Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown.

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.

All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers; our profoundest loyalty goes out to the failed.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.