American lit midterm
Emerson, the poet
" For as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God, that makes things ugly, the poet, who re attaches things to nature and the whole, re-attaching even artificial things, and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight, disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts"
Emerson, the poet
" I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not , with sufficient plains, or sufficient profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare we chant our own times and social circumstance. If we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it" "We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable material, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods, whose picture he so much admires in Homer" "Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our negroes, and Indian, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the souther planting, the wester clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet unsung"
Poe (The Cask of Amontillado)
" I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. but now there was from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I difficulty recognizing as that of the noble Fortunato" "I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There cam forth in return only jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up"
Whitman, out of the cradle endlessly rocking
" Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death, And again death, death, death, death, Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart, But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, death, death."
Emerson, the American scholar
" Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product be.... The books of an older period will not fit this" "Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles"
Hawthorne, My Kinsman, Major Molineux
" This is some country representative, was his conclusion, who has never seen the inside of my kinsman's door, and lacks the breeding to answer a stranger civilly. " "From the country, I presume, Sir? said he, with a profound bow. Beg to congratulate you on your arrival, and trust you intend a long stay with us. Fine own here, Sir, beautiful buildings, and much that may interest a stranger. May I hope for the honor of your commands in respect to supper"
Emerson, the poet
" the breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the commonwealth" "For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study for utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression" "The poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which the others dream of, transverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart"
Whitman, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd
""Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death. Prais'd be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise! For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death. Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly."
Emerson (The American Scholar)
"Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without I, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hands before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we can not even see it beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind."
Song of myself, Whitman
"All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch?) Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul."
whitman, song of myself
"And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me. To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes, I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting, I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors, And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape. And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons. And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)"
Poe, the tell tale heart
"And now- I have not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the sense? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound- much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound will, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increase my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulate the soldier into courage." "In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I BROUGHT CHAIRS INTO THE ROOM, AND DESIRED THEM HERE TO REST FROM their fatigues; while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, place my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim" "They suspect!- they knew!- they were making a mockery of my horror!"
Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
"And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love." "O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear'd—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul."
Emerson, the American scholar
"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right used? what is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire" "The one thing in the world of value, is, the active soul, the should, free, sovereign, active." "Man thinking must not be subdued by his instruments" "One must be n inventor to read well... There is then creative reading, as well as creative writing. when the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold delusion"
Edwards, Personal Narrative
"But yet, it was not long after my recovery, before I fell again into my old ways of sin" "I laid myself under y a kind of vows to God, I was brought wholly to break off all former wicked ways, and always of known outward sin; and to apply myself to seek my salvation, and practice the duties of religion"
Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
"Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in black, With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women standing, With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey, With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang, Here, coffin that slowly passes,"
Whitman, out of the cradle endless ly rocking
"Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me? For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have heard you, Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake, And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours, A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die." "O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me, O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you, Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night, By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me."
Whitman, song of myself
"Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from, The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles and all the creeds.
Emerson, the poet
"For the world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful thins, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor of his own right"
Edwards, personal narrative
"From my childhood up, my mind had been won't to be full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom He would to eternal life and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell" "But I have oftentimes since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God's sovereignty, than I had then. I have often since, not only had a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine of God's sovereignty has very often appeared, an exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet doctrine to me: and absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God"
Hawthorne, My Kinsman, Major Molineux
"He belong the door, than he heard a general laugh, in which the innkeeper's voice might be distinguished, like the dropping of small stones in a kettle. Now it is not strange, thought Robin, with his usual shrewdness, is it not stranger, that the confession of an empty pocket, should outweigh the name of my kinsman, Major Molineux? Oh, if I had one of these grinding rascals in the woods, where I and my soak sapling grew up together, I would tech him that my arm is heavy, though my purse be light"
Chopin, Desiree's baby
"He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name. She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door, hoping he would call her back." "She walked across a deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin gown to shreds. She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again."
Hawthorne, My Kinsman, Major Molineux
"He was an elderly man, of large and majestic person, and strong, square features, betokening a steady should; but steady as it was, his enemies had found the means to shake it....His whole frame was agitated by.a quick, and continual whelming humiliation. But perhaps the bitterest pan of all was when his eyes met those of Robin; for he evidently knew him on the instant, as the youth stood witnessing the foul disgrace of a head that grown grey in honor." "Thanks to you, and to my other friends, have at last met my kinsman, and he will scarce desire to see my fave again. I begin to grow weary of a town life, Sir. Will you show me the way to the Ferry"
Chopin, Desiree's baby
"He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived; then they were married." "It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from far-off neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful change in her husband's manner, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves."
