Poets from New Hampshire

"It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has. Some cognizance of the fact must be taken in your teaching."

"Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense."

"A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words."

"My Sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane."

"Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She's glad the birds are gone away, She's glad her simple worsted gray Is silver now with clinging mist."

"The desolate, deserted trees, The faded earth, the heavy sky, The beauties she so truly sees, She thinks I have no eye for these, And vexes me for reason why."

"Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days Before the coming of the snow, But it were vain to tell her so, And they are better for her praise."

"I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true."

"The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows."

"There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground."

"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?"

"Men work together," I told him from the heart, "Whether they work together or apart."

"Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."

"My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours.""

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down."

"He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”"

"He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it To raise herself and look again. He spoke Advancing toward her: "What is it you see From up there always?—for I want to know.""

"She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see. But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh.""

"The little graveyard where my people are! So small the window frames the whole of it."

"He said twice over before he knew himself: "Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?" 'Not you!'—'Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it! I must get out of here. I must get air.'— I don't know rightly whether any man can.'"

"'My words are nearly always an offense. I don't know how to speak of anything So as to please you. But I might be taught, I should suppose. I can't say I see how.'"

"A man must partly give up being a man With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off Anything special you're a-mind to name. Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love. Two that don't love can't live together without them. But two that do can't live together with them." She moved the latch a little. "Don't — don't go. Don't carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it's something human. Let me into your grief. I'm not so much Unlike other folks as your standing there Apart would make me out. Give me my chance."

"'I can repeat the very words you were saying: "Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man can build." Think of it, talk like that at such a time! What had how long it takes a birch to rot To do with what was in the darkened parlor? You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all."

"I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long. — You come too."

"And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope."

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in."

"The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone. 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."

"Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor."

"I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets. It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though: Pressed into service means pressed out of shape."

"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still. And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now."

"Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep."

"By good rights I ought not to have so much Put on me, but there seems no other way. Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. 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."

"I always have felt strange when we came home To the dark house after so long an absence, And the key rattled loudly into place Seemed to warn someone to be getting out At one door as we entered at another."

"To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay."

"I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

"The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it."

""Don't let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. But the hand was gone already."

"Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none."

"But he sent her Good-by, And said to be good, And wear her red hood, And look for skunk tracks In the snow with an ax — And do everything!"

"Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools."

"There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing."

"The Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow."

"We love the things we love for what they are."

"“My dear, It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe, For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings—there are no such things. There are only middles."

"I’d like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better."

"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."

"I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone."

"All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms."

"I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism. Whittier, when he shows any style at all is probably a greater person than Longfellow as he is lifted priestlike above consideration of the scornful. Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt, above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever. At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions: to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to this side of the standing argument. Humor is the most engaging cowardice."

"It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it."

"Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. A least lyric alone may have a hard time, but it can make a beginning, and lyric will be piled on lyric till all are easily heard as sung or spoken by a person in a scene — in character, in a setting. By whom, where and when is the question."

"A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic."

"If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving."

"We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between the night tonight And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? How different from the way it ever stood?"

"Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of."

"The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil."

"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."

"The snake stood up for evil in the Garden."

"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."

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice."

"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."

"And then we saw him bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray, Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes."

"Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air"

"Now no joy but lacks salt, That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove."

"How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below. I have to be gone for a season or so."

"The birds that came to it through the air At broken windows flew out and in, Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh From too much dwelling on what has been."

"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."

"My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year."

"He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake."

"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."

"Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven, godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths – and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something."

"Let me be the one To do what is done."

"I turned to speak to God About the world's despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there. God turned to speak to me (Don't anybody laugh) God found I wasn't there At least not over half."

"And be all plunderers curst. 'The best way to hate is the worst. 'Tis to find what the hated need, Never mind of what actual worth, And wipe that out of the earth. Let them die of unsatisfied greed, Of unsatisfied love of display, Of unsatisfied love of the high, Unvulgar, unsoiled, and ideal. Let their trappings be taken away. Let them suffer starvation and die Of being brought down to the real."

"Dust always blowing about the town, Except when sea-fog laid it down, And I was one of the children told Some of the blowing dust was gold."

"All the dust the wind blew high Appeared like god in the sunset sky, But I was one of the children told Some of the dust was really gold."

"Such was life in the Golden Gate: Gold dusted all we drank and ate, And I was one of the children told, 'We all must eat our peck of gold.'"

"You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent; It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken."

"Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me."

"That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather."

"One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night."

"If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I'm not the one for putting off the proof. Let it be overwhelming, off a roof And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust, And blind me to a standstill if it must."

"It must be the brook Can trust itself to go by contraries The way I can with you — and you with me — Because we're — we're — I don't know What we are."

"Our life runs down in sending up the clock. The brook runs down in sending up our life. The sun runs down in sending up the brook. And there is something sending up the sun."

