Get Your Premium Membership

Best Famous Cork Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Cork poems. This is a select list of the best famous Cork poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Cork poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of cork poems.

Search and read the best famous Cork poems, articles about Cork poems, poetry blogs, or anything else Cork poem related using the PoetrySoup search engine at the top of the page.

See Also:
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

A Life

 Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year --- Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail: It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork, Every one of them permanently busy.
At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper: Stalling in midair, Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy As Victorian cushions.
This family Of valentine faces might please a collector: They ring true, like good china.
Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.
A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle, The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised, Leave her alone now.
The future is a grey seagull Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her, And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold, Crawls up out of the sea.


Written by Frank Bidart | Create an image from this poem

California Plush

 The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars

--descending through the city
 fast as the law would allow

through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep

 and you on top; the air
 now clean, for a moment weightless

 without memories, or
 need for a past.
The need for the past is so much at the center of my life I write this poem to record my discovery of it, my reconciliation.
It was in Bishop, the room was done in California plush: we had gone into the coffee shop, were told you could only get a steak in the bar: I hesitated, not wanting to be an occasion of temptation for my father but he wanted to, so we entered a dark room, with amber water glasses, walnut tables, captain's chairs, plastic doilies, papier-mâché bas-relief wall ballerinas, German memorial plates "bought on a trip to Europe," Puritan crosshatch green-yellow wallpaper, frilly shades, cowhide booths-- I thought of Cambridge: the lovely congruent elegance of Revolutionary architecture, even of ersatz thirties Georgian seemed alien, a threat, sign of all I was not-- to bode order and lucidity as an ideal, if not reality-- not this California plush, which also I was not.
And so I made myself an Easterner, finding it, after all, more like me than I had let myself hope.
And now, staring into the embittered face of my father, again, for two weeks, as twice a year, I was back.
The waitress asked us if we wanted a drink.
Grimly, I waited until he said no.
.
.
Before the tribunal of the world I submit the following document: Nancy showed it to us, in her apartment at the model, as she waited month by month for the property settlement, her children grown and working for their father, at fifty-three now alone, a drink in her hand: as my father said, "They keep a drink in her hand": Name Wallace du Bois Box No 128 Chino, Calif.
Date July 25 ,19 54 Mr Howard Arturian I am writing a letter to you this afternoon while I'm in the mood of writing.
How is everything getting along with you these fine days, as for me everything is just fine and I feel great except for the heat I think its lot warmer then it is up there but I don't mind it so much.
I work at the dairy half day and I go to trade school the other half day Body & Fender, now I am learning how to spray paint cars I've already painted one and now I got another car to paint.
So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all this.
I know how to straighten metals and all that.
I forgot to say "Hello" to you.
The reason why I am writing to you is about a job, my Parole Officer told me that he got letter from and that you want me to go to work for you.
So I wanted to know if its truth.
When I go to the Board in Feb.
I'll tell them what I want to do and where I would like to go, so if you want me to work for you I'd rather have you sent me to your brother John in Tonapah and place to stay for my family.
The Old Lady says the same thing in her last letter that she would be some place else then in Bishop, thats the way I feel too.
and another thing is my drinking problem.
I made up my mind to quit my drinking, after all what it did to me and what happen.
