poetry Quotes

“Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And too often is his gold complexion dimm’d: And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance or natures changing course untrimm’d; By thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring barque, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

“O serpent heart hid with a flowering face! Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest - A dammed saint, an honourable villain!”

“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

“The city had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country;”

“We love the things we love for what they are.”

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for.”

“Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?”

“My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.”

“So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”

“He says the best way out is always through. And I agree to that, or in so far As that I can see no way out but through— Leastways for me — and then they’ll be convinced.”

“My words itch at your ears till you understand them”

“Whose woods these are I think I know His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.”

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

“Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams, Now I wash the gum from your eyes, You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life”

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, and the stars.”

“The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.”

“Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak . . . ”

“Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.”

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”

“But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.”

“Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.”

“I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing.”

“Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.”

“I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.”

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

“Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”

“Next to nothing for weight, And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color.”

“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles”

“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”

“A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had! Worth three cents more to give away than sell, As may be shown by a simple calculation. Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter. I can’t help wishing I could send you one, In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.”

“It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf . . . ”

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”

“Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop, And who’s to say where The harvest shall stop?”

“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.”

“Resist much, obey little.”

“I have been one acquainted with the night.”

“Peace is always beautiful.”

“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.”

“I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”

“I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, It alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder.”

“Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

“Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?”

“When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.”

“I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

“How countlessly they congregate O’er our tumultuous snow, Which flows in shapes as tall as trees When wintry winds do blow!”

“Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night In any rough place where it caught.”

“This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say. I don’t plan it. When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.”

“You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

“Would you like them in a house? Would you like them with a mouse?”

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

“Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe, Sooner than I will live with you. Fish will come walking out of the sea, Sooner than you will come back to me.”

“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be.”

And medecine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for.

“There was a moment of silence, and Matilda, who had never before heard great romantic poetry spoken aloud, was profoundly moved. ‘It’s like music,’ she whispered.”

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

“We often sneaked out at night to, for example, sing ‘American Pie’ beneath the window of the captain of the cheerleading team. (Her father was a local minister and so, we reasoned, less likely to shoot). After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week.”

“He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.”

“Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can’t control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense.”

“Would you, could you, in the rain?”

“Could you, would you, with a goat? I would not, could not, with a goat!”

“So I will eat them in a box. And I will eat them with a fox. And I will eat them in a house. And I will eat them with a mouse. And I will eat them here and there. Say! I will eat them ANYWHERE!”

“And I will eat the in the rain. And in the dark. And on a train. And in car. And in tree. They are so good, so good, you see!”

“I do not like them in a house. I do not like them with a mouse.”

“You do not like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam-I-am.”

“A train! A train! A train! A train! Could you, would you, on a train?”

“And I would eat them in a boat, And I would eat them with a goat…”

But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

Gil-galad was an Elven-king. Of him the harpers sadly sing: The last whose realm was fair and free Between the Mountains and the Sea. His sword was long, his lance was keen, His shining helm afar was seen; The countless stars of heaven’s field Were mirrored in his silver shield. But long ago he rode away, And where he dwelleth none can say; For into darkness fell his star In Mordor where the shadows are.

“I asked Doc about German poets, and he replied that Goethe was the only one in his opinion who could be considered worthy, but he personally found him a terrible bore and that the Germans put all their poetry to music. He declared I should study the English for their poetry and the Germans for their music.”

“Rowing then becomes a kind of perfect language. Poetry, that’s what a good swing feels like.”

“Making a famine where abundance lies, Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.”

“Do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.”

“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

“Nothing I have written or done has made any difference in this world, and suddenly I know what it means to rage, and to crave. I read the whole poem and eat it up, drink it up.”

“There’s a reason they didn’t keep this poem. The poem tells you to fight.”

“I’ve never gotten a love letter before. But reading these notes like this, one after the other, it feels like I have. It’s like...it’s like there’s only ever been Peter. Like everyone else that came before him, they were all to prepare me for this.”

“If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say ‘This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.‘”

“Glorious, stirring sight! The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today—in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!”

“As in large troops And multitudinous, when winter reigns, The starlings on their wings are borne abroad; So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls. On this side and on that, above, below, It drives them: hope of rest to solace them Is none, nor e’en of milder pang.”

“Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises.”

“We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.”

“She wears strength and darkness equally well, the girl has always been half goddess, half hell.”

“Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running away from them.”

“Some people are born with tornadoes in their lives, but constellations in their eyes. Other people are born with stars at their feet, but their souls are lost at sea.”

“Some people are going to love you like you are a pond, and others are going to love you like you are a river, but you are an ocean, and you should never settle for anyone who loves you for anything less than that.”

“You are a dangerous collection of all my favorite things. An old soul, a heart of gold and hands that make my body sing.”

