Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.
When such as I cast out remorse; So great a sweetness flows into the breast; We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.
When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
I--though heart might find relief
Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief
What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part.
Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote.
A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat.
So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.
Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.
Before The World Was Made If I make the lashes dark and the eyes more bright and the lips more scarlet, or ask if all be right from mirror after mirror, no vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made. What if I look upon a man as though on my beloved, and my blood be cold the while and my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was before the world was made.
When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.