I’m living just as the century ends. A great leaf, that God and you and I have covered with writing turns now, overhead, in strange hands. We feel the sweep of it like a wind. We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering ‘it will be happier’.
― Alfred Lord Tennyson
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.
― G.K. Chesterton
You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this:
“Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.”
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
― Wendell Berry
There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
— C.S. Lewis
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, & ten years is nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering & counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, & stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that summer may not come.
— Rilke
Part Two, Sonnet XXIX
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.In this uncontainable night,
The mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.— Rainer Maria Rilke
photo credits: unsplash