Leopards on the gable-ends, Leopards on the painted stair, Stiff the blazoned shield they bear, Or and gules, a bend of vair, Leopards on the gable-e… - Vita Sackville-West

The Heron

Every morning at dawn the heron comes winging across the woods to rob my lake of its trout. It is not a very large lake, and there are not very many trout; soon there will be none at all if the heron continues to breakfast in this fashion. I would not grudge him a reasonable meal occasionally, but he is an indiscriminate and extravagant fisherman who pulls out trout too large for him to swallow and strews them mangled on the bank. The good fisherman, the honest angler, returns his smaller catch to the water; the heron acts contrariwise, failing to return those which are too big to be of any use to him. The other day he was seen struggling with one half way down his throat; and in spite of my liking for herons, especially when they frequent other people's lakes and streams, I confess I wish it had choked him.

Lady Roehampton was not a young woman; but she was still, though not without taking a certain amount of trouble, beautiful. This question of the middle-aged woman’s beauty and desirability has never sufficiently been exploited by novelists.

Aparentemente no tenía opiniones: no tenía más que estados de ánimo a cuya intensidad arrolladora solo igualaba la velocidad con la que sucedían. No se acostumbraba a su impermanencia; cualquiera que fuera su condición mental del momento, al instante creía ver en ella una visión asentada de la vida. Súbitamente alarmado cuando ese estado le abandonaba, enseguida pasaba a otro, con olvidadizo optimismo.