Like the pleasant memory of a kiss that lingers, the thought of a touch that remains after the caress has ceased. A heart made weary is the story of loveâs tender whispers and the lessonâs Virginia Manningâs heart finds the courage to learn.

“The world is broken. I am broken. And my need is dire.” This stark revelation is the path to divine surrender. Our courage has a chance to flourish when we reach a point where we have no control and nothing to lose. In a series of letters, Rebecca Reynolds uses imagery to breathe truth to the lonely, the weary, the restless, and afraid. If you feel the ache of brokenness, you will be refreshed by the source of all courage illuminated in these pages. God is available and wants to join you, in the midst of any mess. You can take heart. As Aslan of Narnia whispered (and only Lucy heard), Courage, dear heart.

Drawing on new research, this biography of William Steinitz (1836-1900), the first World Chess Champion, covers his early life and career, with a fully-sourced collection of his known games until he left London in 1882. A portrait of mid-Victorian British chess is provided, including a history of the famous Simpson's Divan. Born to a poor Jewish family in Prague, Steinitz studied in Vienna, where his career really began, before moving to London in 1862, bent on conquering the chess world. During the next 20 years, he became its strongest and most innovative player, as well as an influential writer on the game. A foreigner with a quarrelsome nature, he suffered mockery and discrimination from British amateur players and journalists, which eventually drove him to immigrate to America. The final chapters cover his subsequent visits to England and the last three tournaments he played there.

One of Keats' finest sonnets begins: "Much have I traveled," yet Keats traveled very little, only to Italy where he died. Shelley, also an introspective and intellectual, dabbled in politics, often with a comic effect and although he could not swim, he was devoted to sailing. Wordsworth marched to France, praising the Revolution, which he later regretted. Coleridge wandered to Germany and German metaphysics. Later he created the Ancient Mariner which is the mythic centerpiece of the Romantic period. Each of these poets feels that the occupation of a poet demand a dedication to a life of action as well as inward discovery. Consequently, the image of "the journey," with its double reference to natural and psychic realities, is one of the unifying motifs of nineteenth-century poetry. Alfred Tennyson, the author claims, was one of the last poets able to make both voyages, but he could only do so with great effort and at great expense. By nature introspective , he found the life of the mind far more appealing than the life of action; yet he knew, like Milton and Keats before him, that great poetry demands the voyage without as well as the voyage within. His early poetry, then, is concerned with the pull of the two voyages, and thus it becomes, in Arnold's worlds, the dialogue of the mind with itself. There is for modern readers something intensely interesting about such a divided personality, for we see in Tennyson almost the same dilemma that faces contemporary artists. Often when we read his poems we feel that Tennyson is of our age. But then at times he seems as remote from us as Bishop Wilberforce and his anti-Darwin fulminations. What, then, is there about Tennyson that makes him appear so modern and yet so dated? The answer is not easily given, although this has been one of the primary concerns of Tennyson's critics. In this book, the author shows how Tennyson became the mental voyager exploring both the inner and outer worlds, and further, how in making the two voyages he followed the pattern of development of other Romantic artists of the nineteenth century. He examines certain themes and images in Tennyson's early verse which in their frequent recurrence attain symbolic status, and by doing so, he shows that there is a very clear-cut pattern in Tennyson's poetry, one which is repeated time and again throughout the poet's work to 1850.