To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: Act i, Scene v





Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo in the balcony pas de deux of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden.

Rose, O pure contradiction, delight in being no one's sleep under so many eyelids.

Details of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Il ratto di Proserpina.


No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by. ~Franz Schubert


Details of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Apollo and Daphne.
(Photo above via: flickr)


Details of Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss.


If there is any substitute for love, it is memory.
~Joseph Brodsky


"There was a time when I talked unwillingly of Schubert, whose name, I thought, should only be whispered at night to the trees and stars!" ~Robert Schumann, Neue Zeitschrift (1839)


Whilst thus I sing, I am a king,
Although a poor blind boy. (Der Blinde Knabe)