On Poetry Quotes

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!True anyhow no matter how manyLiars use those words.

There's a certain slant of light, On winter afternoons, That oppresses, like the weightOf cathedral tunes.

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

Language is fossil poetry

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feetHas led me- who knows how?To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

Over the inter glaciers, I see the summer glow, And, through the wild-piled snowdrift, The warm rosebuds below.

A charm invests a faceImperfectly beheld, —The lady dare not lift her veilFor fear it be dispelled.But peers beyond her mesh, And wishes, and denies, —Lest interview annul a wantThat image satisfies.

the gods play nofavorites.

Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes, ” I say, “I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.“Enough to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And has the nature of infinity.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—As if my Brain had split—I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—But could not make it fit.

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition.

I would not come in.I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.

To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.

The lamb misused breeds public strifeAnd yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand,

some see things as they are: others as they are” (p.82) ~CXCI

Consciousness is the only home of which we know.

Lovers, forget your love, And list the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze.

sometimes all we need to be able to continue aloneare the deadrattling the wallsthat close us in.

there's no clarity.there was never meant to be clarity.

some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout.

The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in him.

So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world.And live your life.

Even though I seem not human, a mute shelfof glucose, bottled blood, machineryto swell the lung and pump the heart—even so, do not put out my life. Let me still glow.

If I could write the beauty of your eyesAnd in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say 'this poet lies! Such heaven never touched earthly faces

Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

I do think the barsThat kept my spirit in are burst - that IAm sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!How beautiful thou art!

Of course! the path to heavendoesn't lie down in flat miles.It's in the imaginationwith which you perceive this world, and the gestureswith which you honor it.-from The Swan

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.

Oh let me live my own! and die so too! ("To live and die is all I have to do:") Maintain a poet's dignity and ease, And see what friends, and read what books I please.

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

Sugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dying

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

He moves in darkness as it seems to meNot of woods only and the shade of trees.

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

regret is mostly caused by not havingdone anything.

There is no greater sorrowThan to recall a happy timeWhen miserable.

I know that some nightin some bedroomsoonmy fingers willriftthroughsoft cleanhairsongs such as no radioplaysall sadness, grinninginto flow.

and love is a word usedtoo much andmuchtoo soon.

Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul...

The sea is a desert of waves, A wilderness of water.

Not with a club, the Heart is brokenNor with a Stone –A Whip so small you could not see itI've known

Books! tis a dull and endless strife:Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it.

I didn't know who tobelievebutone thing I doknow: when a man islivingmany claim relationshipsthat are hardlysoand after he dies, well, then it's everybody'sparty.