Describe for me the most beautiful writing you have ever read?

Question

If you list a title/author, web location or better yet, a short passage, That would be perfect. It may be a book, poem, poet, essay whatever you like!

Answer 1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here of parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Walt Whitman

Answer 2

One of the most beautiful passages I have ever read was from Norman MacLean's novel "A River Runs Through It". It is when Paul is alone fly fishing and MacLean describes the arcing of the line and his control of the rod. He describes the river bank, the sun glinting on the water, birds, insects, the atmosphere ... all sheer beauty in words.

Unfortunately I cannot quote it because someone has borrowed my copy - as happens to my small library a lot - and has not had to decency to return it yet. However, I have managed to get a small quote from the web, which is:

"As a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word "beautiful."

After he buttoned his glove, he would hold his rod straight out in front of him, where it trembled with the beating of his heart. Although it was eight and a half feet long, it weighed only four and a half ounces. It was made of split bamboo cane from the far-off Bay of Tonkin. It was wrapped with red and blue silk thread, and the wrappings were carefully spaced to make the delicate rod powerful but not so stiff it could not tremble.

Always it was to be called a rod. If someone called it a pole, my father looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would look at a recruit who had just called a rifle a gun."

My love of MacLean's style of writing increased enormously the more I read ... and this from a woman of advanced years who cannot stand sports and finds the idea of fly fishing rather boring. It is a measure of his writing that he held me page by page. And the passage where Paul fishes alone is so uplifting, spiritually, without one religious word having been written. It is sheer poetry.

Answer 3

The last part of The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis

"'The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.'

"And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Answer 4

A poem called "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas. It's a memory of charmed childhood days running and playing. It makes me cry when I read it, because it's just so beautiful. Here's a link:

http://www.bigeye.com/fernhill.htm

and here's an excerpt:

"And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace."

Answer 5

Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen bluehn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen gluehn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin! Dahin,
Moecht' ich mit dir, O mein Geliebter, ziehn.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Mignons Lied


Translation:

Knowest thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom, where amid the shadowed leaves the golden oranges glisten, a gentle zephyr breathes from the blue heavens, the myrtle is motionless, and the laurel rises high? Dost thou know it well? Thither, thither, fain would I fly with thee, O my beloved!

Sorry it's in German; you don't get the feel of it in translation. Reading this verse, I always feel this will be my first glimpse of heaven, and where I shall rest awhile...

There is plenty more I love - Shakespeare, Metaphysical Poets, Romantics, etc, but this verse won't leave me!

Answer 6

Count of Montecristo by Alexander Dumas.Its about a young French sailor who was unjustly imprisoned for 14 years before he escapes and ultimately takes revenge on his enemies.The author did a great job describing the emotions of the prisoner.Disbelief,denial,self pity,madness,apathy and finally hope.I don't remember the exact words but it goes something like this

"For a happy man prayer is but a jumble of words.For a sad man it is the only means of connection between man and God."

Very true.

From the poem 'Home they brought her warrior dead' by alfred tennyson.

Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
‘She must weep or she will die.’

Then they praised him, soft and low,
Called him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stepped,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee—
Like summer tempest came her tears—
‘Sweet my child, I live for thee.’

That is powerful stuff.

Answer 7

The short stories of Lord Dunsay - some of them read like looking at gems, with facets, glints and colors and hidden meanings.

Answer 8

Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis".

"Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. "

Here is a link to part of it:

(Also "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde:

"Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?")

Answer 9

the most beautiful? Gosh, thats hard.
probably Shakespeare. he is so eloquent and tatestful, yet witty and clever. His writings are so diverse; gentile and lovely, to harsh and tragic. But he remains unique and genuis to this day.

Hope that Helps,
dancinghobbit131 :-D

Answer 10

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam: "The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on", and much much more!