The Last Harvest

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Houghton Mifflin, 1922 - 294 pages
 

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Page 129 - I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived 'from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, 'There goes a Sainte-Terrer,
Page 145 - I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor...
Page 69 - Mature the unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.
Page 256 - If you forgive me, I rejoice ; if you are angry, I can bear it : the die is cast, the book is written ; to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which : it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
Page 35 - Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more And mix the bowl again; Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain. Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race; The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones, and countless days, No ray is dimmed, no atom worn; My oldest force is good as new; And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew.
Page 194 - Daily it is forced home on the mind of the geologist, that nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the level of the crust of this earth.
Page 118 - When my hoe tinkled against the stones. that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans...
Page 97 - Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — "Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.
Page 149 - For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.

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