Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in 'f...oreign commerce' on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves--this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hear you were seen running through Portugal in used B.V.D.'s, chewing ground glass and collecting material for a story about bou...le players; that you were publicity man for Lindbergh; that you have finished a novel a hundred thousand words long consisting entirely of the word "balls" used in new groupings; that you have been naturalized a Spaniard, dress always in a wine-skin with "zipper" vent and are engaged in bootlegging Spanish Fly between St. Sebastian and Biarritz where your agents sprinkle it on the floor of the Casino. I hope I have been misinformed but, alas!, it all has too true a ring.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Standing on the snow-covered plain ... I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under ...my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To stand on common ground here and there gritty with pebbles... yet elsewhere 'fine and mellow-- uncommon fine for ploughing' there to labor planting the vegetable wordsLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glitt'ring o'er my fault,... Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Salmon, shad, and alewives were formerly abundant here, and taken in weirs by the Indians ... until the dam and afterward the cana...l at Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put an end to their migrations hitherward; though it is thought that a few more enterprising shad may still occasionally be seen in this part of the river.... Perchance, after a few thousands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass their summers elsewhere meanwhile, nature will have leveled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories, and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be explored by new migratory shoals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea in...to dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »