As from the house your mother seesYou playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will lookThrough the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intentIs all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear, he will not look,Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of airThat lingers in the garden there.

Robert Louis Stevenson Copyright John David 2011. All rights reserved.jdavid@netspace.net.au

“The windows of my soul I throwWide open to the sun.”

John Greenleaf Whittier

“To thee I do commend my watchful soul,Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes.”

Shakespeare “Richard III”

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Philip Larkin “High Windows”

The glass, by lovers’ nonsense blurr’d,Dims and obscures our sight;

So, when our passions Love has stirr’d,It darkens Reason’s light.

Jonathan Swift

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.Shakespeare “Romeo & Juliet”

For those milk-paps,That through the window-bars bore at men’s eyes

Timon of Athens (IV, iii)

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. But if thou live, remembered not to be,

Die single and thine image dies with theeShakespeare Sonnet III

“These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul.” Guilliaume de Salluste

In these darkened rooms, whereI spend oppressive days,

I pace to and fro to find the windows.When a window opens, it will be a consolation.

But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot find them.And maybe it is best that I do not find them.

Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.Who knows what new things it will reveal?Constantine P. Cavafy “The Windows”

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, And along the trampled edges of the street I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids

Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

T. S. Eliot “Morning at the Window”

The Magistracy, with insignia, passed,--And all the people shouted in the sun,

And all the thousand windows which had castA ripple of silks in blue and scarlet down

(As if the houses overflowed at last),Seemed growing larger with fair heads and eyes.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning “Casa Guidi Windows”

I look and see myself angelic! I die and love—Let the window be art, mysticism,—

To be reborn, wearing my dream as a crown,In that previous sky where Beauty flowered!

Stéphane Mallarmé “Les fenêtres”

For through the painter must you see his skill,To find where your true image pictur’d lies,Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.Shakespeare Sonnet 24

Tree at my window, window tree,My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be curtain drawnBetween you and me.

Robert Frost “Tree at my Window”

Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word? He is a brittle crazie glasse:

Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place,

To be a window, through thy grace.“The Windows” George Herbert 1633

“This life’s dim windows of the soulDistorts the heavens from pole to pole.”

William Blake

“so I wait for you like a lonely housetill you will see me again and live in me.

Till then my windows ache.”Pablo Neruda

100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor