"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

#AdventCalendar – Day 11: To Winter

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.

He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed
In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes;
For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world.

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st
With storms; till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.

– William Blake

architecture, engineering and construction

The Universe within a Room

Gaston Bachelard‘s Poetics of Space is the book that gives this week its title, and its central claim, that the house is our first universe, a cosmos before we know the word, is seductive enough that it’s worth resisting for a moment. You know the

Read More »
Summertime

Clarice Lispector’s Room you never designed for yourself

The premise of The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector’s mystical novel from 1964 is almost nothing: a sculptor, known to us only by her initials, decides to clean out the maid’s room after the maid has left her employment. That’s the entire plot. She

Read More »
Share on LinkedIn
Throw on Reddit
Roll on Tumblr
Mail it
No Comments

Post A Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RELATED POSTS

The Universe within a Room

Gaston Bachelard‘s Poetics of Space is the book that gives this week its title, and its central claim, that the house is our first universe, a cosmos before we know the word, is seductive enough that it’s worth resisting for a moment. You know the

Read More