The Web Between the Worlds

APPENDIX 1: Notes on Quotes

When this book first appeared, I received lots of questions about beanstalks. I expected those. What I did not expect was the number of people who came up to me and said, “Were those all quotes at the beginning of chapters? I’ve tried to look them up, and I can’t find half of them.”

They were not all quotes, but many were. Here, for the curious, are their origins.

Chapter 1. “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven, to His feet thy tribute bring.” — from the hymn beginning with these words, by Reginald Heber.

Chapter 3. “Go and catch a falling star…” — from the poem beginning with these words, by John Donne.

Chapter 4. “Busy old fool, unruly Sun…” — from the poem beginning with these words, by John Donne.

Chapter 5. “The light of other days…” — from the poem beginning, “Oft, in the still night, ere slumber’s chain has bound me…” by Thomas Moore.

Chapter 8. “To meet with Caliban…” — from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Chapter 9. “Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain…” — from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Chapter 11. “What seest thou else, in the dark backward and abysm of time?” — from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Chapter 12. “…at the quiet limit of the world, a white-haired shadow roaming like a dream…” — from Tennyson’s “Tithonus.”

Chapter 15. “I do begin to have bloody thoughts…” — from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Chapter 16. “Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the gates of Heaven…” — from John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress.

Chapter 18. “Cor contritum quasi cinis, gere curam mei finis.” — from the Dies Irae in the Latin Mass for the Dead; these lines are often translated as, “See like ashes my contrition, help me in my last condition.”