I belong to a "quotation of the day" email list, where I get a little pearl of wisdom each morning, befitting the day's offing. I love it.
Quotation of the Day for December 31, 2008
We Have Been Here Before
I think I remember this mooreland,
The tower on the tip of the tor;
I feel in the distance another existence;
I think I have been here before.
And I think you were sitting beside me
In a fold in the face of the fell;
For Time at its work'll go round in a circle,
And what is befalling, befell.
"I have been here before!" I asserted,
In a nook on a neck of the Nile.
I once in a crisis was punished by Isis,
And you smiled. I remember your smile.
I had the same sense of persistence
On the site of the seat of the Sioux;
I heard in the teepee the sound of a sleepy
Pleistocene grunt. It was you.
The past made a promise, before it
Began to begin to begone.
This limited gamut brings you again. Damn it,
How long has this got to go on?
- Morris Bishop (1893-1973), The New Yorker, October 29, 1938.
Submitted by: thom newlin