I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good versi...on. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds... and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters--because girls can read as well as boys--reading this book? Is it a book tha...t you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones The labor of an age in piled stones?... Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Has built thyself a livelong monument. For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavoring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took; Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving, And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while.... What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all don...e reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote to you, is the most interesting fact to me at present. I have just read his second edition (whi...ch he gave me), and it has done me more good than any reading for a long time. Perhaps I remember best the poem of Walt Whitman, an American, and the Sun-Down Poem. There are two or three pieces in the book which are disagreeable, to say the least; simply sensual. He does not celebrate love at all. It is as if the beasts spoke. I think that men have not been ashamed of themselves without reason. No doubt there have always been dens where such deeds were unblushingly recited, and it is no merit to compete with their inhabitants. But even on this side he has spoken more truth than any American or modern that I know. I have found his poem exhilarating, encouraging. As for its sensuality,--and it may turn out to be less sensual than it appears,--I do not so much wish that those parts were not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read them without harm, that is, without understanding them. One woman told me that no woman could read it,--as if a man could read what a woman could not. Of course Walt Whitman can communicate to us no experience, and if we are shocked, whose experience is it that we are reminded of? On the whole, it sounds to me very brave and American, after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that have been preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trumpets sound, the banners fly, The glittering spears are ranked ready;... The shouts o' war are heard afar, The battle closes thick and bloody; But it's no the roar o' sea or shore Wad mak me langer wish to tarry; Nor shout o' war that's heard afar, Its leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are real...ities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »