|
c354df1
|
When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back; Three from the circle, three from the track; Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone; Five will return and one go alone. Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long; Wood from the burning; stone out of song; Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw; Six signs the circle and the grail gone before. Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old. ..
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
d05a8f0
|
On the day of the dead, when the year too dies, Must the youngest open the oldest hills Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks. There fire shall fly from the raven boy, And the silver eyes that see the wind, And the light shall have the harp of gold. By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie, On Cadfan's Way where the kestrels call; Though grim from the Grey King shadows fall, Yet singing the golden harp shall guide To break the..
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
5c57fe5
|
The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
b60a97d
|
For ever and ever, we say when we are young, or in our prayers. Twice, we say it. Old One, do we not? For ever and ever ... so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
c6f506e
|
Once upon a time... a long time ago... things that happened once perhaps but have been talked about for so long that nobody really knows. And underneath all the bits that people have added the magic swords and lamps they're all about one thing - the good hero fighting the giant or the witch or the wicked uncle. Good against bad. Good against evil.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
7f6bbe4
|
For remember, that it is altogether your world now. You and all the rest. We have delivered you from evil, but the evil that is inside men is at the last a matter for men to control. The responsibility and the hope and the promise are in your hands-your hands and the hands of all men on this earth. The future can not blame the present, just as the present can not blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce ca..
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
63613c9
|
All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves....
|
|
theatre
philosophical
theater
|
Susan Cooper |
|
d38757b
|
The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawson's farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
b755065
|
So the Dark did a simple thing. They showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing--fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to accomplish anything of great worth--fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such great fears, that are the doom of people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
2ed947c
|
You remember the fairy tales you were told when you were very small - 'once upon a time...' Why do you think they always began like that?" "Because they weren't true," Simon said promptly. Jane said, caught up in the unreality of the high remote place, "Because perhaps they were true once, but nobody could remember them."
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
6e84d3d
|
For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
de3c794
|
But once in a great while he remembered that he had felt pain, a terrible ache in his heart, and he swore he would never let himself feel love for a human again.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
3199ffb
|
It is a burden...(M)ake no mistake about that. Any great gift or power or talent is a burden and this more than any, and you will long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law." - Susan Cooper ("Merriman" The Dark is Rising)"
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
7520e67
|
Never dismiss anyone's value until you know him.
|
|
value
|
Susan Cooper |
|
cde8244
|
Funny,' Will said, as they picked their way through. 'Things are absolutely awful and yet people look much happier than usual. Look at them all. Bubbling.'
|
|
humour
the-dark-is-rising
truism
|
Susan Cooper |
|
05fcb8c
|
Poets find truth by writing about what they love.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
cd699b7
|
Still in the black hemisphere the stars blazed and slowly wheeled; beneath them, Will felt so infinitesimally small that it seemed impossible he should even exist. Immensity pressed in on him, terrifying, threatening--and then, in a swift flash of movement like a dance, like the glint of a leaping fish, came a flick of brightness in the sky from a shooting star... He heard Bran give a small chirrup of delight, a spark struck from the same b..
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
3154c07
|
The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the out-buildings nor the old crumbling walls. There lay only a narrow clearing round the house now, hummocked with unbroken snowdrifts, before the trees began, with a narrow path leading away.
|
|
the-dark-is-rising
|
Susan Cooper |
|
570f892
|
When we are children, we have a tranquil acceptance of mystery which is driven out of us later on, by curiosity and education and experience. But it is possible to find one's way back. With affection and respect, I disagree totally with Penelope Lively's conviction about the 'absolute impossibility of recovering a child's vision.' There _are_ ways, imperfect, partial, fleeting, of looking again at a mystery through the eyes we used to have...
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
2c0f3d3
|
And at the last all shall be safe, and evil thrust out never to return. And so that the trust be kept, he said, I give it into your charge, and your sons', and your sons' sons, until the day come.
|
|
trust
faithfulness
|
Susan Cooper |
|
ffc764a
|
He leaned forward suddenly, so that for an instant the strong, bearded face was clear; the voice softened, and there was an aching sadness in it. "Only the creatures of the earth take from one another, boy. All creatures, but men more than any. Life they take, and liberty and all that another man may have - sometimes through greed, sometimes through stupidity, but never by any volition but their own. Beware your own race, Bran Davies - they..
