This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds.

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.

This is war: Boys flung into a breach Like shoveled earth; And old men, Broken, Driving rapidly before crowds of people In a glitter of silly decorations. Behind the boys And the old men, Life weeps, And shreds her garments To the blowing winds.

Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her.

I know that a creed is the shell of a lie.

If what we worship fail us, still the fire burns on, and it is much to have believed.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you; of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.