Development: A NovelA loosely fictionalized autobiographical novel which takes Nancy--Bryher's fictional self--from her earliest conscious memories at the age of three or so to her first visit to the Scilly Isles around the age of 17. |
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Page 33
... she desired to cross the Nile , and reaching the hollows of that ridge of hills , full of strangeness and the dignity of the pyramids , to come at last to Thebes . Luxor temple was dull ; she could not love all ruins 33 D HIEROGLYPHICS.
... she desired to cross the Nile , and reaching the hollows of that ridge of hills , full of strangeness and the dignity of the pyramids , to come at last to Thebes . Luxor temple was dull ; she could not love all ruins 33 D HIEROGLYPHICS.
Page 42
... hills . Pursuit was impossible . It was hard enough to move even slowly over the stones . Only the agility of ten , seeing no danger , careless of the way , clambered in natural recklessness up the short grass slope , vanished beyond a ...
... hills . Pursuit was impossible . It was hard enough to move even slowly over the stones . Only the agility of ten , seeing no danger , careless of the way , clambered in natural recklessness up the short grass slope , vanished beyond a ...
Page 60
... hills , the almost careless seizing of an island , where all the Southern nations in turn disputed for mastery . Undisturbed by the complexities of history , her imagination was free to absorb the entire force of the direct narrative ...
... hills , the almost careless seizing of an island , where all the Southern nations in turn disputed for mastery . Undisturbed by the complexities of history , her imagination was free to absorb the entire force of the direct narrative ...
Page 61
... hill , grey and arrogant as rain , held Nancy's eyes . The sky , transparent as an almond petal , flushed with night ... hills turned ominous with greyness , remembrance of the book she was to fashion drove fear back . To be wise was to ...
... hill , grey and arrogant as rain , held Nancy's eyes . The sky , transparent as an almond petal , flushed with night ... hills turned ominous with greyness , remembrance of the book she was to fashion drove fear back . To be wise was to ...
Page 78
... hills shone in the sun , and all the happy afternoons she had spent up there among the bee orchids came back to her . Why had she never realised her happiness then ? Miss Sampson came in and called her ; whatever she had to face she ...
... hills shone in the sun , and all the happy afternoons she had spent up there among the bee orchids came back to her . Why had she never realised her happiness then ? Miss Sampson came in and called her ; whatever she had to face she ...
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Common terms and phrases
actual adventure Agathokles AGE OF DISCOVERY almond antiquity Arab artist basset hound beauty blue Bouvard et Pécuchet breathed Carthage Carthaginian CHAPTER child childhood colour Crete dark date palms desire desolate Doreen Downwood dream dull eager echoed verse Egypt Elizabethans epic expression eyes feel felt flower freedom French gold Hannibal head girl heart heavy hills hope Iliad imagination immortality islands knew Knossos knowledge land light lived loveliness Luxor temple mind Miss Sampson mistress morning Nancy looked Nancy stared Nancy turned Nancy's never night paint passed petals picture poem poet poetry realised reality rhythm richness ride rose rough ruins sailor sand scarlet seemed ships Sicily silence sleep South spirit strange Swiss Family Robinson Sylvia thought touch truth uncon Verhaeren vers libre verse vivid walked wasted watch waves wild wind window wonderful words
Popular passages
Page 108 - Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights, Wherein you spend your folly : There's nought in this life sweet If man were wise to see't, But only melancholy, O sweetest Melancholy...
Page 53 - Give me my robe, put on my crown ; I have Immortal longings in me : Now no more The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip: — Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. — Methinks, I hear Antony call; I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act; I hear him mock The luck of...
Page 54 - Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me; now no more The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip. Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear Antony call; I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act; I hear him mock The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come: Now to that name my courage prove my title! I am fire, and air; my other elements I give to baser life.
Page 109 - I sit by and sing, Or gather rushes, to make many a ring For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love; How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes She took eternal fire that never dies ; How she...
Page 99 - Alas, my lord, my life is not a thing Worthy your noble thoughts ! 'tis not a life, 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.
Page 122 - But beauty is set apart, beauty is cast by the sea, a barren rock, beauty is set about with wrecks of ships, upon our coast, death keeps the shallows - death waits clutching toward us from the deeps. Beauty is set apart; the winds that slash its beach, swirl the coarse sand upward toward the rocks. Beauty is set apart from the islands and from Greece.
Page 59 - She would labour to make it perfect, to make it beautiful, till it became the very epic of the South, till all could read in one volume the knowledge she was seeking in books, in fragments, in pictures, in stones, in the whole of the land itself. At this time a historian usurped, to her, the place that excavators and Egyptologists formerly had held. It seemed a way to keep, to touch the immortality of a greatness...
Page 5 - ... texture of an imaginary dream. Hail and spray rapidly beat a sense of salt reality into her thought till, exultant with discovery that wildness was yet alive and might be hers, she hurried joyously along the beach to be lifted up to see the men in cork belts and sou'westers ready to begin their voyage. A parting of the waves, a vivid shout, and the lifeboat slid into the water, vanishing in the hollows, or flung, a struggling fish, upright against a roll of wave. Gusts of wind caught Nancy as...
Page 171 - ... Masters, A Fair Quarrel, Eastward Ho, was to step back three centuries and actually enter the Elizabethan world. The side of her nature which resented the impossibilities of Fletcher, however beautiful the poetry, was not disquieted with Moll, the Roaring Girl. It was indeed a mad world she read of, curious mingling of a very ferocity of strength with the *"' light-colour summer stuff " out of which Euphues, Campaspe, and Rosalynde were fashioned.
Page 163 - ... thoroughly an element of her mind that it was only by accident she discovered, at fifteen, they were printed symbols to the multitude, and to speak of them as gold or crimson merely provoked derision. It was not until nine years later that she found she was simply a colour hearer and that, while it was not common to every one, as she had at first imagined, it was not confined to the few, but was, in one form or another, fairly prevalent.