I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.

The imperfect is our paradise.

Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.

It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.

She says, "But in contentment I still feel The need for imperishable bliss." Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires. Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang?

Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.