Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Alchemy is a kind of philosophy: a kind of thinking that leads to a way of understanding.
The essence of a man is found in his faults.
Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.
What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.
I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.
Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.
Cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.
A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.