A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.

was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?

... for, by all the stars That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars That kept my spirit in are burst - that I Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.

There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality.

Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it