Quotes

Oh, Brignal banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen.

A Babylonish dialect Which learned pedants much affect.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

But me they’ll lash in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? Just ease these darbies [manacles] at the wrist, And roll me over fair! I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry.

Time will rust the sharpest sword, Time will consume the strongest cord; That which molders hemp and steel, Mortal arm and nerve must feel.

For he by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly; if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come.

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town.

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens.

Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, Easy live and quiet die.

And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day The clock doth strike, by algebra.

First there’s the children’s house of make believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad.

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Oh, poverty parts good company.

’Twas Presbyterian true blue.

This even-handed justice.

Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books; But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

O the one life within us and abroad, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere— Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled.

Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun.

Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take—and took.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

To lure this tassel-gentle back again.

Be but organic harps diversely fram’d, That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of All?

And prove their doctrine orthodox, By apostolic blows and knocks.

I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people.

That looks in on to a mood apart.

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.

How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears!