“Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!Smile, for your lover comes!”

“Either define the moment or the moment will define you.”

“I inhale great draught of space...the east and west are mine...and the north and south are mine...I am grandeur than I thought...I did not know i held so much goodness.”

“A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing lacking.”

“People who serve you without love get even behind your back.”

“Hither rolls the storm of heat;I feel its finer billows beatLike a sea which me infolds;Heat with viewless fingers moulds,Swells, and mellows, and matures,Paints, and flavors, and allures,Bird and brier inly warms,Still enriches and transforms,Gives the reed and lily length,Adds to oak and oxen strength,Transforming what it doth infold,Life out of death, new out of old.”

“What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.”

“Old & New put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marked by both. The present moment gives the motion & the color of the flake: Antiquity, its form & properties. All things wear a luster which is the gift of the present & a tarnish of time.”