for did it not mean I was losing my darling, just when I had secretly made her mine? - Vladimir Nabokov

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly.

Any future is unknown – but sometimes it acquires a particular fogginess, as if some other force had come to the aid of destiny's natural reticence and distributed this resilient fog, from which thought rebounds.

Here, I’ll tell you — with my love I could have filled ten centuries of fire, songs, and valour — ten whole centuries, enormous and winged, — full of knights riding up blazing hills — and legends about giants — and fierce Troys — and orange sails — and pirates — and poets.