My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;... The worm--the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and desc...ent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When stepped on, the worm curls up. That is a clever thing to do. Thus it reduces its chances of being stepped on again. In the la...nguage of morality: humility.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All's vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm Nature is whole in her least things exprest,... Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; And all man's Babylons strive but to impart The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop awa...y from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »