Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.

The imagination is the liberty of the mind It is intrpeid and eager and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction.

Thought tends to collect in pools.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.

People ought to like poetry the way a child likes snow & they would if poets wrote it.

In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.