listeningTo QUOTES

1 " I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn; --
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn. "

― Thomas Hood

2 " Friedrich Rückert wrote 425 poemsAfter his two youngest childrenDied from scarlet feverWithin sixteen days of each otherIn 1833 and 1834 he could not copeAnd often thought they had gone outFor a while " they'll be home soon" He told himself to tell his wife" They're only taking a long walk" Mahler scored five of those poemsIn 1901 and 1904 for a vocalistAnd an orchestra to break your heartAs soon as I heard the plaintive oboe And the descending movement of the hornAnd the lyric baritone enteringI felt I should not be listeningTo Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singingKindertotenlieder with the Berlin PhilharmonicMahler's wife was superstitiousAnd thought he was chancing disasterWith Songs on the Death of Children" Now the sun wants to rise so brightlyAs if nothing terrible had happened overnightThat tragedy happened to me alone" Mahler knew he could never have written themAfter his four-year-old daughter diedFrom scarlet fever three years laterHe said he felt sorry for himselfThat he needed to write these songsAnd for the world that would listen to them "

3 " In the summer,
on fine evenings, I love to drive late and
alone in the scented forests, and when I have
reached a dark part stop, and sit quite still, listening
to the nightingales repeating their little tune over
and over aga^n after interludes of gurgling, or if
there are no nightingales, listening to the marvellous
silence, and letting its blessedness descend into
my very souL The nightingales in the forests
about here all sing the same tune, and in the same
key of (E flat). "

― Elizabeth von Arnim