on heath posting this sonnet from ronsard, a great favourite of both of us:

i was thinking of the first of my three apartments in cambridge. when i think of reading in peace, of wanting trois jours entiers demeurer à requoy, i think longingly of what it would be to be in that apartment again, to be lying in that bed in a negligee, to feel its crisp green cotton sheets cool against the body: reading undisturbed, with light spilling in from the windows with their pale green gauze curtains, and tea, always steaming and fragrant, just within reach. thinking of the faux-tatami bamboo mats, which i chose to cover over the concrete floor (no carpets for me, always bamboo), a low, long wooden table, and a wooden zaisu chair, and two zabutons. the windows with their wide sills, on which i liked to perch to watch the snow (cambridge to me is always about snow, though we rarely had rain, which was the sound of an equatorial home to me.) the flowers on the sill, i always had a small vase of flowers however impecunious i was, because our basest beggars are in our poorest needs superfluous, are we not? and the bookshelves, ceiling high and full of beloved volumes.

i would give a lot to have that space back again.

Je veus lire en trois jours l’Iliade d’Homere,
Et pour-ce, Corydon, ferme bien l’huis sur moy.
Si rien me vient troubler, je t’asseure ma foy
Tu sentiras combien pesante est ma colere.

Je ne veus seulement que nostre chambriere
Vienne faire mon lit, ton compagnon, ny toy,
Je veus trois jours entiers demeurer à requoy,
Pour follastrer apres une sepmaine entiere.

Mais si quelqu’un venoit de la part de Cassandre,
Ouvre lui tost la porte, et ne le fais attendre,
Soudain entre en ma chambre, et me vien accoustrer.

Je veus tant seulement à luy seul me monstrer :
Au reste, si un Dieu vouloit pour moy descendre
Du ciel, ferme la porte, et ne le laisse entrer.