As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, the smaller bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along its edge, ...or stood probing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on us, though so demurely at work, or else he ran along over the wet stones like a wrecker in his storm-coat, looking out for wrecks of snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limping flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a rod of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet; and now our steady approach compels him to seek a new retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian school, and no doubt believes in the priority of water to the other elements; the relic of a twilight antediluvian age which yet inhabits these bright American waters with us Yankees. There is something venerable in this melancholy and contemplative race of birds, which may have trodden the earth while it was yet in a slimy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks, too, are still visible on the stones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
See what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself,... An eye like Mars, to threaten and command.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye tryin...g to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half... an hour high. A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide. It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul:... While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I sat by an eminent Storyteller and Politician who takes half an Ounce in five Seconds, and has mortgaged a pretty Tenement near t...he Town, meerly [sic] to improve and dung his Brains with this prolifick Powder.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The dry eucalyptus seeks god in the rainy cloud. Professor Eucalyptus of New Haven seeks him... In New Haven with an eye that does not look Beyond the object.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The houses are from five to seven feet high, and all built upon one arbitrary plan--the ungraceful form of a dry-goods box. The si...des are daubed with a smooth white plaster, and tastefully frescoed aloft and alow with disks of camel-dung placed there to dry. This gives the edifice the romantic appearance of having been riddled with cannon-balls, and imparts to it a very pleasing effect. When the artist has arranged his materials with an eye to just proportion--the small and the large flakes in alternate rows, and separated by carefully-considered intervals--I know of nothing more cheerful to look upon than a spirited Syrian fresco. Nothing in this world has such a charm for me as to stand and gaze for hours and hours upon the inspired works of these old masters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Art knows no happier moment than the opportunity to show the symmetry of an extreme, during that moment of spheric harmony when th...e dissonance dissolves for the blink of an eye, dissolves into a blissful harmony, when the most extreme opposites, coming together from the greatest alienation, fleetingly touch with lips of the word and of love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »