My Friend, You Should Blow

When Shall We See Poets Born? After A Time Of Disasters And Great Misfortunes, When Harrowed Nations Begin To Breathe Again. And Then, Shaken By The Terror Of Such Spectacles, Imaginations Will Paint Things Entirely Strange To Those Who Have Not Witnessed Them.

It Is Not Human Nature We Should Accuse But The Despicable Conventions That Pervert It.

This Root [the Potato], No Matter How Much You Prepare It, Is Tasteless And Floury. It Cannot Pass For An Agreeable Food, But It Supplies A Food Sufficiently Abundant And Sufficiently Healthy For Men Who Ask Only To Sustain Themselves. The Potato Is Criticized With Reason For Being Windy, But What Matters Windiness For The Vigorous Organisms Of Peasants And Laborers?

How Old The World Is! I Walk Between Two Eternities.... What Is My Fleeting Existence In Comparison With That Decaying Rock, That Valley Digging Its Channel Ever Deeper, That Forest That Is Tottering And Those Great Masses Above My Head About To Fall? I See The Marble Of Tombs Crumbling Into Dust; And Yet I Don't Want To Die!

First Move Me, Astonish Me, Break My Heart, Let Me Tremble, Weep, Stare, Be Enraged-only Then Regale My Eyes.