#may sinclair

[petaltexturedskies]

May Sinclair, Life and Death of Harriett Frean (originally published c. 1922)

[twojamie-o-clock]

A straight flagged road, laid on the rough earth, / A causeway of stone from beautiful city to city, / Between the tall trees, the slender, delicate trees, / Through the flat green land, by plots of flowers, by black canals thick with heat.

The road-makers made it well / Of fine stone, strong for the feet of the oxen and of the great Flemish horses, And for the high waggons piled with corn from the harvest.

But the labourers are few; / They and their quiet oxen stand aside and wait / By the long road loud with the passing of the guns, the rush of armoured cars and the tramp of an army on the march forward to battle;

And, where the piled corn-wagons went, our dripping / Ambulance carries home / Its red and white harvest from the fields.

The straight flagged road breaks into dust, into a thin white cloud, / About the feet of a regiment driven back league by league, / Rifles at trail, and standards wrapped in black funeral cloths. / Unhasting, proud in retreat, / They smile as the Red Cross Ambulance rushes by.

(You know nothing of beauty and of desolation who have not seen / That smile of an army in retreat.)

They go: and our shining, beckoning danger goes with them, / And our joy in the harvests that we gathered in at nightfall in the fields;

And like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart

Our safety weighs us down.

the war games x field ambulance in retreat by May Sinclair

[lillyli-74]

She was so quiet, so quiet, and her quietness hurt far more than if she was angry.

~May Sinclair

[butiambatman]

"They don't understand that you can really love words—beautiful sounds. And thoughts. Love them awfully, as if they were alive. As if they were people." - May Sinclair, Mary Olivier: a Life

[thebookwormdaydreamer]

Currently reading Mary Olivier: A Life. I genuinely think that it’s such a shame May Sinclair is a forgotten author because she’s the one who first coined the term stream-of-consciousness and what I’ve read of her, I just loved.

I first read The Life and Death of Harriet Frean which I highly recommend because it’s short and follows a woman from birth till death. She’s a conventional woman who lived adhering to societal norms and her parents’ expectations, never managing to break free and find happiness.

Mary Olivier: A Life follows Mary Olivier from birth to middle age. The prose is excellent as you can feel the writing style change from when Mary is a baby to when she’s an adult. I’m not done with it yet but I love the way it explores mother-daughter relationships. Like imagine living with a Victorian boymom.

Both books are also free on Project Gutenberg.

[squeakowl]

Our love is woven Of a thousand strands— The cool fragrance of the first lilac At morning, The first dew on the grass, The smell of wild mint in the wood, The pungent and earthy smell of ground ivy crushed under our feet; Songs of birds, songs of great poets; The leaping of the red squirrel in the tree, The running of the river, The commotion of stars and clouds in the high winds at night; And dark stillness. It is adorned with all the flowers That stand in our garden; It holds the night and the day. Our love is made Of the South Wind and the West Wind, And the soft falling of rain; Of white April evenings; It is made of trees, And of the many-coloured fields on the hills; Of horizons, Dark sea-blue of the west, thin sky-blue of the east, With a yellow road between. The flames of sunset and sunrise Mingle in the fire of our love.

May Sinclair, The Dark Night (XVIII)

[moodyinapinkbow]

Moodboard: Aesthetic - Dark Academia & Scorpio.

❝You made everything dark around you and withdrew into your innermost self; you burrowed deep into the darkness there till you got beyond it; you tapped the Power, as it were, underground at any point you pleased and turned it in any direction.❞

[violentdevotion]

May Sinclair, 'The Life and Death of Harriett Frean'