As I write this, we have been shrouded with a dense winter fog, and yet a sudden burst of sunshine is breaking through, and I am light-drenched – how lovely these surprising coincidences. 

This triologism is from a response by Seamus Heaney to a line of Blake:

Quartz, rose, amethyst: all three of them are now ashimmer, ‘minute and vast and clear’, as if they had escaped from the light-drenched empyrean of Dante’s Paradiso.  

May you look up and see a light-drenched empyrean from time to time.  And incidentally, here is my love letter to Dante (my name is Beatrice, after all). 

Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 340

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Pin It on Pinterest