Cathy

“On the course of that chariot and those horses.
A boy could not hope to control them.
You are my son, but mortal. No mortal
Could hope to manage those reins.
Not even the gods are allowed to touch them.

...

'Our first stretch is almost vertical.
Fresh as they are, first thing,
It is all the horses can do to get up it.
Then on to mid-heaven. Terrifying
To look down through nothing
At earth and sea, so tiny.
My heart nearly struggles out of my body
As the chariot sways.
Then the plunge towards evening -
There you need strength on the reins. Tethys,

'Who waits to receive me
Into her waters, is always afraid
I shall topple -
And come tumbling
Head over heels in a tangled mass.

'Remember, too,
That the whole sky is revolving
With its constellations, its planets.
I have to force my course against that -
Not to be swept backwards as all else is.

'What will you do,
Your feet braced at the chariot, the reins in your hands,
When you have to counter the pull
Of the whistling Poles? When the momentum
Of the whole reeling cosmos hauls you off sideways?”
― Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“However wildly
this year's cherry blossoms bloom,
I'll see them
with the plum's scent
filling my heart.”
― Ono no Komachi, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet