Here are the quotations for next week (July 24th to 30th):
1. '..there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros
hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge;
there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers and hunting knives;
there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a
shape that never sees the light of day…there were belts, seven fingers
broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies…'
2. 'It blazed with the dull red of the ruby, the angry green of the
emerald, the cold blue of the sapphire and the white, hot glory of the
diamond. But dulling all these glories was the superb radiance of one gem
that lay above the great carved emerald on the central clasp. It was the
black diamond - black as the pitch of the infernal lake, and lighted from
below with the fires of hell.'
3. 'First are two flawed sapphires - one of two ruttees and one of four,
as I should judge. The four ruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge. There
is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and there are two
inscribed - one with a Name of God in gilt… Four flawed emeralds there
are, but one is drilled in two places, and one is a little carven…there is
one ruby of Burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and there is a
balas-ruby, flawed, of two ruttees…'
The sources of last week's extracts (July 17th to 23rd) are as follows:
1. ('...It was a slope of gap-edged fields possessed to their centres by
clumps of brambles.) This is from "An Habitation Enforced" in Actions and
Reactions.
2. (...I found hidden villages where bees, the only things awake, boomed
in eighty-foot lindens that overhung grey Norman churches) This is from
"They" in Traffics and Discoveries.
3. ('... ...the life of the English road, which to me is one renewed and
unreasoning orgy of delight.) is is from "The Vortex" in A Diversity of
Creatures.
Good wishes to all, John R
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