Failure Is In A Sense The Highway

Who, Of Men, Can Tell That Flowers Would Bloom, Or That Green Fruit Would Swell To Melting Pulp, That Fish Would Have Bright Mail, The Earth Its Dower Of River, Wood, And Vale, The Meadows Runnels, Runnels Pebble-stones, The Seed Its Harvest, Or The Lute Its Tones, Tones Ravishment, Or Ravishment Its Sweet, If Human Souls Did Never Kiss And Greet?

Give Me Books, French Wine, Fruit, Fine Weather And A Little Music Played Out Of Doors By Somebody I Do Not Know.

Even Bees, The Little Almsmen Of Spring Bowers, Know There Is Richest Juice In Poison-flowers.

Fanatics Have Their Dreams, Wherewith They Weave A Paradise For A Sect.

Much Have I Traveled In The Realms Of Gold, And Many Goodly States And Kingdoms Seen; Round Many Western Islands Have I Been Which Bards In Fealty To Apollo Hold. Oft Of One Wide Expanse Had I Been Told That Deep-brow'd Homer Ruled As His Demesne, Yet Did I Never Breathe Its Pure Serene Till I Heard Chapman Speak Out Loud And Bold: Then Felt I Like Some Watcher Of The Skies When A New Planet Swims Into His Ken; Or Like Stout Cortez When With Eagle Eyes He Stared At The Pacific, And All His Men Look'd At Each Other With A Wild Surmise, Silent, Upon A Peak In Darien.