Quotes from book
Nets to Catch the Wind

Name: Nets to Catch the Wind
Author: Elinor Wylie

Elinor Wylie

Reproduction of the original: Nets to Catch the Wind by Elinor Wylie

“The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.”

Elinor Wylie book Nets to Catch the Wind

1
Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), Wild Peaches

“One man stands as free men stand
As if his soul might be
Brave, unbroken; see his hand
Nailed to an oaken tree.”

Elinor Wylie book Nets to Catch the Wind

Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), A Crowded Trolley Car

“I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.”

Elinor Wylie book Nets to Catch the Wind

4
Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), Wild Peaches

“When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore”

Elinor Wylie book Nets to Catch the Wind

1
Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), Wild Peaches
Context: When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

“A bell is clanging, people sway
Hanging by their hands.”

Elinor Wylie book Nets to Catch the Wind

Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), A Crowded Trolley Car
Context: The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray
Sharp as golden sands,
A bell is clanging, people sway
Hanging by their hands.

“Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There’s something in this richness that I hate.”

Elinor Wylie book Nets to Catch the Wind

4
Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), Wild Peaches
Context: Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There’s something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There’s something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

“Brothers, yet insensate brutes
Who fear each others’ eyes.”

Elinor Wylie book Nets to Catch the Wind

Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), A Crowded Trolley Car
Context: Orchard of the strangest fruits
Hanging from the skies;
Brothers, yet insensate brutes
Who fear each others’ eyes.