All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the bo...ards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It seems to us that no traveler has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the wonders which science is elsewhere revealing every... day, who would not like to hear their annals? Our humble villages in the plain are their contribution. We borrow from the forest the boards which shelter and the sticks which warm us. How important is their evergreen to the winter, that portion of the summer which does not fade, the permanent year, the unwithered grass! Thus simply, and with little expense of altitude, is the surface of the earth diversified.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At length, by mid-afternoon, after we had had two or three rainbows over the sea, the showers ceased, and the heavens gradually cl...eared up, though the wind still blowed as hard and the breakers ran as high as before. Keeping on, we soon after came to a charity-house, which we looked into to see how the shipwrecked mariners might fare. Far away in some desolate hollow by the seaside, just within the bank, stands a lonely building on piles driven into the sand, with a slight nail put through the staple, which a freezing man can bend, with some straw, perchance, on the floor on which he may lie, or which he may burn in the fireplace to keep him alive. Perhaps this hut has never been required to shelter a shipwrecked man, and the benevolent person who promised to inspect it annually, to see that the straw and matches are here, and that the boards will keep off the wind, has grown remiss and thinks that storms and shipwrecks are over; and this very night a perishing crew may pry open its door with their numbed fingers and leave half their number dead here by morning. When I thought what must be the condition of the families which alone would ever occupy or had occupied them, what must have been the tragedy of the winter evenings spent by human beings around their hearths, these houses, though they were meant for human dwellings, did not look cheerful to me. They appeared but a stage to the grave. The gulls flew around and screamed over them; the roar of the ocean in storms, and the lapse of its waves in calms, alone resounds through them, all dark and empty within, year in, year out, except, perchance, on one memorable night. Houses of entertainment for shipwrecked men! What kind of sailor's homes were they?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the n...umerous chinks between the boards.... Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you would be a leader of men you must lead your own generation, not the next. Your playing must be good now, while the play is ...on the boards and the audience in the seats.... It will not get you the repute of a good actor to have excellencies discovered in you afterwards.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the herdsman treads them on behind,... And I am broken by their passing feet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot halt The tread, the beat of it, it is my own heart,... The walls of my room rise, it is still night, I have woken again before the word was spelt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as... our guide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »