My prophetic soul
…we defy augury: there’s a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? (V.ii)
Three sparrows fall’n today, just one by the brick wall of the college and two in the gutter outside the pub, flying too low or too foolishly, or daring to defy the fast-moving cars…
I walked to the library slowly, as if shambling, for my heart is bound with iron bands like the faithful servant in that old tale. Yet it is not affection which so constricts my heart, but fever, though the voice is gone with which I might speak of it.
To bed! to bed! and drink hot tea with lemon and ginger, and rest! and rest! Even so, I cannot help but think of that essay of Woolf’s, all tremulous iterations of incipient illness.