Poems on the Underground

Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound,
Off trundled timber and scoops of hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:

The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Poems on the Underground

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

-Robert Graves

Pan's Labyrinth

"Because the paths of the Lord are inscrutable, because the essence of his forgiveness lies in his world and his mystery, because although God sends us the message, it is our task to decipher it, . . . when we open our arms, the Earth takes in only a hollow and senseless shell. Far away now is the world in its eternal glory. Because it is in pain that we find the meaning of life and the state of grace that we lose when we are born. Because God, in his infinite wisdom, puts the solution in our hands. And because it is only in his physical absence that the place he occupies in our souls is reaffirmed."

Oscar Wilde = The Picture of Dorian Gray

"People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."