I've begun to appreciate the generational patterns that ripple out from our lives like stones dropped in water, pulsing outward ev...en after we are gone. Although we have but one childhood, we relive it first through our children's and then our grandchildren's eyes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For a symbol is like a rock dropped into a pool: it sends out ripples in all directions, and the ripples are in motion. Who can sa...y where the last ripple disappears? One may have a sense that he at least knows approximately the center point of all those ripples, the point at which the stone struck the water. Yet even then he has trouble marking it precisely. How does one make a mark on water? ... The ripples continue to move and the light to change on the water and the longer one watches the more changes he sees. And such shifting-and-being-at-the-same-instant is of the very sparkle and life of poetry. Of poetry and of life itself. For the poem is a dynamic and living thing. One experiences it as one experiences life--as everybody but Mr. Gradgrind experiences life. One is never done with it: every time he looks he sees something new, and it changes even as he watches. And that very sense of continuity in fluidity is one of the kinds of knowledge, one of the ways of knowing, that only the arts can teach, poetry foremost among them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The forest waves, the morning breaks, The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes,... Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be And life pulsates in rock or tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain... Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could s...ee the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For the most part, there was no recognition of human life in the night; no human breathing was heard, only the breathing of the wi...nd. As we sat up, kept awake by the novelty of our situation, we heard at intervals foxes stepping about over the dead leaves, and brushing the dewy grass close to our tent, and once a musquash fumbling among the potatoes and melons in our boat; but when we hastened to the shore we could detect only a ripple in the water ruffling the disk of a star. At intervals we were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry of an owl; but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully abroad at that hour.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The morning was a bright one, and perfectly still and serene, the lake as smooth as glass, we making the only ripple as we paddled... into it. The dark mountains about it were seen through a glaucous mist, and the brilliant white stems of canoe birches mingled with the other woods around it. The wood thrush sang on the distant shore, and the laugh of some loons, sporting in a concealed western bay, as if inspired by the morning, came distinct over the lake to us, and, what was more remarkable, the echo which ran round the lake was much louder than the original note; probably because, the loon being in a regularly curving bay under the mountain, we were exactly in the focus of many echoes, the sound being reflected like light from a concave mirror.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the 29th of April, as I was fishing ... I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play wit...h their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »