The Swan Sequence

(Art + words) With folded wings, they watch by their last king.

[acrosscenturiesandgenerations]

▪︎ Astronomical Clock.

Attributed to: Wolfgang Hager

Date: 1625-1635

Place of origin: Germany, Thuringia, Arnstadt

Medium: Iron, brass

[rosieandthemoon]

By Audrey Benjaminsen

[the-swan-sequence]

“…with her fragile, often bloodstained fingers she'd shown me the path toward true eternal peace, and also toward an asceticism based not on sacrifice but on the impossibility of accepting other, inferior pleasures.”

THE SIREN BY GIUSEPPE TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA (1957)

Art: Paolo e Francesca by Giovanni Costetti (1902)

[portalibis]

Theseus and Ariadne by the Cretan labyrinth, c. 1460-1470, Anonymous, Florentine. The British Museum

P.I. Telegram/ P.I. Facebook

[rosieandthemoon]

By Greg Mort

[the-swan-sequence]

“Pour nectar in the golden cups

And mix it deftly with

our dancing and mortal wine”

Horses in Flowers

Sappho (c. 612 BC)

[lepetitdragonvert]

Artist : Nicolaes de Bruyn (1571-1656)

Source : Museum Lovers

[the-swan-sequence]

The golden crow lights on the western huts;

Evening drums beat out the shortness of life.

There are no inns on the road to the grave —

Whose is the house I go to tonight?

Prince Otsu (663-686)

ON THE EVE OF HIS EXECUTION

Translated by Burton Watson

Art: Paul Wilhelm Keller-Reutlingen - Jugend Magazine Nr. 15, 1896

[venustapolis]

Melancholy (Constance Marie Charpentier, 1801)

[aqua-regia009]

Actaeon, 1884 - oil on canvas — Briton Riviere (British, 1840-1920)

[the-swan-sequence]

"I woke, dying,

In the summer sun of the hillside,

with my eyes

Far from human.”

“Sheep Child”

James Dickey (1923-1997)

Art: The Hounds Last Leap by Nathan Reidt (2018)

[bebs-art-gallery]

Lightning Struck a Flock of Witches

— by William Holbrook Beard

[the-swan-sequence]

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

Plutarch (46-119 AD)

Art: The Holy Grail is carried in by Arthur Rackham (1917)

[the-swan-sequence]

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite.”

William Blake (1757-1827)

Art: solar eclipse captured in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico

[the-swan-sequence]

“Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god?”

Virgil, The Aeneid

Art: The Empty Tomb by Mikhail Nesterov (1889)

[the-swan-sequence]

“To sit alone in the lamplight, with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen sensations— such is a pleasure beyond compare.”

Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness 1340

Art: The Tale of Genji - Wakana by Yoshio Okada (1939-2021)

[eirene]

Medea, 1873 Anselm Feuerbach

[the-swan-sequence]

“Arts, culture, reverence, honor, all things fade,

save treason, and the dagger of her trade

or murder with his silent bloody feet.”

Libertatis Sacra Fames by Oscar Wilde

Art: Fair Rosamund and Eleanor(detail) by Frank Cadogan Cowper (1877-1958)