Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth. Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies. They carry it, they eat it, they shit it. They go through it, it goes through them. It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active. The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.
(There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.)
One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving. The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself. In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and revealed its vulnerable shape. The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.
During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness. No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals. But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly. You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.
Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds. Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.
They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants. They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves. They are hell on salads.
What are these beings from the depths of the ditches? Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving. They are in their element but they are also wanderers. And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.
It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.
Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake, inimitable contriver, endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon, thank you for such as it is my gift.
I have made up a morning prayer to you containing with precision everything that most matters. ‘According to Thy will’ the thing begins.
But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own time, accept too his own price, And shut the money into this small hand When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? Oh, I'll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seems As if—forgive now—should you let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
No more, my dear, no more these counsels try; Oh, give my passions leave to run their race; Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace; Let folk o'ercharg'd with brain against me cry; Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye; Let me no steps but of lost labour trace; Let all the earth with scorn recount my case, But do not will me from my love to fly. I do not envy Aristotle's wit, Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame; Nor aught do care though some above me sit; Nor hope nor wish another course to frame, But that which once may win thy cruel heart: Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art.
May the Babylonish curse, Strait confound my stammering verse, If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide or scant) To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love, thee so, That, whichever thing I shew, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole,
Jam non consilio bonus, sed more eo perductus, ut non tantum recte facere possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim"
"I am no longer good through deliberate intent, but by long habit have reached a point where I am not only able to do right, but am unable to do anything but what is right." (Seneca, Letters 120.10) Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove;
To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings, Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun, For my mean Pen are too superior things; Or how they all, or each their dates have run, Let Poets and Historians set these forth. My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.
But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart Great Bartas’ sugar’d lines do but read o’er, Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part ‘Twixt him and me that over-fluent store. A Bartas can do what a Bartas will But simple I according to my skill.
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