I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.

Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree.

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.