What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then? – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
Jean Giraudoux

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir

At a Window
By Carl Sandburg
Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.
Richard Burton – The Greatest Poem In The English Language

We can in fact first place the beam of rays of moving positive atomic ions in a plane perpendicular to the axis in which we see the spectral lines emitted by them. – Johannes Stark

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind
by William Shakespeare
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship if feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As a friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship if feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Each Life Converges to some Centre
by Emily Dickinson
Expressed — or still —
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal —
Embodied scarcely to itself — it may be —
Too fair
For Credibility’s presumption
To mar —
Adored with caution — as a Brittle Heaven —
To reach
Were hopeless, as the Rainbow’s Raiment
To touch —
Yet persevered toward — sure — for the Distance —
How high —
Unto the Saint’s slow diligence —
The Sky —
Ungained — it may be — by a Life’s low Venture —
But then —
Eternity enable the endeavoring
Again.

Spring at dusk.
