How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I think serenity is not something you just find in the world, like a plum tree, holding up its white petals. The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like small dark lanterns. The green mosses, being so

After excitement we are so restful. When the thumb of fear lifts, we are so alive.

I hope to see everything in this world before I die.

And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders? On one street after another, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry

FROM “WEST WIND” 1. If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together. Imagine! Two little stones, two fleas under the wing of a gull, flying along through the fog! Or, ten blades of grass. Ten loops of honeysuckle, all flung against each other, at the edge of Race Road!

Have I not been ready always at the iron door, not knowing to what country it opens—to death or to more life?

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO ENTER THE LONG BLACK BRANCHES Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives— tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer, feel like? Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you? Never to enter the sea and notice

Do you have a question that can’t be answered? Do the stars frighten you by their heaviness and their endless number? Does it bother you, that mercy is so difficult to understand?

“‘Whoever shall be guided so far towards the mysteries of love, by contemplating beautiful things rightly in due order, is approaching the last grade. Suddenly he will behold a beauty marvellous in its nature, that very Beauty, Socrates, for the sake of which all the earlier hardships had been borne: in the first place, everlasting, and never being