Thursday, December 6, 2012

Snapshots from "A Poet's Sourcebook" (5)

from Thomas Carlyle
Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual condition of his own heart; and other men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him.

from Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Deal with us nobly, women though we be,
And honour us with truth, if not with praise.

from Edgar Allan Poe
A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect.

from Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov
I am not Byron--yet I am
One fore-elected, yet one more
Unknown, world-hunted wanderer,
A Russian in my mood and mind.

from Henry David Thoreau
Here is a small reddish-topped rush (is it the Juncus effusus, common or soft rush?), now a foot high, in the meadow with the cowslip. It is the greatest growth of the grass form I have seen. The butterflies are now more numerous, red and blue-black or dark velvety. The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

from Frederick Douglass
In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.

from Emily Bronte
The kitchin is in a very untidy state. Anne and I have not done our music exercise which consists of b major. Tab[b]y said on my putting a pen in her face, "Ya pitter pottering there instead of pilling a potate." I answered, "O Dear, O Dear, O dear, I will directly."

from Walt Whitman
The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready plowed and manured.

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