Written by
Emily Dickinson |
"Sic transit gloria mundi,"
"How doth the busy bee,"
"Dum vivimus vivamus,"
I stay mine enemy!
Oh "veni, vidi, vici!"
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh "memento mori"
When I am far from thee!
Hurrah for Peter Parley!
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!
Peter, put up the sunshine;
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!
Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
From off my father's tree!
I climb the "Hill of Science,"
I "view the landscape o'er;"
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne'er beheld before!
Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I'll take my india rubbers,
In case the wind should blow!
During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!
The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!
It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o'er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!
Mortality is fatal --
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!
Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho' full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still, --
The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies!
A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!
Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e'e.
In token of our friendship
Accept this "Bonnie Doon,"
And when the hand that plucked it
Hath passed beyond the moon,
The memory of my ashes
Will consolation be;
Then, farewell, Tuscarora,
And farewell, Sir, to thee!
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever,
To stand the cold or heat—to take good aim with a gun—to sail a boat—to
manage
horses—to beget superb children,
To speak readily and clearly—to feel at home among common people,
And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea.
Not for an embroiderer;
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers—I welcome them also;)
But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.
Not to chisel ornaments,
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme Gods, that The
States
may realize them, walking and talking.
Let me have my own way;
Let others promulge the laws—I will make no account of the laws;
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace—I hold up agitation and conflict;
I praise no eminent man—I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy.
(Who are you? you mean devil! And what are you secretly guilty of, all your life?
Will you turn aside all your life? Will you grub and chatter all your life?)
(And who are you—blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences,
Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak a single word?)
Let others finish specimens—I never finish specimens;
I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature does, fresh and modern continually.
I give nothing as duties;
What others give as duties, I give as living impulses;
(Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)
Let others dispose of questions—I dispose of nothing—I arouse unanswerable
questions;
Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?
What about these likes of myself, that draw me so close by tender directions and
indirections?
I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my
enemies—as I
myself do;
I charge you, too, forever, reject those who would expound me—for I cannot expound
myself;
I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me;
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.
After me, vista!
O, I see life is not short, but immeasurably long;
I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower,
Every hour the semen of centuries—and still of centuries.
I will follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth;
I perceive I have no time to lose.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
"Sic transit gloria mundi,"
"How doth the busy bee,"
"Dum vivimus vivamus,"
I stay mine enemy!
Oh "veni, vidi, vici!"
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh "memento mori"
When I am far from thee!
Hurrah for Peter Parley!
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!
Peter, put up the sunshine;
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!
Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
From off my father's tree!
I climb the "Hill of Science,"
I "view the landscape o'er;"
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne'er beheld before!
Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I'll take my india rubbers,
In case the wind should blow!
During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!
The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!
It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o'er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!
Mortality is fatal --
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!
Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho' full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still, --
The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies!
A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!
Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e'e.
In token of our friendship
Accept this "Bonnie Doon,"
And when the hand that plucked it
Hath passed beyond the moon,
The memory of my ashes
Will consolation be;
Then, farewell, Tuscarora,
And farewell, Sir, to thee!
|
Written by
Laura Riding Jackson |
The little quids, the million quids,
The everywhere, everything, always quids,
The atoms of the Monoton—
Each turned three essences where it stood
And ground a gisty dust from its neighbors' edges
Until a powdery thoughtfall stormed in and out,
The cerebration of a slippery quid enterprise.
Each quid stirred.
The united quids
Waved through a sinuous decision.
The quids, that had never done anything before
But be, be, be, be, be,
The quids resolved to predicate
And dissipate in a little grammar.
Oh, the Monoton didn't care,
For whatever they did—
The Monoton's contributing quids—
The Monoton would always remain the same.
A quid here and there gyrated in place-position,
While many essential quids turned inside-out
For the fun of it
And a few refused to be anything but
Simple, unpredicated copulatives.
Little by little, this commotion of quids,
By threes, by tens, by casual millions,
Squirming within the state of things—
The metaphysical acrobats,
The naked, immaterial quids—
Turned inside on themselves
And came out dressed,
Each similar quid of the inward same,
Each similar quid dressed in a different way—
The quid's idea of a holiday.
The quids could never tell what was happening.
But the Monoton felt itself differently the same
In its different parts.
The silly quids upon their rambling exercise
Never knew, could never tell
What their pleasure was about,
What their carnival was like,
Being in, being in, being always in
Where they never could get out
Of the everywhere, everything, always in,
To derive themselves from the Monoton.
But I know, with a quid inside of me,
But I know what a quid's disguise is like,
Being one myself,
The gymnastic device
That a quid puts on for exercise.
And so should the trees,
And so should the worms,
And so should you,
And all the other predicates,
And all the other accessories
Of the quid's masquerade.
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
1
RISE, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep!
Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour’d what the earth gave me;
Long I roam’d the woods of the north—long I watch’d Niagara pouring;
I travel’d the prairies over, and slept on their breast—I cross’d the
Nevadas, I
cross’d the plateaus;
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail’d out to sea;
I sail’d through the storm, I was refresh’d by the storm;
I watch’d with joy the threatening maws of the waves;
I mark’d the white combs where they career’d so high, curling over;
I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;
Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!)
Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow’d after the lightning;
Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid the din they
chased
each
other across the sky;
—These, and such as these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet pensive and
masterful;
All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;
Yet there with my soul I fed—I fed content, supercilious.
2
’Twas well, O soul! ’twas a good preparation you gave me!
Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;
Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;
Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities;
Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring;
Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed inexhaustible?)
What, to pavements and homesteads here—what were those storms of the mountains and
sea?
What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen?
Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?
Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage;
Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front—Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain’d;
—What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!
How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!
How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of lightning!
How DEMOCRACY, with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those
flashes
of
lightning!
(Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,
In a lull of the deafening confusion.)
3
Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!
And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!
Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good;
My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment;
—Long had I walk’d my cities, my country roads, through farms, only
half-satisfied;
One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the ground before me,
Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low;
—The cities I loved so well, I abandon’d and left—I sped to the certainties
suitable
to me;
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature’s dauntlessness,
I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only;
I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air I waited long;
—But now I no longer wait—I am fully satisfied—I am glutted;
I have witness’d the true lightning—I have witness’d my cities electric;
I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise;
Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,
No more on the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea.
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