"The world has room to make a bear feel free; The universe seems cramped to you and me."

"Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct."

"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

"Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more."

"When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don't feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing. ... You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism — for the New Republic."

"You see the beauty of my proposal is It needn’t wait on general revolution. I bid you to a one-man revolution— The only revolution that is coming."

"Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family — But not much in between, unless a college."

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You´re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you´re two months back in the middle of March."

"But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For heaven and the future´s sakes."

"The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be — The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea."

"Never ask of money spent Where the spender thinks it went. Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did with every cent."

"Wind goes from farm to farm in wave on wave, But carries no cry of what is hoped to be. There may be little or much beyond the grave, But the strong are saying nothing until they see."

"Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away From one another once you are agreed That life is only life forevermore Together wing to wing and oar to oar."

"No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard. Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide!"

"The old dog barks backward without getting up; I can remember when he was a pup."

"Who said it mattered What monkeys did or didn't understand? They might not understand the burning-glass. They might not understand the sun itself. It's knowing what to do with things that counts."

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars — on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places."

"I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old."

"It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song."

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick. Modern instruments of precision are being used to make things crooked as if by eye and hand in the old days."

"Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went."

"Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields."

"O Star (the fairest one in sight) We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud — It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light. Some mystery becomes the proud. But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed. Say something to us that we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. Say something! And it says "I burn.""

"It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height. So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may take something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid."

"We disparage reason. But all the time it's what we're most concerned with. There's will as motor and there's will as brakes. Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear."

"Deliver us from committees."

"The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them."

"Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul."

"The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people."

"Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become."

"'Twas Age imposed on poems Their gather-roses burden To warn against the danger That overtaken lovers From being overflooded With happiness should have it And yet not know they have it."

"She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease."

"But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To every thing on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware."

"Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length"

"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."

"She drew back; he was calm "It is this that had the power," And he lashed his open palm With the tender-headed flower."

"He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words."

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."

"If this uncertain age in which we dwell Were really as dark as I hear sages tell, And I convinced that they were really sages, I should not curse myself with it to hell"

"They've tried to grasp with too much social fact Too large a situation. You and I Would be afraid if we should comprehend And get outside of too much bad statistics, Our muscles never could again contract: We never could recover human shape, But must live lives out mentally agape Or die of philosophical distention. That's how we feel — and we're no special mystics."

"We can't appraise the time in which we act. But for the folly of it, let's pretend We know enough to know it for adverse."

"I may have wept that any should have died Or missed their chance, or not have been their best, Or been their riches, fame, or love denied; On me as much as any is the jest. I take my incompleteness with the rest. God bless himself can no one else be blessed. I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori. And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

"Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on."

"Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take — and took."

"I stopped my song and almost heart, For any eye is an evil eye That looks in onto a mood apart."

"All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief."

"Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry – Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there's a story in a book about it."

"As for the woods' excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees."

"The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you're lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up to all but me."

"First there's the children's house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad."

"This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny's A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)"

"I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it, So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't. (I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."

"You are all probably taking literature classes in which the professors teach how to get behind authors' words to determine their deeper meanings. In my case, they teach that the crow shaking snow from a hemlock tree means that evil, black, stands in contrast to the pure white good of the snow around it, like in life. They are wrong. I saw the crow, and the tree, and the snow. It was beautiful. I stopped to enjoy it. Period."

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."

"A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair."

"People are inexterminable — like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices — that's us."

"How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint."

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on."

"The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended."

"Asked...whether he would define poetry as "escape" he answered hardily: "No. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.""

"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."

"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."

"Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with."

"The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise."

"You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular.... The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat."

"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."

"Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something artists ought to celebrate."

"Today is for my cause a day of days. And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise Who was the first to think of such a thing. This verse that in acknowledgement I bring Goes back to the beginning of the end Of what had been for centuries the trend; A turning point in modern history."

"Colonial had been the thing to be As long as the great issue was to see What country'd be the one to dominate By character, by tongue, by native trait, The new world Christopher Columbus found. The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed And counted out. Heroic deeds were done. Elizabeth the First and England won. Now came on a new order of the ages That in the Latin of our founding sages (Is it not written on the dollar bill We carry in our purse and pocket still?)"

"So much those heroes knew and understood, I mean the great four, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison So much they saw as consecrated seers They must have seen ahead what not appears, They would bring empires down about our ears And by the example of our Declaration Make everybody want to be a nation."

"And this is no aristocratic joke At the expense of negligible folk. We see how seriously the races swarm In their attempts at sovereignty and form. They are our wards we think to some extent For the time being and with their consent, To teach them how Democracy is meant."

""New order of the ages" did they say? If it looks none too orderly today, 'Tis a confusion it was ours to start So in it have to take courageous part. No one of honest feeling would approve A ruler who pretended not to love A turbulence he had the better of."

