65 quotes
God bless the roots! — Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The Far Field (1964)
Voice, come out of the silence.
Say something.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,
The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,
Will turn its private substance into green,
And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
Open House (1941)
To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.
Poetry and Craft (1965)
I shook the softening chalk of my bones,
Saying,
Snail, snail, glister me forward,
Bird, soft-sigh me home,
Worm, be with me.
This is my hard time.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
I lived with deep roots once:
Have I forgotten their ways —
The gradual embrace
Of lichen around stones?
Words for the Wind (1958)
Being, not doing, is my first joy.
The Far Field (1964)
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Bless me and the maze I'm in!
Hello, thingy spirit.
Praise to the End! (1951)
Yet for this we travelled
With hope, and not alone,
In the country of ourselves,
In a country of bright stone.
Previously Uncollected Poems (1975)
The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
The light comes brighter from the east; the caw
Of restive crows is sharper on the ear.
Open House (1941)
I study the lives on a leaf: the little
Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
I have gone into the waste lonely places
Behind the eye.
Words for the Wind (1958)
Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The Far Field (1964)
A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.
Open House (1941)
There's a point where plainness is no longer a virtue, when it becomes excessively bald, wrenched.
Poetry and Craft (1965)
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow
Upon that God who knows what I would know.
The Far Field (1964)