When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?

Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death, it is form, union, plan, it is eternal life, it is happiness.

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, / The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.

I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.