"Everyone knows the glory of the twain Who gave America the aeroplane To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane. Some poor fool has been saying in his heart Glory is out of date in life and art. Our venture in revolution and outlawry Has justified itself in freedom's story Right down to now in glory upon glory."

"Come fresh from an election like the last, The greatest vote a people ever cast, So close yet sure to be abided by, It is no miracle our mood is high."

"Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs."

"There was the book of profile tales declaring For the emboldened politicians daring To break with followers when in the wrong, A healthy independence of the throng, A democratic form of right divine To rule first answerable to high design. There is a call to life a little sterner, And braver for the earner, learner, yearner. Less criticism of the field and court And more preoccupation with the sport."

"It makes the prophet in us all presage The glory of a next Augustan age Of a power leading from its strength and pride, Of young ambition eager to be tried, Firm in our free beliefs without dismay, In any game the nations want to play. A golden age of poetry and power Of which this noonday's the beginning hour."

"Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me."

"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."

"It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling."

"Till we came to be There was not a trace Of a thinking race Anywhere in space."

"Unless I'm wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I'm—bound—away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died."

"It is the future that creates his present. All is an interminable chain of longing."

"“Well, who begun it?” That's what at the end of a war We always say not who won it, Or what it was foughten for."

"Every artist must have two fears -- the fear of God and the fear of man -- fear of God that his creation will ultimately be found unworthy and the fear of man that he will be misunderstood by his fellows."

"If poetry isn't understanding all, the whole word, then it isn't worth anything. Young poets forget that poetry must include the mind as well as the emotions. Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in."

"It is hard to believe that he chops nearly as much wood as he pretends to, or that cows, hens, and barnyards are his chief loves. He has been known to enjoy the tea life of social England and is at present a professor of poetry in a college."

"This day devoted to the memory of Robert Frost offers an opportunity for reflection which is prized by politicians as well as by others, and even by poets, for Robert Frost was one of the granite figures of our time in America. He was supremely two things: an artist and an American. A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers. In America, our heroes have customarily run to men of large accomplishments. But today this college and country honors a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit, not to our political beliefs but to our insight, not to our self-esteem, but to our self-comprehension. In honoring Robert Frost, we therefore can pay honor to the deepest sources of our national strength. That strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us."

"Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been" he wrote, "one acquainted with the night." And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom, he held a deep faith in the spirit of man, and it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment."

"Robert Frost was often skeptical about projects for human improvement, yet I do not think he would disdain this hope. As he wrote during the uncertain days of the Second War: Take human nature altogether since time began ... And it must be a little more in favor of man, Say a fraction of one percent at the very least ... Our hold on this planet wouldn't have so increased. Because of Mr. Frost's life and work, because of the life and work of this college, our hold on this planet has increased."

"Translators, again-the most abused and patient lot of folk on earth-are helpful in making us better acquainted; though we hope the time will soon come when citizens of the twenty-one republics will no longer need translators. There is no reason for our not speaking each other's language...Ernesto Montenegro, on the other hand, has introduced Sandburg, Frost, Robinson, Masters, and many other North American poets to the Spanish reading public."

"Muna Lee "Cultural Interchanges between the Americas" (1929) in A Pan-American Life: Selected Poetry and Prose of Muna Lee, edited and with biography by Jonathan Cohen (2004)"

"What I'm trying to do is something defined by Robert Frost: when he said "a poem is a momentary stay against confusion." When you write a poem you have a moment in which all confusion ceases and you understand one thing perfectly."

""But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep." Taken from a popular poem by Robert Frost, these two lines could serve as an anthem for Mexican women in the Southwest, women who, as a social and economic group, still find themselves at or near the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder."

"The poet stands in relation to Nature; this does not mean landscape, as Robert Frost points out, but "the whole Goddamn machinery.""

"A poet knows war without objective war in the world; it was conflict at the root of his mind that impelled him to the masking of these conflicts in the apparent resolution and order of works of art.In a dialectical sense, all poetry is war."

"The war may present or force a subject; it may bring out a poet, or shock him onto a sensibility of silence. It may kill him. Or germinate the best war poems for exfoliation years after the event."

"I felt the ruthfulness and senselessness of war so acutlely that I wrote the first three stanzas of which, are in effect a prayer."

"Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?"

"Poems in a way are spells against death. They are milestones, to see where you were then from where you are now. To perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive."

"Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country. It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world."

"In her eyes a thought Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn— A mystical forewarning!"

"What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round."

"The ability to secure your own way and yet impress others with the idea that they are having their own way is rare among men; in women it is as common as eyebrows."

"We weep when we are born, not when we die!"

