Aún no habías nacido cuando los árboles eran cristal ni has nacido ahora, en esta vigilia dentro de un sueño. - Wallace Stevens

His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick, Inevitably modulating, in the blood. And war for war, each has its gallant kind. <p>How simply the fictive hero becomes the real; How gladly with proper words the solider dies, If he must, or lives on the bread of faithful speech.

"I

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the selfsame sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna:

Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

from "Peter Quince at the Clavier

In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American — on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.