There is this time during babydom that the mother herself can lie about like a baby, like a beached whale, having birthed her bloody spawn, and the mother can just hover in those sparkling dust motes of afternoon sun and be cradled and lifted and suspende in the golden light.

Walter Pater’s essay on Style is honeycombed with involutions and preciosity.

Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?

I remember the heat, the deluge of rain-squalls that kept us baling for dear life (but filled our water cask), and I remember sixteen hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder and a steering oar over the stern to keep my first command head on to a breaking sea.