This is one thing I'll never forget as longs as I live I never want to go through all this mess again.
This sure did teach me lot of things that I never knew before.
So Howard you can let me know soon as possible.
I sure would appreciate it.
P.
S From Your Friend I hope you can read my Wally Du Bois writing.
I am a little nervous yet --He and his wife had given a party, and one of the guests was walking away just as Wallace started backing up his car.
He hit him, so put the body in the back seat and drove to a deserted road.
There he put it before the tires, and ran back and forth over it several times.
When he got out of Chino, he did, indeed, never do that again: but one child was dead, his only son, found with the rest of the family immobile in their beds with typhoid, next to the mother, the child having been dead two days: he continued to drink, and as if it were the Old West shot up the town a couple of Saturday nights.
"So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things that I never knew before.
I am a little nervous yet.
" It seems to me an emblem of Bishop-- For watching the room, as the waitresses in their back-combed, Parisian, peroxided, bouffant hairdos, and plastic belts, moved back and forth I thought of Wallace, and the room suddenly seemed to me not uninteresting at all: they were the same.
Every plate and chair had its congruence with all the choices creating these people, created by them--by me, for this is my father's chosen country, my origin.
Before, I had merely been anxious, bored; now, I began to ask a thousand questions.
.
.
He was, of course, mistrustful, knowing I was bored, knowing he had dragged me up here from Bakersfield after five years of almost managing to forget Bishop existed.
But he soon became loquacious, ordered a drink, and settled down for an afternoon of talk.
.
.
He liked Bishop: somehow, it was to his taste, this hard-drinking, loud, visited-by-movie-stars town.
"Better to be a big fish in a little pond.
" And he was: when they came to shoot a film, he entertained them; Miss A--, who wore nothing at all under her mink coat; Mr.
M--, good horseman, good shot.
"But when your mother let me down" (for alcoholism and infidelity, she divorced him) "and Los Angeles wouldn't give us water any more, I had to leave.
We were the first people to grow potatoes in this valley.
" When he began to tell me that he lost control of the business because of the settlement he gave my mother, because I had heard it many times, in revenge, I asked why people up here drank so much.
He hesitated.
"Bored, I guess.
--Not much to do.
" And why had Nancy's husband left her? In bitterness, all he said was: "People up here drink too damn much.
" And that was how experience had informed his life.
"So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things that I never knew before.
I am a little nervous yet.
" Yet, as my mother said, returning, as always, to the past, "I wouldn't change any of it.
It taught me so much.
Gladys is such an innocent creature: you look into her face and somehow it's empty, all she worries about are sales and the baby.
her husband's too good!" It's quite pointless to call this rationalization: my mother, for uncertain reasons, has had her bout with insanity, but she's right: the past in maiming us, makes us, fruition is also destruction: I think of Proust, dying in a cork-linked room, because he refuses to eat because he thinks that he cannot write if he eats because he wills to write, to finish his novel --his novel which recaptures the past, and with a kind of joy, because in the debris of the past, he has found the sources of the necessities which have led him to this room, writing --in this strange harmony, does he will for it to have been different? And I can't not think of the remorse of Oedipus, who tries to escape, to expiate the past by blinding himself, and then, when he is dying, sees that he has become a Daimon --does he, discovering, at last, this cruel coherence created by "the order of the universe" --does he will anything reversed? I look at my father: as he drinks his way into garrulous, shaky defensiveness, the debris of the past is just debris--; whatever I reason, it is a desolation to watch.
.
.
must I watch? He will not change; he does not want to change; every defeated gesture implies the past is useless, irretrievable.
.
.
--I want to change: I want to stop fear's subtle guidance of my life--; but, how can I do that if I am still afraid of its source?
Written by Pablo Neruda | Create an image from this poem

