America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
Interpretation
Emerson perceives America as a living poem filled with natural beauty and vastness that inspires creativity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that America embodies the essence of poetry through its vast landscapes and diverse geography. He highlights how the country's beauty captivates the imagination, urging that such a wonder cannot be confined to traditional forms of artistic expression. Instead, it calls for spontaneous admiration and creative interpretation as America continually unfolds its grandeur, inviting all to witness its lyrical nature.
In practice
A writer may quote Emerson during a literary festival to emphasize the relationship between nature and creativity.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright among all horizontals.
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
Fly not yet; 't is just the hour When pleasure, like the midnight flower That scorns the eye of vulgar light, Begins to bloom for sons of night And maids who love the moon.
My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.
April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.