This be the verse you grave for me

"sick and well, I have had splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little"^[

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

 ... Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer.

Stevenson's tomb on Upolu island in Samoa

 

Life with a hole in It

... a family-values type

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

They may not mean to,

but they do.   

They fill you with the 

faults they had

And add some extra, just

for you.

 

But they were fucked up

in their turn

By fools in old-style

hats and coats,   

Who half the time were

soppy-stern

And half at one   

another’s throats.

  

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself. 

              

  ... Philip Larkin (1822-85), English poet (entitled This Be The Verse) 

  

     

 

Algren's "three rules of life"

...a proletarian view

"Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."


... Nelson Algren (1909-81), American writer ... quote from his 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side.

Realism, naturally

Honoré de Balzac on an 1842 daguerreotype

 

 

 

"Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside".   

 

            
... Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), French novelist and playwright.