Come With Me I Said And No One Knew (VII)

 Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me, 
only a wound that love had opened.
I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying, and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns! That is why when I heard your voice repeat Come with me, it was as if you had let loose the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine the geysers flooding from deep in its vault: in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again, of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.
Written by Gwendolyn Brooks | Create an image from this poem

The Independent Man

 Now who could take you off to tiny life 
In one room or in two rooms or in three 
And cork you smartly, like the flask of wine 
You are? Not any woman.
Not a wife.
You'd let her twirl you, give her a good glee Showing your leaping ruby to a friend.
Though twirling would be meek.
Since not a cork Could you allow, for being made so free.
A woman would be wise to think it well If once a week you only rang the bell.
Written by William Matthews | Create an image from this poem

Dire Cure

 "First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous in its behavior that at first they mis- diagnosed it.
"Your wife will die of it within a year.
" But in ten days or so I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour soup and heard an intern congratulate her on her new diagnosis: a children's cancer (doesn't that possessive break your heart?) had possessed her.
I couldn't stop personifying it.
Devious, dour, it had a clouded heart, like Iago's.
It loved disguise.
It was a garrison in a captured city, a bad horror film (The Blob), a stowaway, an inside job.
If I could make it be like something else, I wouldn't have to think of it as what, in fact, it was: part of my lovely wife.
Next, then, chemotherapy.
Her hair fell out in tufts, her color dulled, she sat laced to bags of poison she endured somewhat better than her cancer cells could, though not by much.
And indeed, the cancer cells waned more slowly than the chemical "cocktails" (one the bright color of Campari), as the chemo nurses called them, dripped into her.
There were three hundred days of this: a week inside the hospital and two weeks out, the fierce elixirs percolating all the while.
She did five weeks of radiation, too, Monday to Friday like a stupid job.
She wouldn't eat the food the hospital wheeled in.
"Pureed fish" and "minced fish" were worth, I thought, a sharp surge of food snobbery, but she'd grown averse to it all -- the nurses' crepe soles' muffled squeaks along the hall, the filtered air, the smothered urge to read, the fear, the perky visitors, flowers she'd not been sent when she was well, the room- mate (what do "semiprivate" and "extra virgin" have in common?) who died, the nights she wept and sweated faster than the tubes could moisten her with lurid poison.
One chemotherapy veteran, six years in remission, chanced on her former chemo nurse at a bus stop and threw up.
My wife's tumor has not come back.
I like to think of it in Tumor Hell strapped to a dray, flat as a deflated football, bleak and nubbled like a poorly ironed truffle.
There's one tense in Tumor Hell: forever, or what we call the present.
For that long the flaccid tumor marinates in lurid toxins.
Tumor Hell Clinic is, it turns out, a teaching hospital.
Every century or so, the way we'd measure it, a chief doc brings a pack of students round.
They run some simple tests: surge current through the tumor, batter it with mallets, push a wood-plane across its pebbled hide and watch a scurf of tumor- pelt kink loose from it, impale it, strafe it with lye and napalm.
There might be nothing left in there but a still space surrounded by a carapace.
"This one is nearly dead," the chief doc says.
"What's the cure for that?" The students know: "Kill it slower, of course.
" They sprinkle it with rock salt and move on.
Here on the aging earth the tumor's gone: My wife is hale, though wary, and why not? Once you've had cancer, you don't get headaches anymore, you get brain tumors, at least until the aspirin kicks in.
Her hair's back, her weight, her appetite.
"And what about you?" friends ask me.
First the fear felt like sudden weightlessness: I couldn't steer and couldn't stay.
I couldn't concentrate: surely my spit would dry before I could slather a stamp.
I made a list of things to do next day before I went to bed, slept like a cork, woke to no more memory of last night's list than smoke has of fire, made a new list, began to do the things on it, wept, paced, berated myself, drove to the hospital, and brought my wife food from the takeout joints that ring a hospital as surely as brothels surround a gold strike.
I drove home rancid with anger at her luck and mine -- anger that filled me the same way nature hates a vacuum.
"This must be hell for you," some said.
Hell's not other people: Sartre was wrong about that, too.
L'enfer, c'est moi? I've not got the ego for it.
There'd be no hell if Dante hadn't built a model of his rage so well, and he contrived to get exiled from it, for it was Florence.
Why would I live in hell? I love New York.
Some even said the tumor and fierce cure were harder on the care giver -- yes, they said "care giver" -- than on the "sick person.
" They were wrong who said those things.
Of course I hated it, but some of "it" was me -- the self-pity I allowed myself, the brave poses I struck.
The rest was dire threat my wife met with moral stubbornness, terror, rude jokes, nausea, you name it.
No, let her think of its name and never say it, as if it were the name of God.


Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Create an image from this poem

Mr. Mistoffelees

 You ought to know Mr.
Mistoffelees! The Original Conjuring Cat-- (There can be no doubt about that).
Please listen to me and don't scoff.
All his Inventions are off his own bat.
There's no such Cat in the metropolis; He holds all the patent monopolies For performing suprising illusions And creating eccentric confusions.
At prestidigitation And at legerdemain He'll defy examination And deceive you again.
The greatest magicians have something to learn From Mr.
Mistoffelees' Conjuring Turn.
Presto! Away we go! And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there ever A Cat so clever As Magical Mr.
Mistoffelees! He is quiet and small, he is black From his ears to the tip of his tail; He can creep through the tiniest crack, He can walk on the narrowest rail.
He can pick any card from a pack, He is equally cunning with dice; He is always deceiving you into believing That he's only hunting for mice.
He can play any trick with a cork Or a spoon and a bit of fish-paste; If you look for a knife or a fork And you think it is merely misplaced-- You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn! But you'll find it next week lying out on the lawn.
And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there ever A Cat so clever As Magical Mr.
Mistoffelees! His manner is vague and aloof, You would think there was nobody shyer-- But his voice has been heard on the roof When he was curled up by the fire.
And he's sometimes been heard by the fire When he was about on the roof-- (At least we all heard that somebody purred) Which is incontestable proof Of his singular magical powers: And I have known the family to call Him in from the garden for hours, While he was asleep in the hall.
And not long ago this phenomenal Cat Produced seven kittens right out of a hat! And we all said: OH! Well I never! Did you ever Know a Cat so clever As Magical Mr.
Mistoffelees!
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

An Electric Sign Goes Dark

 POLAND, France, Judea ran in her veins,
Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottle’s cork.
“Won’t you come and play wiz me” she sang … and “I just can’t make my eyes behave.
” “Higgeldy-Piggeldy,” “Papa’s Wife,” “Follow Me” were plays.
Did she wash her feet in a tub of milk? Was a strand of pearls sneaked from her trunk? The newspapers asked.
Cigarettes, tulips, pacing horses, took her name.
Twenty years old … thirty … forty … Forty-five and the doctors fathom nothing, the doctors quarrel, the doctors use silver tubes feeding twenty-four quarts of blood into the veins, the respects of a prize-fighter, a cab driver.
And a little mouth moans: It is easy to die when they are dying so many grand deaths in France.
A voice, a shape, gone.
A baby bundle from Warsaw … legs, torso, head … on a hotel bed at The Savoy.
The white chiselings of flesh that flung themselves in somersaults, straddles, for packed houses: A memory, a stage and footlights out, an electric sign on Broadway dark.
She belonged to somebody, nobody.
No one man owned her, no ten nor a thousand.
She belonged to many thousand men, lovers of the white chiseling of arms and shoulders, the ivory of a laugh, the bells of song.
Railroad brakemen taking trains across Nebraska prairies, lumbermen jaunting in pine and tamarack of the Northwest, stock ranchers in the middle west, mayors of southern cities Say to their pals and wives now: I see by the papers Anna Held is dead.
Written by William Topaz McGonagall | Create an image from this poem

