The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still,--and there was so much sky, more than ...at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go, and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root,... Tell me, where all past years are, Or who cleft the devil's foot, Teach me to her mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be ...painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat up the hours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go bring him home to his people. Lay him in state on a sepal.... Wrap him for shroud in a petal. Embalm him with ichor of nettle. This is the word of your Queen."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let him Who was love's teacher teach you too love's cure;... Let the same hand that wounded bring the balm. Healing and poisonous herbs the same soil bears, And rose and nettle oft grow side by side.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
this frenzy, like bees stinging the heart all morning,... will keep the angels with their windows open, wide as an English bathtub.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best... Neighbored by fruit of baser quality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of high...ways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility. I have looked after the wild stock of the town,... and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm.... I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons. In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »