The Collected Poems Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It is strange how often a heart must be broken Before the years can make it wise.

The Collected Poems

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

The Collected Poems

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

The Collected Poems

When you are old and gray and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

The Collected Poems

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

The Collected Poems

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those...

The Collected Poems

If you dissect a bird / to diagram the tongue, / you'll cut the chord / articulating song.

The Collected Poems

When you are old and grey and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep

The Collected Poems

In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformatio...

The Collected Poems

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

The Collected Poems

Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said It was the dream itself enchanted me ("The Circus Animal's Desertion")

The Collected Poems

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

The Collected Poems

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.

The Collected Poems

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet ("Oil and Blood")

The Collected Poems

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

The Collected Poems

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the d...

The Collected Poems

The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper, Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars Letting in the light, peephole after peephole--- A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.

The Collected Poems

Not easy to state the change you made. If I'm alive now, I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.

The Collected Poems