Duddingston

Now fancy paints that bygone day

When you were here, my fair -

The whole lake rang with rapid skates

In the windless, winter air.

*

You leaned to me, I leaned to you,

Our course was smooth as flight -

We steered - a heel-touch to the left,

A heel-touch to the right.

*

We swung our way through flying men,

Your hand lay fast in mine,

We saw the shifting crowd dispart,

The level ice-reach shine.

*

I swear by yon swan-travelled lake,

By yon calm hill above,

I swear had we been drowned that day

We had been drowned in love.

*

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-94

March: An Ode - Algernon C. Swinburne

"Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell,
and the splendor of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger
than dreams that fulfill us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops
and branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossom like snow
or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land,
nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring:
such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms
that enkindle the season they smite."

XLVIII - Emily Dickinson

“March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know,
The Persons of Prognostication
Are coming now.
We try to sham becoming firmness,
But pompous joy
Betrays us, as his first betrothal
Betrays a boy.”

Pride and Prejudice (Chapter 1) - Jane Austen

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXI

“So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,
With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.”

.soft, white feather

. floats down

. towards the floor

. squishing back

. and forth

. in a strange

. zigzag pattern

. before coming

. to a halt upon the ground.

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

“There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.”