When I was a young man and very well thought of, I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied. I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins, And I… - Peter S. Beagle
" "When I was a young man and very well thought of,
I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.
I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,
And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied.
But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know
The secret I shelter and savor and save
I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'
The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;
The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.
I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,
And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.
But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see
There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave.
My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'
At last came a lady both knowing and tender,
Saying, 'you're not at all what they take you to be.'
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea.
And I say to myself when there's time for a word,
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,
'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.
English
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About Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle (born 20 April 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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Peter Soyer Beagle
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Additional quotes by Peter S. Beagle
"He felt as if he had told a joke and they had missed the punchline and were leaning to him, wating for the kicker, the all-illuminating kicker that is found only in jokes; or as if someone had asked, "How you doing?" and the spring-and-strap arrangement in him had rusted and broken and he would never again be able to answer perfunctory questions the way other people did."
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The impulse is being called reactionary now, but lovers of Middle-earth want to go there. I would myself, like a shot. For in the end it is Middle-earth and its dwellers that we love, not Tolkien’s considerable gifts in showing it to us. I said once that the world he charts was there long before him, and I still believe it. He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day’s madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers — thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.
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