A Collection of Things, Big and Small

Here is first something new from me, and second some text from "The Once And Future King" which I have been reading much of late. Enjoy.

...and I, in the dark, the one feared most
I, standing against the oncoming tides
holding back this dark host, I
No three hundred behind or before, only I
yet stand I, against the one most feared
I, feared by the one, that is feared by I
Surrounded. Helpless. Alone. I.
Against I. I stand. I falter. I fall.
Drowned. Crushed. Broken.
Yet again, I stand, yet again.
Ever I stand and ever I fall.
I, on my knees, for mercy I call
Not I, but grace, lifts me to stand
Yet again, I stand, yet again.
Though now, as I’ve long known
I may stand, yet not alone.

~

"They were to press the war home to its real lords-until they themselves were ready to refrain from warfare, being confronted with its reality." - "The Once And Future King" - T.H.White

"There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules." - "The Once And Future King" - T.H.White

"Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one --- knowledge of the world.

The slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy --- this discovery is not a matter for triumph. The baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: I have balance! But the seventh sense is recognized without a cry. We only carry on with our famous knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves in a habitual, petrifying way, because we have reached a stage of deadlock in which we can think of nothing else to do.

And at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we lacked the seventh sense. We begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with the impetus of life. It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling and so it deadens in our minds.

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not." - "The Once And Future King" - T.H.White