Poetry Train

“Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for and you will succeed.”
― Sydney Smith

“Take up the White Man’s burden,
And teach the Philippines
What interest and taxes are
And what a mortgage means.
Give them electrocution chairs,
And prisons, too, galore,
And if they seem inclined to kick,
Then spill their heathen gore.
They need our labor question, too,
And politics and fraud—
We’ve made a pretty mess at home,
Let’s make a mess abroad.”
― Ernest Crosby

“Maremna’s high resolve is ta'en-
Faithful till Death to be, unto her vow.”
― Florence Caroline Dixie, Gloriana: or The Revolution of 1900

“History is the poisoned well, seeping into the ground-water. It’s not the unknown past we’re doomed to repeat, but the past we know. Every recorded event is a brick of potential, of precedent, thrown into the future. Eventually the idea will hit someone in the back of the head. This is the duplicity of history: an idea recorded will become an idea resurrected. Out of fertile ground, the compost of history.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces