"Sleep: and between the closed eyelids of sleep,
From the dark spirit's still unresting grief,
The one tear burns its way. O God, O God,
What monstrous world is this, whence no escape
Even in sleep? Between the fast-shut lids
This one tear comes, hangs on the lashes, falls:
Symbol of some gigantic dream, that shakes
The secret-sleeping soul... And I descend
By a green cliff that fronts the worldlong sea;
Disastrous shore, where bones of ships and rocks
Are mixed; and beating waves bring in the sails
Of unskilled mariners, ill-starred. The gulls
Fall in a cloud upon foul flotsam there;
The air resounds with cries of scavengers."

--Aik*n


"It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.."


"But sixty years before that [1923], Jakob Burkhardt had written: The time of 'the terrible simplifers' will come." --John Lukacs, Th* Hitl*r of History (1997)