Quotes Tagged "poetry"

How blest am I in this discovering thee! To enter in these bonds is to be free; Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be

Early Morning in Your Room It's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep. The gray light as you pour gleaming water-- It seems you've traveled years to get here. Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery Had its way, poverty, no money at least. Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over. Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books: The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter to his Father, are all here. You can dance With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling With only one eye. Even the blind man Can see. That's what they say. If you had A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, Student of our sweet English tongue, Read out my words at night, alone: I was a poet, I was young. Since I can never see your face, And never shake you by the hand, I send my soul through time and space To greet you. You will understand.

Let your love flow where the beautiful things are and something beautiful will always come your way.

The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

I have no riches but my thoughts, Yet these are wealth enough for me

There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.

Let me remember you, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heartless.

what if I fall? oh, my darling, but if you fly?

Spend all you have for loveliness, Buy it and never count the cost; For one white singing hour of peace Count many a year of strife well lost, And for a breath of ecstasy Give all you have been, or could be.

What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, That my songs do not show me at all? For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire, I am an answer, they are only a call

By the craggy hill-side, Through the mosses bare, They have planted thorn-trees For pleasure here and there. If any man so daring As dig them up in spite, He shall find their sharpest thorns In his bed at night.

The business of love is cruelty which, by our wills, we transform to live together.

Some People Some people flee some other people. In some country under a sun and some clouds. They abandon something close to all they’ve got, sown fields, some chickens, dogs, mirrors in which fire now preens. Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles. The emptier they get, the heavier they grow. What happens quietly: someone’s dropping from exhaustion. What happens loudly: someone’s bread is ripped away, someone tries to shake a limp child back to life. Always another wrong road ahead of them, always another wrong bridge across an oddly reddish river. Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away, above them a plane seems to circle. Some invisibility would come in handy, some grayish stoniness, or, better yet, some nonexistence for a shorter or a longer while. Something else will happen, only where and what. Someone will come at them, only when and who, in how many shapes, with what intentions. If he has a choice, maybe he won’t be the enemy and will leave them to some sort of life.

Love is bitter, death is sweet.

Every particle of dust on a patch of earth Was a sun-cheek or brow of the morning star; Shake the dust off your sleeve carefully-- That too was a delicate, fair face.

Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other.

If I Must Go If I must go to heaven's end Climbing the ages like a stair, Be near me and forever bend With the same eyes above me there; Time will fly past us like leaves flying, We shall not heed, for we shall be Beyond living, beyond dying, Knowing and known unchangeably.

Here’s a hand to the boy who has courage To do what he knows to be right; When he falls in the way of temptation, He has a hard battle to fight. Who strives against self and his comrade Will find a most powerful foe. All honor to him if he conquers. A cheer for the boy who says, “No!” There’s many a battle fought daily The world knows nothing about; There’s many a brave little soldier Whose strength puts a legion to rout. And he who fights sin singlehanded Is more of a hero, I say, Than he who leads soldiers to battle And conquers by arms in the fray. Be steadfast, my boy, when you’re tempted, To do what you know to be right. Stand firm by the colors of manhood, And you will o’ercome in the fight. “The right,” be your battle cry ever In waging the warfare of life, And God, who knows who are the heroes, Will give you the strength for the strife.