Today's Stichomancy for Eric Bana

irrecoverably abandoned--as thou hast been forced to leave them;--but 'tis over,--all but the account of 'em, which cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the world.

End of the first volume.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.

Volume the Second

Multitudinis imperitae non formido judicia, meis tamen, rogo, parcant opusculis--in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, in seriis vicissim ad jocos transire.

Joan. Saresberiensis, Episcopus Lugdun.

in knightly encounter and are never to see again. In this way gales have their physiognomy. You remember them by your own feelings, and no two gales stamp themselves in the same way upon your emotions. Some cling to you in woebegone misery; others come back fiercely and weirdly, like ghouls bent upon sucking your strength away; others, again, have a catastrophic splendour; some are unvenerated recollections, as of spiteful wild-cats clawing at your agonized vitals; others are severe, like a visitation; and one or two rise up draped and mysterious, with an aspect of ominous menace. In each of them there is a characteristic point at which the whole feeling seems contained in one single moment. Thus there

The Mirror of the Sea

afternoon in sight between the short headlands; and the Padre had hoped that it might be the ship his homesick heart awaited. But it had slowly passed. From an arch in his garden cloisters he was now watching the last of it. Presently it was gone, and the great ocean lay empty. The Padre put his glasses in his lap. For a short while he read in his breviary, but soon forgot it again. He looked at the flowers and sunny ridges, then at the huge blue triangle of sea which the opening of the hills let into sight. "Paradise," he murmured, "need not hold more beauty and peace. But I think I would exchange all my remaining years of this for one sight again of Paris or Seville. May God forgive me such a thought!"

Across the unstirred fragrance of oleanders the bell for vespers began to

This said I in direction of the light Which first had spoken to me; whence it became By far more lucent than it was before.

Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself By too much light, when heat has worn away The tempering influence of the vapours dense,

By greater rapture thus concealed itself In its own radiance the figure saintly, And thus close, close enfolded answered me

In fashion as the following Canto sings.

Paradiso: Canto VI

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)