The Land of Counterpane - Robert Louis Stevenson When I was sick and lay a-bed, I had two pillows at my head, And all my toys beside me lay, To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so I watched my leaden soldiers go, With different uniforms and drills, Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets All up and down among the sheets; Or brought my trees and houses out, And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still That sits upon the pillow-hill, And sees before him, dale and plain, The pleasant land of counterpane.

[audio http://dysonology.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/02-octet-in-f-d803-ii-andante-un-poco-mosso.mp3]

"Lines for Winter"

Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself -- inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.

by Mark Strand.

Strand wrote this for his friend Rosalind Krauss when she got the blues. I like it.

(photo copyright me though - it's on the river Thames near Hammersmith bridge on a cold day)