If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.

Love is universal migraine, A bright stain on the vision Blotting out reason. Symptoms of true love Are leanness, jealousy, Laggard dawns; Are omens and nightmares - Listening for a knock, Waiting for a sign: For a touch of her fingers In a darkened room, For a searching look. Take courage, lover! Could you endure such pain At any hand but hers?

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

A banker warned the British poet Robert Graves that one could not grow rich writing poetry. He replied that if there was no money in poetry, there was certainly no poetry in money, and so it was all even.