To Hell With Being Ashamed Of What

America Is Woven Of Many Strands. I Would Recognise Them And Let It So Remain. Our Fate Is To Become One, And Yet Many. This Is Not Prophecy, But Description.

At Best Americans Give But A Limited Attention To History. Too Much Happens Too Rapidly, And Before We Can Evaluate It, Or Exhaust Its Meaning Or Pleasure, There Is Something New To Concern Us. Ours Is The Tempo Of The Motion Picture, Not That Of The Still Camera, And We Waste Experience As We Wasted The Forest.

I Suddenly Recall The Arpeggios Of Laughter Lilting Across The Tender, Springtime Grass-gay-welling, Far-floating, Fluent, Spontaneous, A Bell-like Feminine Fluting, Then Suppressed; As Though Snuffed Swiftly And Irrevocably Beneath The Quiet Solemnity Of The Vespered Air Now Vibrant With Somber Chapel Bells.

We Look Too Much To Museums. The Sun Coming Up In The Morning Is Enough.

The Antidote To Hubris, To Overweening Pride, Is Irony, That Capacity To Discover And Systematize Ideas.