My little notebooks were beginnings - they were the ground into which I dropped the seed... I would work in this way when I was out in the crowds, then put the stuff together at home.
O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.
The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds - where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough - a modest living- and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.
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.
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)
It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess.
Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning - I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction? Do you think I am trusty and faithful? Do you see no further than this façade—this smooth and tolerant manner of me? Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?
O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.