“Superstition saw
Something it had never seen before:
Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,
Beauty so sudden for that time of year.”
from "November Cotton Flower"
Poems from Cane (1923)
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Jean Toomer 4
American poet and novelist 1894–1967Related quotes
Call My Name
Song lyrics, Musicology (2004)
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1039/1039-h/1039-h.htm
Source: Nature and Selected Essays
“Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love”
“To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”
Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, c. 1573-76.
Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), p. 155.
Letter II : Heloise to Abelard
Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Context: A consolatory letter of yours to a friend happened some days since to fall into my hands. My knowledge of the character, and my love of the hand, soon gave me the curiosity to open it. In justification of the liberty I took, I flattered myself I might claim a sovereign privilege over every thing which came from you nor was I scrupulous to break thro' the rules of good breeding, when it was to hear news of Abelard. But how much did my curiosity cost me? what disturbance did it occasion? and how was I surprised to find the whole letter filled with a particular and melancholy account of our misfortunes? I met with my name a hundred times; I never saw it without fear: some heavy calamity always, followed it, I saw yours too, equally unhappy. These mournful but dear remembrances, puts my spirits into such a violent motion, that I thought it was too much to offer comfort to a friend for a few slight disgraces by such extraordinary means, as the representation of our sufferings and revolutions. What reflections did I not make, I began to consider the whole afresh, and perceived myself pressed with the same weight of grief as when we first began to be miserable. Tho' length of time ought to have closed up my wounds, yet the seeing them described by your hand was sufficient to make them all open and bleed afresh. Nothing can ever blot from my memory what you have suffered in defence of your writings.