No place for this but I feel like sharing

Ed · 10th September 2025, 06:29 PM

To conjure, even for a moment, the wistfulness which is the past is like trying to gather in one’s arms the hyacinthine colour of the distance. But if it is once achieved, what sweetness!—like the gentle, fugitive fragrance of spring flowers, dried with bergamot and bay. How the tears will spring in the reading of some old parchment—“to my dear child, my tablets and my ring”—or of yellow letters, with the love still fresh and fair in them though the ink is faded—“and so good night, my dearest heart, and God send you happy.” That vivid present of theirs, how faint it grows. The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow’s past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks—a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we that were the new things, gather magic as we go.

Precious Bane
Mary Webb

Jim McDougall · Yesterday, 05:05 PM

What beautifully written and wonderful sentiments, and thank you for sharing them here. While probably only we 'old timers' might grasp the deep meaning here, we can understand as like the old arms we study, which were once the things of the time, we have become the past.

My quest into looking deeply into the history and memories of these 'old warriors' is to experience their past, much as I venture wistfully into my own.

"...on the walls there were displays of old weapons in which rusty steel blades, condemned to silence, slept an eternal sleep. The soft golden light filling the room could no longer wrest a single gleam from those old dust covered guards darkened by time, the metal marked by old scars"
"The Fencing Master"
Arturo Perez-Reverte (1988)
p.243
For me the darkened old warriors are icons of history, and like me

wear the age, scars and darkness proudly.......as well earned. That is why I prefer these dark old swords, untouched, not 'restored' or vigorously cleaned.
While obviously not as 'attractive or shiny' as they once were, I see them, as myself, in earlier glories, such as they were.

The past is only mute, to those who will not listen.

10th September 2025, 06:29 PM	#1
Ed Member Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 278	No place for this but I feel like sharing To conjure, even for a moment, the wistfulness which is the past is like trying to gather in one’s arms the hyacinthine colour of the distance. But if it is once achieved, what sweetness!—like the gentle, fugitive fragrance of spring flowers, dried with bergamot and bay. How the tears will spring in the reading of some old parchment—“to my dear child, my tablets and my ring”—or of yellow letters, with the love still fresh and fair in them though the ink is faded—“and so good night, my dearest heart, and God send you happy.” That vivid present of theirs, how faint it grows. The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow’s past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks—a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we that were the new things, gather magic as we go. Precious Bane Mary Webb

Yesterday, 05:05 PM	#2
Jim McDougall Arms Historian Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Route 66 Posts: 10,570	Poignant truth What beautifully written and wonderful sentiments, and thank you for sharing them here. While probably only we 'old timers' might grasp the deep meaning here, we can understand as like the old arms we study, which were once the things of the time, we have become the past. My quest into looking deeply into the history and memories of these 'old warriors' is to experience their past, much as I venture wistfully into my own. "...on the walls there were displays of old weapons in which rusty steel blades, condemned to silence, slept an eternal sleep. The soft golden light filling the room could no longer wrest a single gleam from those old dust covered guards darkened by time, the metal marked by old scars" "The Fencing Master" Arturo Perez-Reverte (1988) p.243 For me the darkened old warriors are icons of history, and like me wear the age, scars and darkness proudly.......as well earned. That is why I prefer these dark old swords, untouched, not 'restored' or vigorously cleaned. While obviously not as 'attractive or shiny' as they once were, I see them, as myself, in earlier glories, such as they were. The past is only mute, to those who will not listen. Last edited by Jim McDougall; Yesterday at 05:24 PM.