To me the sea is a continual miracle, The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?
Sparkles from the Wheel
Where the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day, Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them.
By the curb toward the edge of the flagging, A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife, Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee, With measur’d tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but firm hand, Forth issue then in copious golden jets, Sparkles from the wheel.
The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me, The sad sharp-chinn’d old man with worn clothes and broad shoulder-band of leather, Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here absorb’d and arrested, The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,) The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets, The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press’d blade, Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold, Sparkles from the wheel.
To a Pupil
Is reform needed? is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you need to accomplish it.
You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul that when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impress’d with your Personality?