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
4420a12
|
They walked as old friends walk, without often speaking, sharing the kind of silence that is not so much silence as a kind of still communication.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
223cda5
|
Sometimes you must seem to hurt something in order to do good for it.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
3deea74
|
Go away," he said. "Go away. I wish you had never come here. I wish I had never heard of the Light and the Dark, and your damned old Merriman and his rhymes. If I had your golden harp now I would throw it in the sea. I am not a part of your stupid quest anymore, I don't care what happens to it. And Cafall was never a part of it either, or a part of your pretty pattern. He was my dog, and I loved him more than anything in the world, and now ..
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
7ebc8ca
|
But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often..
|
|
the-dark-is-rising
the-grey-king
|
Susan Cooper |
|
d5758c5
|
Wish on a star, said a tiny voice in his head from some long-departed day of early childhood: Wish on a star--the cry of pleasure and faith as ancient as the eyes of man.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
489c627
|
So it will go," Merriman said. "He will have a sweet picture of the Dark to attract him, as men so often do, and beside it he will set all the demands of the Light, which are heavy and always will be."
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
30ea0ca
|
When the dark comes rising, six shall turn it back; Three from the circle, three from the track; Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone; Five will return, and one go alone.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
545582d
|
The night became silver again; looking up, it was as if they saw the moon sailing through the clouds instead of the other way around; racing smoothly across the sky, passing puffs and wisps of cloud on either side, and yet never moving from its place.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
eae3e48
|
The child I was is the only child I really know.' That's it. I can still feel what it was like to be that child of the 1940s from inside; I am still the same mixture of insecurity and determination, shyness and arrogance, curiosity and fear. I have the same talent she had; the same imagination. I write for her, for that child, and so it is true when I say I write for myself.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
219d6d1
|
Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes; blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads.
|
|
satan
sin
|
Susan Cooper |
|
18fa0d9
|
But a wild creature will always go back to the wild, in the end.
|
|
returning
wild
|
Susan Cooper |
|
6ecf949
|
There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
b1a8353
|
For half an hour they poked about in a happy dusty dream, through the junk and broken furniture and ornaments. It was like reading the story of somebody's life, Jane thought, as she gazed at the tiny matchstick masts of the ship sailing motionless forever in the green glass bottle. All these things had been used once, had been part of every day in the house below. Someone has slept on the bed, anxiously watched the minutes on the clock, pou..
|
|
jane-drew
|
Susan Cooper |
|
569fed5
|
In the end, all it takes is one small action, by one person. One at a time.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
4bbd864
|
Little Hawk, it is not for us to tell how great and terrible things come about. Only the Great Spirit can see all.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
7769000
|
Sometimes you must seem to hurt something in order to do good for it.
|
|
tough-love
|
Susan Cooper |
|
75d7e85
|
He sat there all through a history lesson about the Roman Empire, which--having lived in the Roman Empire, for the four hundred years during which it had included the British Isles--he found inaccurate and boring.
|
|
history
the-boggart
roman-empire
|
Susan Cooper |
|
99124e6
|
If you are concerned for the future of our civilization, there is no more cheering sight than a boy or girl who is lost in a book. It's an image I cling to, in moments of depression: the absorbed child, reading.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
611957f
|
every man has a last choice after the first, a chance of forgiveness. It is not too late. Turn. Come to the Light.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
ed017ce
|
It's all right!" Simon said hoarsely. Hastily he cleared his throat and put his shoulders back, though it was hard to recover dignity in pajamas."
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
2a9b92b
|
But the slice-of-life novel is really not so much a world apart as an interlude - like the conference or the film set, the holiday hotel or the voyage by sea or air. You enter it, you live there for a while, you leave again. Perhaps it will alter you; usually it will not. I suspect that the book which takes you into a world apart must also _trouble_ you, at least a little. And the troubling stays with you, like the grit in the oyster, and a..
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
217d1ae
|
The wind on the headland whined softly round them, and although, as they watched, Great-Uncle Merry's expression did not change, they suddenly knew that some enormous emotion was flooding through him. Like an electric current it tingled the air, exciting and frightening at the same time; though they could not understand what it was.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |
|
ff15dd6
|
It says, loving doesn't change just because someone isn't there, or because time gets in the way, or even death. It's always with you, keeping you safe, it won't ever leave you.
|
|
|
Susan Cooper |