“You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?”

“Fall in love with someone who tastes like adventure but looks like the calm, beautiful morning after a terrible storm”

“Those freckles make you seem like a galaxy of stars, just waiting to be explored and loved.”

“It is eerily terrifying that there is no sound when a heart breaks. Car accidents end with a bang, falling ends with a thud, even writing makes the scratching sound of pencil against paper. But the sound of a heart breaking is completely silent.”

“You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”

“A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.”

“Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.”

“Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Poetry depends on intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. [...] Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry.”

“I am visible-see this Indian face-yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They’d like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven’t. We haven’t.”

″Doth any maiden seek the glorious fame Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy? Gaze in the eyes of that sweet enemy Whom all the world doth as my lady name! How honor grows, and pure devotion’s flame, How truth is joined with graceful dignity, There thou mayst learn, and what the path may be To that high heaven which doth her spirit claim; There learn that speech, beyond all poet’s skill, And sacred silence, and those holy ways Unutterable, untold by human heart. But the infinite beauty that all eyes doth fill, This none can learn! because its lovely rays Are given by God’s pure grace, and not by art.”

“O joyous, blossoming, ever-blessed flowers! ’Mid which my pensive queen her footstep sets; O plain, that hold’st her words for amulets And keep’st her footsteps in thy leafy bowers! O trees, with earliest green of springtime hours, And all spring’s pale and tender violets! O grove, so dark the proud sun only lets His blithe rays gild the outskirts of thy towers! O pleasant country-side! O limpid stream, That mirrorest her sweet face, her eyes so clear, And of their living light canst catch the beam! I envy thee her presence pure and dear. There is no rock so senseless but I deem It burns with passion that to mine is near.”

“I once beheld on earth celestial graces And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known, Whose memory yields nor joy nor grief alone, But all things else in cloud and dreams effaces. I saw how tears had left their weary traces Within those eyes that once the sun outshone, I heard those lips, in low and plaintive moan, Breathe words to stir the mountains from their places. Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth Made in their mourning strains more high and dear Than ever wove soft sounds for mortal ear; And heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth The very leaves upon the bough to soothe, Such sweetness filled the blissful atmosphere.”

“When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline, And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh With his own touch, and leads a minstrelsy Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,— He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine, And to my thoughts brings transformation high, So that I say, ‘My time has come to die, If fate so blest a death for me design.’ But to my soul, thus steeped in joy, the sound Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven, It holds my spirit back to earth as well. And thus I live: and thus is loosed and wound The thread of life which unto me was given By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.”

“Sweet air, that circlest round those radiant tresses, And floatest, mingled with them, fold on fold, Deliciously, and scatterest that fine gold, Then twinest it again, my heart’s dear jesses; Thou lingerest on those eyes, whose beauty presses Stings in my heart that all its life exhaust, Till I go wandering round my treasure lost, Like some scared creature whom the night distresses. I seem to find her now, and now perceive How far away she is; now rise, now fall; Now what I wish, now what is true, believe. O happy air! since joys enrich thee all, Rest thee; and thou, O stream too bright to grieve! Why can I not float with thee at thy call?”

“Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me”

“i’m only human, & inadequacy is what makes us human, & if we was perfect we wdnt have nothin to strive for, so you might as well go on & forgive me pretty baby, cause i’m sorry”

“one thing I don’t need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i don’t know what to do wit em they don’t open doors or bring the sun back they don’t make me happy or get a mornin paper didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars cuz a sorry.”

“i usedta live in the world really be in the world free & sweet talkin good mornin & thank-you & nice day uh huh i cant now i cant be nice to nobody nice is such a rip-off regular beauty & a smile in the street is just a set-up”

“i loved you on purpose i was open on purpose i still crave vulnerability & close talk & i’m not even sorry bout you bein sorry you can carry all the guilt & grime ya wanna just dont give it to me i cant use another sorry next time you should admit you’re mean/ low-down/ triflin/ & no count straight out steada bein sorry alla the time enjoy bein yrself”

“i done forgot all abt words aint got no definitions”

“Ever since I realized there waz someone callt/ a colored girl an evil woman a bitch or a nag/ i been tryin not to be that & leave bitterness/ in somebody else’s cup...”

“somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street but somenody almost walked off wid alla my stuff like a kleptomaniac workin hard and forgettin while stealin this is mine this aint yr stuff now why dont you put me back and let me hang out in my own self...”

“its been so many years and there he was at the concert and he looked the same way he’s always looked and then he looked at me the same way he’s always looked and then his arm was around me and we walked the same way we’s always walked and i fell into his arms and we fell into the bed.”

