--
something.

Waiting

My garden is sleeping. These are the long days of Winter. At least to my mind they are like the darkness before the dawn. There are no flowers to cheer me, no green to freshen the landscape made bleak by ice and snow. Even the sunshine, welcome as it is, reminds me of how long I must wait before Spring comes to stay. I miss the songs of the birds. I miss the warmth of the sun. I miss the long walks on my favorite paths. But I must wait.

It is the waiting that I need so very much-- and that I very much do not want. There are many lessons here, if only I will learn them. While my garden is sleeping, I am waiting. And learning.

Taking tea on my twenty-first birthday, Part 1

On the morning of my twenty-first birthday I awoke to find myself in the place which had occupied my daydreams for as long as I could remember. It was nearly mid-April and the streams of Spring were coursing once again through the countryside of Stratford, a world alive with so many English beauties and wonders that I could scarcely begin to apprehend them all . I walked in a waking dream, so it seemed then and still seems, along cobbled streets which ran to and from the river Avon. Here and there pairs of swans like kings and queens were gliding upon the silvered water as the sun streamed from sapphire skies. I watched the clouds collide and pass each other, blown by strong and silent winds aloft; and soon there began to fall the tiniest of snowflakes, like the laughter of children from a distance. There I stood in the center of the loveliest snow globe I had ever seen as the scenes unfolded before me.

The Secret Sits

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

--Robert Frost