"Brief, fading ivy, climbing, fugitive flora, the most colourless, the most depressing, to many minds, of all that creep on walls or decorate windows; to me the dearest of them all, from the day when it appeared upon our balcony, like the very shadow of the presence of Gilberte, who was perhaps already in the Champs-Elysees, and as soon as I arrived there would greet me with: 'Let's begin at once. You are on my side.' Frail, swept away by a breath, but at the same time in harmony, not with the season, with the hour; promise of that immediate pleasure which the day will deny or fulfill, and thereby of the one paramount immediate pleasure, the pleasure of loving and of being loved; more soft, more warm upon the stone than even moss is; alive, a ray of sunshine sufficing for its birth, and for the birth of joy, even in the heart of winter."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 416
You know, I could write at length about Proust's use of metaphor and specifically ivy as metaphor, but in the end I think I'll leave this alone with one comment: it's beautiful.
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