“This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take… So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time — as yet — remains powerless.”
Horvendile, in Ch. 13 : What a Boy Thought
The Way of Ecben (1929)
Context: My immortality has sharp restrictions. For it is at a price that I pass down the years, as yet, in eternal union with the witch-woman whose magic stays — as yet — more strong than the magic of time. The price is that I only of her lovers many not ever hope to win Ettare. This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take... So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time — as yet — remains powerless.
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James Branch Cabell 130
American author 1879–1958Related quotes
"A Glass of Beer" (1918), line 9, in Collected Poems (London: Macmillan, 1954) p. 185.
The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis
“May I look on thee when my last hour comes; may I hold thy hand, as I sink, in my dying clasp.”
Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora,<br/>Et teneam moriens deficiente manu.
Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora,
Et teneam moriens deficiente manu.
Bk. 1, no. 1, line 59.
Variant translation: May I be looking at you when my last hour has come, and dying may I hold you with my weakening hand.
Elegies
John Proctor
Source: The Crucible (1953)
“I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.”
Amaze
Verses (1915)
"A Scientist Rebels" Atlantic Monthly (Jan, 1947)
Context: The measures taken during the war by our military agencies, in restricting the free intercourse among scientists on related projects or even on the same project have gone so far that it is clear that if continued in time of peace, this policy will lead to the total irresponsibility of the scientist, and, ultimately, to the death of science.... The interchange of ideas, which is one of the greatest traditions of science, must of course receive certain limitations when the scientist becomes an arbiter of life and death.... I do not expect to publish any future work of mine which may do damage in the hands of irresponsible militarists...