The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passio...nate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, ...all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose--some for cash and some for "political influence." We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice.... We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. "Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the sorrow; shall it melt? Ah, water Would gush, flush, green these mountains and these valleys... And we rebuild our cities, not dream of islands.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These women behind the store windows? Dreams, sir, dreams at bargain prices, a trip to the Indies! These people perfume themselves... with spices. You enter, they close the curtains, and the trip begins. The gods descend on the nude bodies and the islands drift, demented, with the tousled hair of palm trees in the breeze.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He had brought a large map representing the sea, Without the least vestige of land:... And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand. "What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs! Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we've got our brave Captain to thank" (So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best-- A perfect and absolute blank!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O do not grieve for a torn earth... barren fields burnt forests cracked riven volcano-broken hill-slopes islands shrunken mountains lost.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »