On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, w...ith their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film... studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief.... Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas l'originalité, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons us as it creates. Vive le sol--pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whoso walketh in solitude, And inhabiteth the wood,... Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, Before the money-loving herd, Into that forester shall pass, From these companions, power and grace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And I away in my opposite wood Am touched by that unintimate light... And made feel less alone than I rightly should, For traveler there could do me no good Were I in trouble with night tonight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So pass my Days. But when Nocturnal Shades This World invelop, and th' inclement Air... Persuades Men to repel benumming Frosts, With pleasant Wines, and crackling blaze of Wood; Me Lonely sitting, nor the glimmering Light Of Make-weight Candle, nor the joyous Talk Of loving Friend delights; distress'd, forlorn, Amidst the horrors of the tedious Night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal Thoughts My anxious Mind; or sometimes mournful Verse Indite, and sing of Groves and Myrtle Shades, Or desperate Lady near a purling Stream, Or Lover pendent on a Willow-Tree:LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to th' rooky wood.... Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp ax of light--,... Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow:LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the ...walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They are light and shapely vessels, calculated for rapid and rocky streams, and to be carried over long portages on men's shoulder...s, from twenty to thirty feet long, and only four or four and a half wide, sharp at both ends like a canoe, though broadest forward on the bottom, and reaching seven or eight feet over the water, in order that they may slip over rocks as gently as possible. They are made very slight, only two boards to a side, commonly secured to a few light maple or other hard-wood knees, but inward are of the clearest and widest white pine stuff, of which there is a great waste on account of their form, for the bottom is left perfectly flat, not only from side to side, but from end to end. Sometimes they become "hogging" even, after long use, and the boatmen then turn them over and straighten them by a weight at each end. They told us that one wore out in two years, or often in a single trip, and sold for from fourteen to sixteen dollars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things; now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten w...ood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »