"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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Pulitzer Prize winnersPoets from the United States19th-century poets from the United StatesPoets from New HampshirePeople from San Francisco
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Frost
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin clo…"
"Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subs…"
"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
"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 …"
"Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes ha…"
"The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil."
"Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. A le…"
"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…"
"A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attent…"
"We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between th…"