"My dear Mr. Morse: It was very pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty. One can say to one's self every morning: "There's that letter of Morse's. I haven't read it yet. I think I'll take another shy at it to-day, and maybe I shall be able in the course of a few years to make out what he means by those t's that look like w's and those i's that haven't any eyebrows." Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever—unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime."

"That was indeed to live— At one bold swoop to wrest From darkling death the best That Death to Life can give!"

"My father invested his money so securely in the banking business that he was never able to get any of it out again."

"We visit […] a neighboring graveyard. I am by this time in a condition of mind to become a willing inmate of the place."

"It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight."

"There's a special Providence that watches over idiots, drunken men, and boys."

"Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space— In Twilight-land—in No-man’s land— Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand. “And who are you?” cried one, a-gape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. “I know not,” said the second Shape, “I only died last night!”"

"Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise And shows you laughing lips and rougish eyes. But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, 'Tis ten to one you find the girl in tears."

"Or light or dark, or short or tall, She sets a springe to snare them all: All's one to her—above her fan She'd make sweet eyes at Caliban."

"They fail, and they alone, who have not striven."

"If you chance to live in a town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in fairyland."

"When Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much impressed by the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in the struggle for independence."

"Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down on the most desirable spot."

"Dwellers by the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the imagination."

"Conservatism and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the unconventional its values also?"

"Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, Named of the four winds, North, South, East and West; Portals that lead to an enchanted land Of cities, forests, fields of living gold Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow, Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past The Arab's date-palm and the Norseman's pine— A realm wherein are fruits of every zone, Airs of all climes, for lo! throughout the year The red rose blossoms somewhere—a rich land A later Eden planted in the wilds, With not an inch of earth within its bound But if a slave's foot press it sets him free. Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage And Honor honor, and the humblest man Stand level with the highest in the law. Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed And with the vision brightening in their eyes Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword. Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, And through them press a wild, a motley throng— Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav, Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn; These bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Those tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. In street and alley what strange tongues are these, Accents of menace alien to our air, Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! O, Liberty, white goddess, is it well To leave the gate unguarded? On thy breast Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate, Lift the downtrodden, but with the hand of steel Stay those who to thy sacred portals come To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn And trampled in the dust. For so of old The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome, And where the temples of the Caesars stood The lean wolf unmolested made her lair."

"What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, or wingëd air."

"O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!"

"Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay. And serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank thee for the precious gift of tears!"

"So precious life is! Even to the old The hours are as a miser’s coins!"

"Here is woe, a self and not the mask of woe."

"When friends are at your hearthside met, Sweet courtesy has done its most If you have made each guest forget That he himself is not the host."

"If my best wines mislike thy taste, And my best service win thy frown, Then tarry not, I bid thee haste; There's many another Inn in town."

"The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born."

"Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. The current-topic variety is especially subject to early frosts, as is also the dialectic species."

"After a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow."

"I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings."

"Books that have become classics—books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal—always remind me of venerable colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay."

"The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know."

"Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said."

"The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks."

"Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy."

"Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice."

"The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly."

"All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?"

"Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs—putting in his oar, so to speak—with some pat word or sentence."

"There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite."

"He has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject."

"A man is known by the company his mind keeps."

"True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation."

"Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades."

"What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next."

"To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent—that is to triumph over old age."

"Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays.[…] The grim cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach blossoms."

"The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is."

"It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky."

"The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow."

"Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over. I am grateful when solitude returns."

"But the form of free verse is as binding and as liberating as the form of a rondeau."

"Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. ... The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country."

"It’s never been such a good time to be a crook. In what other country of laws does one enjoy so much freedom to defraud one’s government and fellow citizens without having to worry about cops showing at the door? Small-time crooks sooner or later end up in the slammer, but our big-time con artists, as we’ve come to learn, are now regarded as the untouchables, too well-heeled and powerful to lock up."

"Should some senator or congressman have a sudden attack of conscience and blurt something out, “dark money” brings them to their senses and reminds them that their job is to facilitate the transfer of public funds into the pockets of the few and to not ask too many questions."

"Of true benevolence, its charms divine, With other motives to call forth its power, And its grand triumphs, multiplied beyond All former bounds, in this its golden age, Humbly I sing, awed by the holy theme; A theme exalted, though as yet unsung, In beauty rich, of inspiration full, And worthy of a nobler harp than that From which heroic strains sublimely sound."

"Time well employed is Satan's deadliest foe: It leaves no opening for the lurking fiend."

"The sultry summer past, September comes, Soft twilight of the soft-declining year. All mildness, soothing loneliness and peace, The fading season ere the falling come."

"Be thy best thoughts to work divine addressed; Do something — do it soon — will all thy might; An angel's wing would droop if long at rest, And God Himself inactive were no longer blessed."

"'Tis infamy to die and not be missed."

"Rouse to some work of high and holy love, And thou an angel's happiness shall know."