The most modern fortifications have an air of antiquity about them; they have the aspect of ruins in better or worse repair from t...he day they are built, because they are not really works of this age. The very place where the soldier resides has a peculiar tendency to become old and dilapidated, as the word barrack implies. I couple all fortifications in my mind with the dismantled Spanish forts to be found in so many parts of the world; and if in any place they are not actually dismantled, it is because that there the intellect of the inhabitants is dismantled.... Such structures carry us back to the Middle Ages, the siege of Jerusalem, and St. Jean d'Acre, and the days of the Bucaniers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Old men who never cheated, never doubted, Communicated monthly, sit and stare... At the new suburb stretched beyond the run-way Where a young man lands hatless from the air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so... necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wild air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere,... That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixt The fleeciest, frailest-fixed Snowflake; that's fairly mixed With, riddles, and is rife In every least thing's life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The head withdraws into its hatch (a boy's), The engines rise to their blind laboring roar,... And the green, made beasts run home to air. Now in each aspect death is pure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »