A poem should not mean but be.
Archibald MacleishRead
To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night ~ brothers who see now they are truly brothers.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the interconnectedness of humanity and the beauty of our shared existence on Earth.
The quote by Archibald Macleish invites us to perceive our planet from a broader perspective, acknowledging its beauty and the silence of the cosmos surrounding it. By recognizing ourselves as riders on this shared Earth, we come to understand our unity and kinship with one another, emphasizing the importance of brotherhood amidst the vastness of existence.
Themes
EarthBrotherhoodUnityBeautyExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a commencement speech to highlight the importance of unity among graduates.
More from Archibald Macleish
All quotes →Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.
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How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms, by truth when it is attacked by lies, by faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, in the final act, by determination and faith.
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Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.
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The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.
Archibald MacleishRead
Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe, having the qualities of a globe, a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center - an equal earth which all men occupy as equals. The airman's earth, if free men make it, will be truly round: a globe in practice, not in theory.
Archibald MacleishRead
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