Dangerous, Great and Bearable

I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever. There they were, seemingly lifeless, made only of black and white, but out of them, out of their own being, came love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all other vague abstractions that make our ephemeral lives dangerous, great and bearable.

from On the Words in Poetry by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)