Wassail, traveler, and welcome to The Gable Grey -- a place of retreat, of renewal, and of resistance: a tree-shaded refuge in Dark Times. Now pass the threshold, and rest from journeys! For a cold wind is blowing; and here, if you wish, you may hear tidings of the world without...

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

And now, a word from Marcus


"Death is relief from reaction to the senses, from the puppet-strings of impulse, from the analytical mind, and from service to the flesh.  Disgraceful if, in this life where your body does not fail, your soul should fail you first.

"Take care not to be Caesarified, or dyed in purple:  it happens.  So keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, unpretentious, a friend of justice, god-fearing, kind, full of affection, strong for your proper work.  Strive hard to remain the same man that philosophy wished to make you.  Revere the gods, look after men.  Life is short.  The one harvest of existence on earth is a godly habit of mind and social action."

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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Whiles carried o'er the iron road,
We hurry by some fair abode;
The garden bright amidst the hay,
The yellow wain upon the way,
The dining men, the wind that sweeps
Light locks from off the sun-sweet heaps --
The gable grey, the hoary roof,
Here now -- and now so far aloof.
How sorely then we long to stay
And midst its sweetness wear the day,
And 'neath its changing shadows sit,
And feel ourselves a part of it.
Such rest, such stay, I strove to win
With these same leaves that lie herein.

-- William Morris, from
"The Roots of the Mountains"