“but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/ my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face my love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face my love is too magic to have thrown back on my face my love is too saturday nite to have thrown back on my face my love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face my love is too music to have thrown back on my face”

″...don’t tell nobody don’t tell a soul are we animals? have we gone crazy? i can’t hear anythin but maddening screams and the soft strains of death and promised me you promised me... somebody/anybody sing a black girl’s song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she’s been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn’t know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she’s half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the songs of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born and handled warmly.”

“without any assistance or guidance from you i have loved you assiduously for 8 months 2 wks & a day i have been stood up four times i’ve left 7 packages on yr doorstep forty poems 2 plants & 3 handmade notecards i left town so i cd send to you have been no help to me on my job you call at 3:00 in the mornin on weekdays so i cd drive 27 1/2 miles cross the bay before i go to work charmin charmin but you are of no assistance i want you to know this waz an experiment to see how selifsh i cd be if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another if i cd stand not being wanted when i wanted to be wanted & i cannot so with no further assistance & no guidance from you i am endin this affair this note is attached to a plant i’ve been waterin since the day i met you you may water it yr damn self”

“The stage is in darkness. Harsh music is heard as dim blue lights come up. One after another, seven women run onto the stage from each of the exits. They all freeze in postures of distress. The follow spot picks up the lady in brown. She comes to life and looks around at the other ladies. All of the others are still. She walks over to the lady in red and calls to her. They lady in red makes no response.”

“i am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt me more than i ever danced outta/ i am ready to die like a lily in the desert/ & i cdnt let you in on it cuz i didnt know/ here is what i have/ poems/ big thighs/ lil tits/ & so much love/ will you take it from me this one time/ please this is for you”

“Dark phrases of womanhood of never havin been a girl half-notes scattered without rhythm/no tune distraught laughter fallin over a black girl’s shoulder it’s funny/it’s hysterical the melody-lesslness of her dance don’t tell nobody don’t tell a soul she’s a dancin on beer cans and shingles this must be the spook house another song with no singers lyrics/ no voices and interrupted solos unseen performances are we ghouls? children of horror? the joke?...”

“its not that i dont love him not that i never love him its just been so many years.”

″...somebody almost walke off wid alla my stuff and didnt care enuf to send a not home sayin i waz late fo my solo conversation or two sizes too small for my own tacky skirts what can anybody do wit somethin of no value on a open market did you getta dime for my things hey man where are you goin wid alla my stuff this is a woman’s trip and i need my stuff to ohh and ahh abt daddy i gotta mainline nmber from my own shit now wontchu put me back and let me play this duet wit this silver ring in my nose...”

“When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower”

“Writing poetry is effortless”

“As a world that has no well, Darkly bright in forest dell; As a world without the gleam Of the downward-going stream; As a world without the glance Of the ocean’s fair expanse; As a world where never rain Glittered on the sunny plain; —Such, my heart, thy world would be, If no love did flow in thee.”

“I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random.”

“you wouldn’t let me love both of us at the same time”

“He sketches you as the antagonist and suddenly his transgressions become deleted scenes. He blames you for his sadness. And this is how the wolf cries boy.”

“When you choose to be a poet, you become a place that people walk through and then leave when they are ready”

“Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.”

“Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry.”

“I am a lover of love and I am a lover of words, and the two together spin visions of airy castles, but also may pierce the heart of hope. And so I remind you that I am a fool, a poet, and what matters is reality, not lovely words. Words are full of promise, yet empty of matter.”

“The word ‘mundane’ has come to mean ‘boring’ and ‘dull’, and it really shouldn’t - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning ‘the world’. And the world is anything but dull: The world is wonderful. There’s real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.”

“I will follow you, my love, to the edge of all our days, to our very last tomorrows.”

“She was everything real in a world of make-believe. ”

“We are all born free and spend a lifetime becoming slaves to our own false truths.”

“That was her magic— she could still see the sunset even on those darkest days.”

“What good are wings without the courage to fly?”

“Love her but leave her wild ”

“I worry there is something broken in our generation, there are too many sad eyes on happy faces.”

“You should be only a little wise, never too wise. A wise man’s heart is seldom glad if he’s truly wise.”

“I remember the giants born so long ago; in those ancient days they raised me. I remember nine worlds, nine giantesses, and the seed from which Yggdrasil sprang.”

“Even cows know when they should go home and leave behind the fields, but an unwise man does not know the measure of his own appetite.”

“Thought and Memory, my ravens, fly every day the whole world over. Each day I fear that Thought might not return, but I fear more for Memory.”

“It was at the very beginning, it was Ymir’s time, there was no sand, no sea, no cooling waves, no earth, no sky, no grass, just Ginnungagap.”

“He needs a fire, the one who has just come in, his knees are shivering. Food and dry clothes will do him well, after his journey over the mountains.”

