I He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah.
I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise.
Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one’s fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea.
We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth.
A man of humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel, but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah.II The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship comes when one is alone.
I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other are foes.
It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby, “Feed me!” What is the use of saying that men are stones when I know I am going to try to turn them into bread.
I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep my miserable wallet. If he says he has any goodness in him, I avoid him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock or betray us in any moment of self-esteem.
I have no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me, for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity.
Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not knowing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned upon me, for I shall never know who I am if I am not loved.
V Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver, for it is the spirit that dies soonest.
Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto’s soldiers could not ford.
Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it.
There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory; go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard for the preservation of your soul.
People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes anywhere. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying.
There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.
God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is friendship, I mistrust every mortal.
Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin which is my daily bread.
The wanton troopers riding by Have shot my fawn, and it will die. Ungentle men! they cannot thrive To kill thee. Thou ne’er didst alive Them any harm, alas, nor could Thy death yet do them any good. I’m sure I never wish’d them ill, Nor do I for all this, nor will; But if my simple pray’rs may yet Prevail with Heaven to forget Thy murder, I will join my tears Rather than fail. But oh, my fears! It cannot die so. Heaven’s King Keeps register of everything, And nothing may we use in vain.
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief; The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!
Interesting that I have to live with my skeleton. It stands, prepared to emerge, and I carry it with me—this other thing I will become at death, and yet it keeps me erect and limber in my walk, my rival.
What will the living see of me if they should open my grave but my bones that will stare at them through hollow sockets
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.
In early youth’s unclouded scene, The brilliant morning of eighteen, With health and sprightly joy elate, We gazed on youth’s enchanting spring, Nor thought how quickly time would bring The mournful period — thirty-eight!
Then the starch maid, or matron sage, Already of the sober age,
To a Venetian coin, the first Gazetta For its generic title became debtor.
Whither excursive Fancy tends thy Flight? Like Eastern Caliph masking thee at night, By Vezier memory attended still, Thou pertly pryest in each domicil.
so it is death is the condition of infinite form— the rebellion of particulars, ourselves and each thing, even ideas, against that infinitude, is the story of finitude—the dream of the children harvested in a harvester-machine
I set forth one misted white day of June Beneath the great Atlantic rainway, and heard: “Honestly you smite worlds of truth, but Lose your own trains of thought, like a pigeon. Did you once ride in Kenneth’s machine?” “Yes, I rode there, an old man in shorts, blind, Who had lost his way in the filling station; Kenneth was kind.” “Did he fill your motionless ears with resonance and stain?”
No one knew what the stones like squatting frogs signified. There they were, fuming in rows, out of the ground; every critic had his explanation or hers. But—we had to remember—they
came to nothing, every one; those large stones out of the earth served the systems of those who considered them, as explaining something about the past it was important
She was pretty swacked by the time she Put the spaghetti & meatballs into the orgy pasta bowl—There was mixed salt & pepper in the “Tittie-tweak” pasta bowl—We drank some dago red from glazed girlie demi-tasse cups—after which we engaged in heterosexual intercourse, mutual masturbation, fellatio, & cunnilingus. For dessert we stared at a cupboard full of art critic
Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum [If you have come to know any precept more correct than these, share it with me, brilliant one; if not, use these with me] (Horace, Epistle I.6.67) PART 1
O Mary, at thy window be, It is the wish'd, the trysted hour! Those smiles and glances let me see, That makes the miser's treasure poor: How blythely wad I bide the stoure, A weary slave frae sun to sun, Could I the rich reward secure, The lovely Mary Morison.
Yestreen when to the trembling string The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha' To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard nor saw: Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, And yon the toast of a' the town,
What bright soft thing is this? Sweet Mary, the fair eyes’ expense? A moist spark it is, A wat’ry diamond; from whence The very term, I think, was found The water of a diamond.
O ’tis not a tear, ’Tis a star about to drop From thine eye its sphere; The sun will stoop and take it up. Proud will his sister be to wear This thine eyes’ jewel in her ear.
In Virgynë the sweltrie sun gan sheene, And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie; The apple rodded from its palie greene, And the mole peare did bende the leafy spraie; The peede chelandri sunge the livelong daie; ’Twas nowe the pride, the manhode of the yeare, And eke the grounde was dighte in its moste defte aumere.
Neque sermonibus vulgi dederis te, nec in præmiis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus. Quid de te alii loquantur, ipsi videant, sed loquentur tamen. (Cicero, De Re Publica VI.23)
["... you will not any longer attend to the vulgar mob's gossip nor put your trust in human rewards for your deeds; virtue, through her own charms, should lead you to true glory. Let what others say about you be their concern; whatever it is, they will say it anyway."] Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said, Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead. The dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. Whatever Nature has in worth denied, She gives in large recruits of needful pride; For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind; Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense! If once right reason drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day; Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.
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