Nick :)

“but in his one hand he held a holly-bundle,
that is greatest in greenery where groves are leafless,
and an axe in the other, ugly and monstrous,
a ruthless weapon aright for one in rhyme to describe:
the head was as large and as long as an ellwand,
a branch of green steel and of beaten gold;
the bit, burnished bright and broad at the edge,
as well shaped for shearing as sharp razors;
the stern was a stout staff, by which sternly he gripped it,
all bound with iron about to the base of the handle,
and engraved in green in graceful patterns,
lapped round with a lanyard that was lashed to the head
and down the length of the haft was looped many times;
and tassels of price were tied there in plenty
to bosses of the bright green, braided most richly.”
― Christopher Tolkien, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“The short verses composed by the colon bacillus were extremely banal and unsuitable for recitation, since—for obvious reasons—bacteria knew nothing about English phonetics. Hence, they could master the meter of verse, but not the rules of rhyming;”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“Away above a harborful of caulkless houses / among the charley noble chimney-pots of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines / a woman pastes up sails upon the wind."
That was a woman, perpetually appearing from behind something, too busy being a part of the world to consider it from the outside. She was the soft pink inside of the world.
Back when I got it, I had just noticed the beauty of the poem's imagery. Looking at it now, it had an added weight. I wanted to be outside the world, like a poet, and I wanted to be inside the world, like a woman.”
― Emily Zhou, Girlfriends