To be sought by scientists, though deep in the ground:
There’s a taproot, life-guzzling, with nine side-roots issuing
That feed that thirst and anchor it sound
In social reality. How roughly the boot
Must heel in the bush, to disintegrate the root!
How laterals dilate in waterlogged ground!
1. LIFE
(the zest for living develops into the primary root)
‘Is it true that grown-ups have a more difficult time here than we do? No. I know it isn’t. Older people have formed their opinions about everything, and don’t waver before they act. It’s twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground and maintain our opinions, in a time when all ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when people are showing their worst side, and do not know whether to believe in truth, right and God...It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.’
(from The Diary of Anne Frank, 15 July 1944)
‘Suicide Mother Kills Sons in Frenzied Attack.’
‘Uniform Approach to New Ulster Boycott
- David Sharrock on the Catholic parents, shunning a Protestant shop, possibly leaving pupils without clothes for school.’
(from headines in The Guardian, 29 August 1996)
The sap that rises in young hearts of oak
Oft smells of roses, so instinct with life
That it buds in the Fall.¹ Human spirit never spoke
From its centre more movingly than Anne Frank from the strife
Of uprootings, crude enough for the metaphor. Fully found