"Loneliness was the first thing that God's eye named not good."

 - Milton

"I’d like to be with a woman, I can’t live without love, without a woman. I wouldn’t care a fig for life if there wasn’t something infinite, something deep, something real."

ibid

"For my part, I still continually have the most impossible and highly unsuitable love affairs from which, as a rule, I emerge only with shame and disgrace."

-- Vincent van Gogh

Come Again, Sweet Love

"You Cannot Barre Love Oute" by Arthur Hughes

Come again! 

Sweet love doth now invite

Thy graces that refrain

To do me due delight,

To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,

With thee again in sweetest sympathy.

Come again! 

That I may cease to mourn

Through thy unkind disdain;

For now left and forlorn

I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die

In deadly pain and endless misery.

All the day 

The sun that lends me shine

By frowns do cause me pine

And feeds me with delay;

Her smiles, my springs that makes my joys to grow,

Her frowns the Winters of my woe.

All the night 

My sleeps are full of dreams,

My eyes are full of streams.

My heart takes no delight

To see the fruits and joys that some do find

And mark the storms are me assign'd.

Out alas, 

My faith is ever true,

Yet will she never rue

Nor yield me any grace;

Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,

Whom tears nor truth may once invade.

Gentle Love, 

Draw forth thy wounding dart,

Thou canst not pierce her heart;

For I, that do approve

By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts

Did tempt while she for triumph laughs.

-- John Dowland

John Dowland--Now, O Now

Rediscovering Ancient Greek Music

This is very interesting. If you find this sort of thing interesting. I love the piece on the "Louvre" aulos. Reminds me of sitting in Mr. Tumnus's house by the fire.

Patricia JANEČKOVÁ: "Les oiseaux dans la charmille" (Jacques Offenbach -...

This is...wow. I thought it was going to be cute, until she opened her mouth and started singing, whereupon my jaw dropped. I've never heard a soprano with such power and precision--and most stunning of all, her voice has that quality that so many sopranos lack--beauty. Even at the highest notes, where so many of them sound like they're just screaming.

I would love to hear her and Anna Netrebko sing the Sull'aria. Perfection.