It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to ...transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower--and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are, indeed, severe things in it which no man should read aloud more than once. "Seek first the kingdom of heaven." "Lay not... up for yourselves treasures on earth." "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Think of this, Yankees! "Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you." Think of repeating these things to a New England audience! thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly, till there are three barrels of sermons! who, without cant, can read them aloud? Who, without cant, can hear them, and not go out of the meeting-house? They never were read, they never were heard. Let but one of these sentences be rightly read, from any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one stone of that meeting-house upon another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed... On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero, From the star-flanked fields of space,... Thunders on the foreign town With a sand-bagged garrison....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Help me to seek, for I lost it there And if that ye have found it, ye that be here,... And seek to convey it secretly, Handle it soft and treat it tenderly, Or else it will plain and then appear:LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »