The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again.

Poetry is a satifying of the desire for resemblance.

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.

The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.

It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.