Going to the Moon

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul…

Thames Cable Car, North Greenwich, Greenwich, SE10

We’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

Neil Armstrong at Apollo mission press conference, quoted in Of a Fire on the Moon (1970) by Norman Mailer

A Ghost of Low Replies

On the way to Kew,
By the river old and gray,

Bushy Park, Hampton Hill, Richmond-upon-Thames, TW12

Where in the Long Ago
We laughed and loitered so,

Ferry Lane, Kew, Richmond-upon-Thames, TW9

I met a ghost to-day,
A ghost that told of you -

Osterley Park, Isleworth, Hounslow, TW7

A ghost of low replies
And sweet, inscrutable eyes

Richmond Park, Richmond-upon-Thames, TW10

Coming up from Richmond
As you used to do.

From William Ernest Henley’s On the Way to Kew

Boudica

Bloodily flow’d the Tamesa rolling phantom bodies of horses and men;
Then a phantom colony smoulder’d on the refluent estuary;

Zahra Modern Art Foundries' Boudica, Houses of Parliament, Westminster, SW1A

Lastly yonder yester-even, suddenly giddily tottering–
There was one who watch’d and told me–down their statue of Victory fell.

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Boadicea (1859)