For I shall learn from flower and leaf, That color every drop they hold, To change the lifeless wine of grief To living gold.

Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitened on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup.

The poet should try to give his poem the quiet swiftness of flame, so that the reader will feel and not think while he is reading. But the thinking will come afterwards.

For I shall learn from flower and leaf, That color every drop they hold, To change the lifeless wine of grief To living gold.

My theory is that poems are written because of a state of emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, like electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem. ... the poem is written to free the poet from an emotional burden.

The grass is waking in the ground, / Soon it will rise and blow in waves - / How can it have the heart to sway / Over the graves, / New graves?

Now at last I have come to see what life is, Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun, And the brave victories that seem so splendid Are never really won.