Poetry is a mug's game.
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured...
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotio...
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
Not the intense moment
One starts an action simply because one must do something.
In my beginning is my end.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.
We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.
April is the crudest month breeding Lilacs out of the dead land mixing Memory and desire stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
This love is silent.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always asked to do things and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.
The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.
It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.
For love would be love of the wrong thing there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
To do the useful thing to say the courageous thing to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
The young feel tired at the end of an action The old at the beginning.
No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.