Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections - whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

Come grow old with me, for the best is yet to come!

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

If one by one we counted people out

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, and wants it down.

God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown, But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown. And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live, And said "To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give. Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend, But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end." God's Garden