“Every man will manage his own wealth till his fated death-day, but there is a time when each one of us leaves here for Hel.”

“At every doorway before you enter, you should look around, you should take a good look around--for you never know where your enemies might be seated within.”

“Heed my words, all classes of men, you greater and lesser children of Heimdall. You summoned me, Odin, to tell what I recall of the oldest deeds of gods and men.”

“He needs water, the one who has just arrived, dry clothes, and a warm welcome from a friendly host--and if he can get it, a chance to listen and be listened to.”

A neat little book with poetry in it reminding us how much kids can hate school, somedays I can relate. The fun part is the rhyming and showing kids no matter what you are talking about, we can put in into a poem.

“It’s good for tongues and necks and knees of people, bees and chimpanzees.”

“I spied my shadow slinking up behind me in the night, I issued it a challenge, and we started in to fight.”

“I wrestled with that shadow, but it wasn’t any fun, I tried my very hardest— all the same, my shadow won.”

“Yubbazubbies, you are yummy, you are succulent and sweet, you are splendidly delicious, quite delectable to eat...”

“Clothes for every dinosaur. No matter shape or size. We have a wide selection. You won’t believe your eyes. Shirts with room for spikes. Pants with holes for tales. Brontosaurus turtlenecks. They’re all on sale!

“Wasps like coffee, Syrup, tea, coca-cola, butter, me. I am very fond of bugs, I kiss the, and I give them hugs.”

“When I grow up, I plan to keep eleven cats, and let them sleep on any bedspread that they wish, and feed them people’s tuna fish.”

“Hamsters are the nicest things that anyone could own. I like them even better than some dogs that I have known. Their fur is soft, their faces nice. They’re small when they are grown. And they sit inside your pocket when you are all alone.”

“Kitten, my kitten, soft and dear, I am so glad that we are here sitting together Just us two you loving me and me loving you.”

“We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passion of the world bound in leather and vellum.”

“I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn’t that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.”

“So many of the poems tonight felt a little like our own stories. Like we saw and were seen. And how crazy would it be if I did that for someone else?”

“Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.”

“In the bookcases of their apartment were four volumes of poetry which had written by Myron Krupnik. But the fourth book was her favorite. Her father’s photograph showed him bald and bearded, the way she had always know him. The poems were soft sounding and quiet, when he read them to her. The book was called Bittersweet; and it said, inside, ‘To someone special: Anastasia’.”

“I oppose to what is passing this ramrod of beaten steel. I will not submit to this aimless passing of billycock hats and Homburg hats and all the plumed and variegated head-dresses of women . . . and the words that trail drearily without human meaning; I will reduce you to order.”

Poetry and prayer are synonymous in my life, and because both are a gift, which I accept with joy and sometimes pain, I seldom know whether I have served the gift well or ill. But perhaps that doesn’t really matter; the important thing is to be willing - to want to serve the gift whenever it comes, either as verse or prayer...

“Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”

“The poets brace themselves for imminent, overeducated poverty.”

Shane is a runaway. A homeless boy living on the streets. One night he finds a kitten and is determined to make it his own and take it home. But will he and Cat be able to make their way safely through the night?

“Things that go ‘Bump’ in the night, Really shouldn’t give one a fright. It’s the holes in the ears that let in the fear, that and the absence of light.”

“The trouble is I don’t know where I’d like to be more. I mean - I like the films - but that’s miles away. I’d be so annoyed when I got there I wouldn’t like it all. And I’d get even more angry coming back so I’d hate it even more here - when I did get back.”

“The Oglers have blossomed like roses in May.”

...“the air they breathe is potassium-free...”

He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet’s soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen.

“And that’s the whole poem,” he said. “Do you like it, Piglet?” “All except the shillings,” said Piglet. “I don’t think they ought to be there.” “They wanted to come in after the pounds,” explained Pooh, “so I let them. It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come.”

“All the Poetry in the Forest has been written by Pooh, a Bear with a Pleasing Manner but a Positively Startling Lack of Brain.

“Did I really do all that?” he said at last. “Well,” said Pooh, “in poetry—in a piece of poetry—well, you did it, Piglet, because the poetry says you did. And that’s how people know.”

“They made us learn the whole catechism. I liked it pretty well. There’s something splendid about some of the words. ‘Infinite, eternal and unchangeable.’ Isn’t that grand? It has such a roll to it—just like a big organ playing. You couldn’t quite call it poetry, I suppose, but it sounds a lot like it, doesn’t it?”

This isn’t poetry, but it makes me feel just the same way poetry does. ‘Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name.’ That is just like a line of music.

The year is gone, we still unite To joke and laugh and read, And tread the path of literature That doth to glory lead.

She knew that in politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency.

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays?