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

All art, in spite of the struggles of some critics to prove otherwise, is based on emotion and projects emotion.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

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.

It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

I'll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound.