“How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”
— The More Loving One, W.H. Auden (via chels)
mattatoio.
A catch-all blog of art, esoterica, and nerdy things. Trigger warnings for gory, medical, and explicit content.
Designed by Redfield. Icons by Evan Brooks. User picture is Death of a Gladiator by Jean-Simon Berthélemy.
Artist and Chimera (1906) - Jacek Malczewski
The Grand Circus: Death of Hysterical Vanity (2005) by Angelo Filomeno.
By the wild Baltic’s strand,
I, with my childish hand,
Tamed the gerfalconMary A. Hallock Foote, from The skeleton in armor, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Boston, 1877.
(Source: archive.org)
The Sphinx, Oscar Wilde
In a dim corner of my room for longer than
my fancy thinks
A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me
through the shifting gloom.
Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she
does not stir
For silver moons are naught to her and naught
to her the suns that reel.
Red follows grey across the air, the waves of
moonlight ebb and flow
But with the Dawn she does not go and in the
night-time she is there.
Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and
all the while this curious cat
Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of
satin rimmed with gold.
Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the
tawny throat of her
Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her
pointed ears.
Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent,
so statuesque!
Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman
and half animal!
Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and
put your head upon my knee!
And let me stroke your throat and see your
body spotted like the Lynx!
And let me touch those curving claws of yellow
ivory and grasp
The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round
your heavy velvet paws!