Chopin, story of an hour
"Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom."
Emerson, self-reliance
"I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large society and dead institution. Every decent and well-spoke individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude thought in all way. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?" "Your goodness must have some edge to it- else it is none"
Whitman, song of myself
"I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, the first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue" "I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say it there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride" "I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown"
Whitman, song of myself
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'œuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."
Whitman, Song of my self 5/6
"I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not able itself to you, and you must not be abased to the other" "They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceased the moment life appear'd. All goes onward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier"
Whitman, song of myself 1
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafed and invite my soul"
Whitman, song of myself 3
"I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end" "Out of the dimness opposite equal advance, always substandard increases always sex, Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life" "I am satisfied- I see, dance, laugh. sing; As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread, leaving the baskets covered with white towels swelling the house with their plenty, Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes, that they turn from fazing after and down the road"
Emerson, self-reliance
"I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation fo the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the ma is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows" "traveling is fool's paradise... My giant goes with me wherever I go" "A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but triumph of principles"
Whitman, song of myself
"I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."
Emerson, Self-reliance
"I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. Always the soul hearts an Admonition in such lines, the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instilled is of more value than any though they may contain. TO believe in your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your heart, is true for all men- that is genius" "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty"
Whitman, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd
"I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not, The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd, And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd, And the armies that remain'd suffer'd."
Whitman, song of myself
"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."
Whitman, song of myself
"I understand the large hearts of heroes, The courage of present times and all times, How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm," "All these I feel or am." "Agonies are one of my changes of garments, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe."
Poe (The Cask of Amontillado)
"I will not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is undressed when retribution overeats its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong" "Although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself upon his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirt"
Emerson, American scholar
"If it were only for a vocabulary the scholar would be covetous of action. life is our dictionary" "The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his material, when the fancy no longer paints, when thought are no longer apprehended, and books are weariness, he has always the resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. living is the functionary"
Whitman, song of myself 13/16/17
"In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing, To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing, Absorbing all to myself and for this song." "I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff's with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine, One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same" "These really the thought of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing"
Emerson, The American scholar
"In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, free and brave. Free eve to the definition of freedom... Fear always springs for ignorance" "These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry, He and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance" "The great man makes the great thing"
Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
"In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break." "Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a coffin."
Emerson, the American scholar
"In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tens to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking"
Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"
"It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold. had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so, by degrees- very gradually- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever"
Edwards--sinners in the hands of an angry god
"It is no security to wicked men for one moment that there are no visible means of death at hand. It is no security to a natural and that he is now in health and that he does not see which way he should immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances" "Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in his covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen"
Emerson, the American scholar
"Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself", and the model precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim"
Hawthorne (The May-Pole of Merry Mount)
"Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire" "These were Gothic monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders of a comet youth, uprose the head and bracing antler of a stag; a second , human in all other points, has the grim visage of a wolf; a third, still with the trunk and limbs of mortal man, sowed the bead and horns of a venerable he-goat." "Had a wandered, bewildered in the melancholy forest, heard their mirth, and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsey jollity that foreman the change"
Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
"Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go, and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn back. We but a little way in the forest yet" "Too far, too far!, exclaimed goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk" "I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that's not trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem. And it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in king Philip's war. They were my good friends, but; and many pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with your, for their sake"
Crane, the open boat
"NONE of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks." "Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat navigation." "The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap."
Whitman, song of myself
"No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest" "Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseased and despairing and of thieves and awards,Voice of cycles of preparation and accretion, and of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father stuff ' "Copulation is no more rank to me than death is "
Whitman, song of myself
"None obey'd the command to kneel, Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight, A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together, The maim'd and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there, Some half-kill'd attempted to crawl away, These were despatch'd with bayonets or batter'd with the blunts of muskets, A youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his assassin till two more came to release him, The three were all torn and cover'd with the boy's blood."
Whitman (Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking)
"O past! O happy life! O songs of joy! In the air, in the woods, over fields, Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! But my mate no more, no more with me! We two together no more."
Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
"On the Sabbath-day, when the congregation were signing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain...... his dying hour was gloom"
Whitman, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd
"Passing the visions, passing the night, Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy," "Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,"
Chopin, The story of an hour
"She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her. There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul."
