If by prayer
Incessant I could hope to change the will
Of him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary him with my assiduous cries;
But prayer against his absolute decree
No more avails than breath against the wind
Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth:
Therefore to his great bidding I submit.
And all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farmhouses had nestled among their trees, wind wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. ... The great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens.
Know, therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return... Forget not that I shall come back to you... A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
You are nipping in the bud fancies which I let blossom. The shore is safer, but I love to buffet the sea - I can count the bitter wrecks here in these pleasant waters, and hear the murmuring winds, but oh, I love the danger!
Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.
And yet - and yet - one's kite will rise on the wind as far as ever one has string to let it go. It tugs and tugs and will go, and one is glad the further it goes, even if everybody else is nasty about it.
Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers. Take the cable thread by thread, take separately all the little determining motives, you break them one after another, and you say: that is all! Wind them and twist them together, they become an enormity.
Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'erflow? If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face? And wilt thou have a reason for this coil? I am the sea; hark, how her sighs do blow! She is the weeping welkin, I the earth: Then must my sea be moved with her sighs; Then must my earth with her continual tears Become a deluge, overflow'd and drown'd: For why my bowels cannot hide her woes, But like a drunkard must I vomit them. Then give me leave, for losers will have leave To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.