The dusk is heavy with the wine's warm load; Here the long sense of classic measure cures The spirit weary of its difficult pain; Here the old Bacchi… - Vita Sackville-West

This is how you must imagine your letters arriving, and me carrying them off to read in peace, and saying 'oh darling Virginia', and smiling to myself, and reading them all over again. Whereas mine just come with the postman.

Chances of meeting this person, doing that thing, accumulate. Life is as I’ve said since I was ten, awfully interesting – if anything, quicker, keener at forty-four than twenty-four – more desperate I suppose, as the river shoots to Niagara – my new vision of death. ‘The one experience I shall never describe’ I said to Vita yesterday.

Who could so watch, and not forget the rack Of wills worn thin and thought become too frail, Nor roll the centuries back — And feel the sinews of his soul grow hale, And know himself for Rome's inheritor?