Chopin, story of an hour
"She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination."
Chopin "Desiree's Baby"
"She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir, listlessly drawing through her fingers the strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half naked, lay asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche's little quadroon boys—half naked too— stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock feathers." "She looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and back again; over and over. "Ah!" It was a cry that she could not help; which she was not conscious of having uttered. The blood turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture gathered upon her face. She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come, at first. When he heard his name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress was pointing to the door. He laid aside the great, soft fan, and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes."
Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
"Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird, Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe." "And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me, The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three, And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, Came the carol of the bird. And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird."
Hawthorne (The May-Pole of Merry Mount)
"That was the very thought that gadded me! How came it in your mind too? said Edith, in a still lower tone than he; for it was high treason to be sad... Therefore do I sigh amid this festive music. And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream, and fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary, and their mirth unreal, and that we are no tru lord and lady of the May. what is the mystery in my heart?" "Their leaders were men who had sported so long with life, that when Thought and Wisdom came, even these unwelcome guests were led astray, by the crowd of vanities which they should have put to flight"
Hawthorne, My Kinsman, Major Molineux
"The Major, having inherited riches, and acquired civil and military rank, had visited his cousin in great pomp a year or two before; had manifested much interest in Robin and an elder brother, and being childless himself, haw thrown out hints respecting the future establishment of one of them in life."
crane, the open boat
"The birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them, telling them to be gone."
Emerson, the American scholar
"The first in time and the first in importance of the influence upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, th sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding the beholder. The scholar must needs stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle" "Nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind. Classification begins. To the young mind, every thing is individual, stand by itself"
Chopin, Desiree's baby
"The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for "Dada." That was as much as she could do or say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Maïs kept, just below the plantation." "The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles."
Whitman, song of myself
"The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
Emerson, the American scholar
"The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,- a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man" "man is metamorphosed into a thing, into many thins. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of true dignity of his ministry"
Hawthorne (The May-Pole of Merry Mount)
"The young deemed themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow willfully, because at least her garments glittered brightest" "At the harvest time, though their crop was of the smallest, they made an image with the sheaves of Indian corn, and wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and bore it home triumphantly" "it was a deed of prophecy. As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest. They returned to it no more."
Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of God
"Their foot shall slide in due time" "That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction coming upon them, being represented by there foot sliding" "He cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next: and when he he does fall, he falls at once without warning" "they are liable to fall of themeless, without being thrown down b the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery grounds needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down"
Emerson, self-reliance
"Their virtues are penance. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. my life is not an apology, but a life" "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude" "But do you thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A amnestying must consider what a blindman's-bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument" "This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particular. Their very true is not quite true"
Emerson, self-reliance
"Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situation. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong" "I confess with shame sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold" "Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues"
Emerson, Self-reliance
"There is a time in every man''s education when he arrive at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of food, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which reside in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried" "The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his confession.
Whitman, song of myself
"There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me. Wrench'd and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep—I sleep long. I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid, It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol. Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters. Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness."
chopin, story of an hour
"There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body."
Poe, the cask of amontillado
"There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned." "At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three side of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner."
Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an angry God
"They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They do not only justly deserve to be cast down tither, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between Him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell" "The devils watch them; they are ever by them at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back. If God should withdraw His hand, but which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their pool souls."
Whitman, song of myself 11
"Twenty eight young men bathe by the shore, twenty eight you men and all so friendly; twenty eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, she hides handsome and richly dress aft the blinds of the window. Which of the young men does she like the best? Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her" "You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room" "The young med float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, they do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, They do not think whom they souse with spray"
Whitman, out of the cradle endlessly rocking
"Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating." "Two together! Winds blow south, or winds blow north, Day come white, or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, While we two keep together."
Whitman - When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
"When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."
Whitman, Song of myself
"Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? What am I? What are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your won, Else it were time lost listening to me " "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, And the good or bad I ay of myself I say of them" "I exist as I am, that is enough, I foo other in the world be aware I SIT CONTENT, And if each all be aware I sit content."
