What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private.

Up from the bronze, I saw Water without a flaw Rush to its rest in air Reach to its rest, and fall.

... how much of our inner substance is it good for us to give to public griefs? The whole modern tendency to agonize over the suffering of the entire globe is surely something new.

The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?

Women have no wilderness in them They are provident instead Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread.

O remember In your narrowing dark hours That more things move Than blood in the heart.

But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. ... It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at.