Affection is an overpowering craving to be compellingly sought.
I write to find out what I didn’t know I knew.
Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went- Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars: I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn’t been.
Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.
If the writer does not cry, the reader does not cry.
You’ve often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.
The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.
I still say the only education worth anything is self-education.
Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn’t so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.
It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling.
The snake stood up for evil in the Garden.
There is little much beyond the grave, but the strong are saying nothing until they see.
Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
I hate the idea that you ought to read the whole of anybody.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth.
I am assured at any rate Man’s practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There’s always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at.
A true sonnet goes eight lines and then takes a turn for better or worse and goes six or eight lines more.
Never discuss the poem you contemplate writing. It’s like turning on the outside spigot. It takes all the pressure off the upstairs bathroom.