Poetry Archive

Long Long Sentences

• T.E. Lawrence 'Seven Pillars..' - 2010-05-13 14:44:51

  The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p 276.

  "All day the grey-green expanse of stones and bushes quivered like a mirage with the movement of men on foot; and horsemen; men on camels; camels bearing the hunched black loads which were the goat-hair tent-cloths; camels swaying curiously, like butterflies, under the winged and fringed howdahs of the women; camels tusked like mammoths or tailed like birds with the cocked or dragging tent-poles of silvery poplar."

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• A feast of punctuation, p 125, 'Seven Pillars..' - 2010-05-13 14:39:28

  T.E. Lawrence "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" p 125. For the love of punctuation, may I make this contribution:

  "Mirzuk, a good-looking, clever lad (a little too sharp-featured) falling into the spirit of the thing, began, in his broad, Ateibi twang, to draw for us word-pictures of young Zeid in flight; of the terror of Ibn Thawab, that famous brigand; and, ultimate disgrace, of how the venerable el Hussein, father of Sherif Ali, the Harithi, had lost his coffee-pots!"

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• T.E. Lawrence "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" - 2010-02-15 13:22:50

  The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1926. (1935, Penguin.) Page 99.

  "My duty was now to take the shortest road to Egypt with the news: and the knowledge gained that evening in the palm wood grew and blossomed in my mind into a thousand branches, laden with fruit and shady leaves, beneath which I sat and half-listened and saw visions, while the twilight deepened, and the night; until a line of slaves with lamps came down the winding paths between the palm trunks, and with Feisal and Maulud we walked back through the garden to the little house, with its courts still full of waiting people, and to the hot inner room in which the familiars were assembled; and there we sat down together to the smoking bowl of rice and meat set upon the food-carpet for our supper by the slaves."

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• John Barrie - 'Peter Pan' 1911 - 2010-02-04 13:22:42

  Peter Pan and Wendy - CHAPTER VIII The Mermaid's Lagoon

  "The most haunting time at which to see the mermaids is at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for mortals then, and until the evening of which we have now to tell, Wendy had never seen the lagoon by moonlight, less from fear, for of course Peter would have accompanied her, than because she had strict rules about every one being in bed by seven."

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