I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.