As the brain of man is the speck of dust in the universe that thinks, so the leaves--the fern and the needled pine and the lattice...d frond and the seaweed ribbon--perceive the light in a fundamental and constructive sense. The flowers looking in from the walled garden through my window do not, it is true, see me. But their leaves see the light, as my eyes can never do. They take it, as it forever spills away radiant into space in a golden waste, to a primal purpose. They impound its stellar energy, and with that force they make life out of the elements. They breathe upon the dust, and it is a rose. Say that this is done with neither thought nor passion, and by something other than will. True that a plant may not think; neither will the profoundest of men ever put forth a flower. Of the use and the beauty of flowering there can be no shade of doubt. It is a rare thought of which as much can be said.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his penthouse lid;... He shall live a man forbid; Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak and pine; Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine-forest. The English mind disliked the French mind... because it was antagonistic, unreasonable, perhaps hostile, but recognized it as at least a thought. The American mind was not a thought at all; it was a convention, superficial, narrow, and ignorant; a mere cutting instrument, practical, economical, sharp and direct. The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The self-consciousness of Pine Ridge manifests itself at the village's edge in such signs as "Drive Keerful," "Don't Hit Our Young... 'uns," and "You-all Hurry Back"Mlocutions which nearly all Arkansas hill people use daily but would never dream of putting in print.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The wind came briskly up this way, Crisping the brook beside the road;... Then, pausing here, set down its load Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly Two petals from that wild-rose tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They all came, some wore sentiments Emblazoned on T-shirts, proclaiming the lateness... Of the hour, and indeed the sun slanted its rays Through branches of Norfolk Island pine as though Politely clearing its throat....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...what a thing it is to lie there all day in the fine breeze, with the pine needles dropping on one, only to return to the hotel ...at night so hungry that the dinner, however homely, is a fete, and the menu finer reading than the best poetry in the world! Yet we are to leave all this for the glare and blaze of Nice and Monte Carlo; which is proof enough that one cannot become really acclimated to happiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see two dingy little rooms with "FOR LADIES" swinging over one and "FOR COLORED PEOPLE" over the other; while wondering under wh...ich head I come, I notice a little way off the only hotel proprietor of the place whittling a pine stick as he sits with one leg thrown across an empty goods box; and as my eye falls on a sample room next door which seems to be driving the only wide-awake and popular business of the commonwealth, I cannot help ejaculating under my breath, "What a field for the missionary woman."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Farm boys wild to couple With anything with soft-wooded trees... With mounds of earthmounds Of pine straw will keep themselves off Animals by legends of their own:LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »