Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: God was not to him the impassive Creator, a Nero from his tower of brass watching the burning of the City to which he himself has set fire. God was fighting. God was suffering. Fighting and suffering with all who fight and for all who suffer. For God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease: and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole! Just as the beech-forest in silence furiously wages war, so Life carries war into the eternal peace.
The wars and the peace rang echoing through Christophe. He was like a shell wherein the ocean roars. Epic shouts passed, and trumpet calls, and tempestuous sounds borne upon sovereign rhythms. For in that sonorous soul everything took shape in sound. It sang of light. It sang of darkness, sang of life and death. It sang for those who were victorious in battle. It sang for himself who was conquered and laid low. It sang. All was song. It was nothing but song.
“The wind sharpened itself on a rock;
A voice sang:
:Pleasure on ground
:Has no sound,
:Easily maddens
:The uneasy man.
:* "The Shape of the Fire," ll. 40 - 45”
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Theodore Roethke 86
American poet 1908–1963Related quotes
Columbine; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 124.
“A knife is sharpened on stone, steel is tempered by fire, but men must be sharpened by men.”
Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 57
This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.
"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 278
Report to Greco (1965)
“Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.”
"Willow" (1940)
Context: Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity
“Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground—So is the race of man.”
Leaves, also, are thy children; and leaves, too, are they who cry out so if they are worthy of credit, or bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer; and leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man's fame to after-times. For all such things as these "are produced in the season of spring," as the poet says; then the wind casts them down; then the forest produces other leaves in their places. But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet thou avoidest and pursuest all things as if they would be eternal.
X, 34
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
"To a Little Girl, One Year Old, in a Ruined Fortress" (1956)
p. 57: Ch. 3 http://books.google.com/books?lr=&id=edhCAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+three+great+elemental+sounds+in+nature+are+the+sound+of+rain+the+sound+of+wind+in+a+primeval+wood+and+the+sound+of+outer+ocean+on+a+beach%22&pg=PA57#v=onepage
The Outermost House, 1928