Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. At the last it bites like a serpent, and s...tings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. "They struck me," you will say, "but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I will seek another drink."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What do we plant when we plant the tree? We plant the ship that will cross the sea,... We plant the mast to carry the sails, We plant the planks to withstand the gales-- The keel, the keelson, and beam and knee-- We plant the ship when we plant the tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Below me trees unnumbered rise, Beautiful in various dyes:... The gloomy pine, the poplar blue, The yellow beech, the sable yew, The slender fir that taper grows, The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which n...o cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was so old a ship--who knows, who knows? MAnd yet so beautiful, I watched in vain... To see the mast burst open with a rose, And the whole deck put on its leaves again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We stood a moment so, in a strange world, Myself as one his own pretense deceives;... And then I said the truth (and we moved on). A young beech clinging to its last year's leaves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On Thursday morning going through the quiet woods... it is not Thursday. To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave;... Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »