The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer, I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.

The earth does not argue, Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.