Yellow Topics

Let us have our heroes. Let us continue to believe that some have been truly great; that it lies within human ability to overcome temptations and trials; that it is sublime to suffer and be strong. Petty biographers with inferior souls and jealous hearts would rob us of these happy privileges. Sensationalism is alright for yellow journalism, but in biography we wish to see our famous men and women as they were and feel the power of the strength and beauty of their lives. Down with the debunking biographers.
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

My time has come.
There are twenty people in my belly,
there is a magnitude of wings,
there are forty eyes shooting like arrows,
and they will all be born.
All be born in the yellow wind.
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summer’s pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumns turn’d
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d!
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d;
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)