The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is... confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
FROM his shoulder Hiawatha Took the camera of rosewood,... Made of sliding, folding rosewood; Neatly put it all together. In its case it lay compactly, Folded into nearly nothing; But he opened out the hinges, Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, Till it looked all squares and oblongs, Like a complicated figure In the second book of Euclid. This he perched upon a tripod-- Crouched beneath its dusky cover-- Stretched his hand, enforcing silence-- Said "Be motionless, I beg you!" Mystic, awful was the process. All the family in order Sat before him for their pictures: Each in turn as he was taken, Volunteered his own suggestions, His ingenious suggestions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open- eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feeling...s for which it is impossible to become a sham.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The difference between Pound and Whitman is not between the democrat who in deep distress could look hopefully toward the future a...nd the fascist madly in love with the past. It is that between the woodsman and the woodcarver. It is that between the mystic harking back to his vision and the artist whose first allegiance is to his craft, and so to the reality it presents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O spirit, white, and versed in mystic lore,... beware, too soon, too soon you think yourself exempt from all our lower thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our eyes Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,... And strangers to the mystic beast and bird, And strangers to the plant and to the mine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can b...elieve there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.... The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The quality of imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. The poet did not stop at the color or the form, but read their meaning, ...neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought. Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon become old and false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »