Happy is the man who can with vigorous wing Mount to those luminous serene fields! The man whose thoughts, like larks, Take liberated flight toward the morning skies --Who hovers over life and understands without effort The language of flowers and voiceless things!
Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul, that soft summer morning round a turning in the path, the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones, its legs in the air like a woman in need burning its wedding poisons like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs, I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound, but I touch my body in vain to find the wound. I am the vampire of my own heart, one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter who can no longer smile. Am I dead? I must be dead.
As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning, . . . [then] they fall down the curtains.
Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere to a higher plane, and purify yourself by drinking as if it were ambrosia the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness. Free from the futile strivings and the cares which dim existence to a realm of mist, happy is he who wings an upward way on mighty pinions to the fields of light; whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked, outreaches life and readily comprehends the language of flowers and of all mute things.