“Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.”

— William Carlos Williams , book Spring and All

"Spring and All"
Spring and All (1923)
Context: Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches —
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
The cold, familiar wind — Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined —
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of
entrance — Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken." by William Carlos Williams?

William Carlos Williams 83

American poet 1883–1963

Related quotes

“I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The Universal Message (1958)
Context: I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts.
Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and precepts, but mankind has ignored them. Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion He taught, man has waged crusades in His name. Instead of living the humility, purity and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed and violence.
Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form I observe Silence. You have asked for and been given enough words — it is now time to live them.

“Those who still believe the Brahmins should take a serious not of the changing times and start leading an awakened life.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, pp. 518 & 519.
Brahminism

“Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. I : The Craft
Context: I had a vision of the face of destiny.
Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.
The squall has ceased to be a cause of my complaint. The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars.