So Dear to My Heart

[thephotoregistry]

Live oaks and palmetto, Everglades, Florida, 1886

George Barker

[cultofthedarksun]

So would I die As then I saw him die, The friend, who like a god Into my darkling youth Threw lightning’s light and fire: Buoyant yet deep was he, Yea, in the battle’s strife With the happy dancer’s heart. Amid the warriors His was the lightest heart, Amid the conquerors His brow was dark with thought — He was a fate poised on his destiny: Unbending, casting thought into the past And future, such was he. Fearful beneath the weight of victory, Yet chanting, as both victory and death Came hand in hand to him. Commanding even as he lay in death, And his command that man annihilate. So would I die As then I saw him die, Victorious and destroying.

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Last Desire

[bookofkhidr]

“How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.”

— Vincent van Gogh, from The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

[the-poisongarden]

Skull among flowers in a field by Dutch printmaker Arend Hendriks, circa 1911-1942.

[icecreamwithjackdaniels]

Wilhelm Kuhnert (German, 1865–1926), "Rock Dove, Wood Pigeon, European Turtle Dove, and a Pouter Pigeon"

[leregretdestempspasses]

Liisa and Inari in Kurkijoki, Finland 1942 (Pekka Kyytinen)

[leregretdestempspasses]

Eva Nuorgam mliking cow, Finland 1925

[datelinepentagons]

[homostalgia]

by Karel Egermeier for "Paysage des Olympiques", d'Henry de Montherlant

[aep23]

Brice Marden, Untitled, 1969

via FigsFromPlums

[nemfrog]

Night-blooming waterlily. Waterlilies : aquatic plants, goldfish for pools and aquariums. 1949.

Internet Archive

[futuregone]

Head of a woman, Gustav Vigeland.

[teddypng]

Leonard Cohen photographed by Gijsbert Hanekroot in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1972

[funeral]

I felt old very soon after my birth; Others struggled, desired, sighed; I felt within myself only a vague regret. I never had anything resembling a childhood.

Deep in some woods, on a carpet of moss, Foetid tree trunks survive their leaves; Around them develops an atmoshpere of mourning; Their skin filthy and black, mushrooms pushing through it.

I have never been any use for anything or to anyone; A shame—one lives badly when one lives only for oneself. The slightest movement constitutes a problem, One feels unhappy yet generic.

One is obscurely driven, like an animalcule; Reduced almost to nothing, and yet how one suffers! Carrying along a sort of void Portable and petty, vaguely ridiculous.

One no longer sees death as a tragic event; Mostly on principle, from time to time, one laughs; One tries vainly to accede to contempt. Then we accept all, and death does the rest.

Michel Houellebecq, "A Life, Small"

[sbsebek]

Fyodor Andreyevich Bronnikov.

“Portrait of an old man”

[vintageeurope]

Helsinki 1920s

[valentineua]

November Morning on the River Wharfe, Yorkshire (1866) - John Atkinson Grimshaw