Whitman, song of myself
"Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof and everything else in my face, with the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic" "Now I will nothing but listen, To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sound contribute toward it" "To be in any form, what is that?.... I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. I merely stir press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, to touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I Stand"
Emerson, the poet
"for it is not meters, but meter-making argument, that makes a poem, a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing" "A beauty not explicable, is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It is nature the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed by life, which he worships, with coarse, but since rites"
Edwards, Personal Narrative
"my wickedness, as I am in myself, hs long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and infinitely swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge, or infinite mountains over my head" "I go about very often, for this many years, with these expressions in my mind, and in my mouth, "Infinite upon infinite. Infinite upon Infinite!" When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me, that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised upon infinite height of all the fullness and glory of the great Jehovah"
Edwards--sinners in the hands of an angry god
"so that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of he'll; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked. His anger is a great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of His wrath in hell, and they have done nothing the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, the hell is gasping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain hold on them, and they have no interest in any mediator, there are no means within reach that can be security for them" "the misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict to that end, that He might show what wrath of Jehovah is. Go hath had it on His heart to show to angels and men both how excellent His love is, and also how terrible His wrath is"
Edwards, Sinners in the hand of an angry God
"that the reason why they are not fallen already, and do not fall now, is only that God's appointed times is not come. For it said that when that due time, or appointed times does, their foot shall slide."
Whitman, Song of myself
"the little one sleeps in its cradle, I lift the gauze and long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand" "The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom, I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen"
Emerson, the American scholar
"the next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past, in whatever form, whether literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth-learn the amount of this influence more conveniently- by considering their value alone. The theory of the book is noble"
Emerson, The American Scholar
"the old fable covers a doctrine her new and sublime; that there is One Man, present to all particle men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to fine the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are parceled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the join work, whilst each other performs his."
Emerson, self-reliance
"the other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them." "but bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust your emotional." "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do" "Is it so bad to be misunderstood"
Emerson, Self-reliance
"these are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members... The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs" "Whoso would be a man must be nonconformist. He who would gather palms must not be hindered by the name f goodness, but must explore if it be goodness"
Emerson, self-reliance
"what pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior children, babes and even brutes.... Infancy conform to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself"
dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes - The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs - The stiff Heart questions 'was it He, that bore,' And 'Yesterday, or Centuries before'? The Feet, mechanical, go round - A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought - Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone - This is the Hour of Lead - Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow - First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -
Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death - He kindly stopped for me - The Carriage held but just Ourselves - And Immortality. We slowly drove - He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility - We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess - in the Ring - We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain - We passed the Setting Sun - Or rather - He passed Us - The Dews drew quivering and Chill - For only Gossamer, my Gown - My Tippet - only Tulle - We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground - The Roof was scarcely visible - The Cornice - in the Ground - Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity -
Dickinson
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - till it seemed That Sense was breaking through - And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought My mind was going numb - And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here - And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing - then -
dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm - The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset - when the King Be witnessed - in the Room - I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away What portion of me be Assignable - and then it was There interposed a Fly - With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - Between the light - and me - And then the Windows failed - and then I could not see to see -
Edwards, Personal narrative
I was the very much affected for many months, and concerned about the things of religion, and my soul's salvation; and was abundant in duties. I used to pray five times a day in secret, and to spend much time in religious talk with other boys ; and used to meet with them to pray together. I experienced I know what and of delight in religion. y mind was much engaged in it, and had much self-righteous pleasure; and it was my delight to abound in religious duties.
Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who are you?Are you - Nobody - too? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know! How dreary - to be - Somebody!How public - like a Frog - To tell one's name - the livelong June - To an admiring Bog!
dickinson
Pain has an element of blank;It cannot recollectWhen it began, or if there wasA time when it was not. It has no future but itself,Its infinite realms containIts past, enlightened to perceiveNew periods of pain.
Dickinson
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church - I keep it, staying at Home - With a Bobolink for a Chorister - And an Orchard, for a Dome - Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice - I, just wear my Wings - And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton - sings. God preaches, a noted Clergyman - And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last - I'm going, all along.
dickinson
The Soul selects her own Society —Then — shuts the Door —To her divine Majority —Present no more — Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —At her low Gate —Unmoved — an Emperor be kneelingUpon her Mat — I've known her — from an ample nation —Choose One —Then — close the Valves of her attention —Like Stone —
Dickinson
There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons - That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes - Heavenly Hurt, it gives us - We can find no scar, But internal difference - Where the Meanings, are - None may teach it - Any - 'Tis the seal Despair - An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air - When it comes, the Landscape listens - Shadows - hold their breath - When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death -
Dickinson
Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury! Futile - the winds - To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart! Rowing in Eden - Ah - the Sea! Might I but moor - tonight - In thee!