The Albion Battleship Calamity

 'Twas in the year of 1898, ond on the 21st of June,
The launching of the Battleship Albion caused a great gloom,
Amongst the relatives of many persons who were drowned in the River Thames,
Which their relatives will remember while life remains.
The vessel was christened by the Duchess of York, And the spectators' hearts felt light as cork As the Duchess cut the cord that was holding the fine ship, Then the spectators loudly cheered as the vessel slid down the slip.
The launching of the vessel was very well carried out, While the guests on the stands cheered without any doubt, Under the impression that everything would go well; But, alas! instantaneously a bridge and staging fell.
Oh! little did the Duchess of York think that day That so many lives would be taken away At the launching of the good ship Albion, But when she heard of the catastrophe she felt woebegone.
But accidents will happen without any doubt, And often the cause thereof is hard to find out; And according to report, I've heard people say, 'Twas the great crowd on the bridge caused it to give way.
Just as the vessel entered the water the bridge and staging gave way, Immersing some three hundred people which caused great dismay Amongst the thousands of spectators that were standing there, And in the faces of the bystanders, were depicted despair.
Then the police boats instantly made for the fatal spot, And with the aid of dockyard hands several people were got, While some scrambled out themselves, the best way they could-- And the most of them were the inhabitants of the neighborhood.
Part of them were the wives and daughters of the dockyard hands, And as they gazed upon them they in amazement stands; And several bodies were hauled up quite dead.
Which filled the onlookers' hearts with pity and dread.
One of the first rescued was a little baby, Which was conveyed away to the mortuary; And several were taken to the fitter's shed, and attended to there By the firemen and several nurses with the greatest care.
Meanwhile, heartrending scenes were taking place, Whilst the tears ran down many a Mother and Father's face, That had lost their children in the River Thames, Which they will remember while life remains.
Oh, Heaven! it was horrible to see the bodies laid out in rows, And as Fathers and Mothers passed along, adown their cheeks the tears flows, While their poor, sickly hearts were throbbing with fear.
A great crowd had gathered to search for the missing dead, And many strong men broke down because their heart with pity bled, As they looked upon the distorted faces of their relatives dear, While adown their cheeks flowed many a silent tear.
The tenderest sympathy, no doubt, was shown to them, By the kind hearted Police and Firemen; The scene in fact was most sickening to behold, And enough to make one's blood run cold, To see tear-stained men and women there Searching for their relatives, and in their eyes a pitiful stare.
There's one brave man in particular I must mention, And I'm sure he's worthy of the people's attention.
His name is Thomas Cooke, of No.
6 Percy Road, Canning Town, Who's name ought to be to posterity handed down, Because he leapt into the River Thames and heroically did behave, And rescued five persons from a watery grave.
Mr.
Wilson, a young electrician, got a terrible fright, When he saw his mother and sister dead-- he was shocked at the sight, Because his sister had not many days returned from her honeymoon, And in his countenance, alas! there was a sad gloom.
His Majesty has sent a message of sympathy to the bereaved ones in distress, And the Duke and Duchess of York have sent 25 guineas I must confess.
And £1000 from the Directors of the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company.
Which I hope will help to fill the bereaved one's hearts with glee.
And in conclusion I will venture to say, That accidents will happen by night and by day; And I will say without any fear, Because to me it appears quite clear, That the stronger we our houses do build, The less chance we have of being killed.
Written by Charles Bukowski | Create an image from this poem

Another Day

 having the low down blues and going
into a restraunt to eat.
you sit at a table.
the waitress smiles at you.
she's dumpy.
her ass is too big.
she radiates kindess and symphaty.
live with her 3 months and a man would no real agony.
o.
k.
, you'll tip her 15 percent.
you order a turkey sandwich and a beer.
the man at the table across from you has watery blue eyes and a head like an elephant.
at a table further down are 3 men with very tiny heads and long necks like ostiches.
they talk loudly of land development.
why, you think, did I ever come in here when I have the low-down blues? then the the waitress comes back eith the sandwich and she asks you if there will be anything else? snd you tell her, no no, this will be fine.
then somebody behind you laughs.
it's a cork laugh filled with sand and broken glass.
you begin eating the sandwhich.
it's something.
it's a minor, difficult, sensible action like composing a popular song to make a 14-year old weep.
you order another beer.
jesus,look at that guy his hands hang down almost to his knees and he's whistling.
well, time to get out.
pivk up the bill.
tip.
go to the register.
pay.
pick up a toothpick.
go out the door.
your car is still there.
and there are 3 men with heads and necks like ostriches all getting into one car.
they each have a toothpick and now they are talking about women.
they drive away first they drive away fast.
they're best i guess.
it's an unberably hot day.
there's a first-stage smog alert.
all the birds and plants are dead or dying.
you start the engine.
Written by Christopher Smart | Create an image from this poem

For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry (excerpt Jubilate Agno)

 For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things