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Quotes from The Far Field — Theodore Roethke

1908–1963 United States

← All quotes by Theodore Roethke

9 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)

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

The Far Field (1964)

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)

I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow
Upon that God who knows what I would know.

The Far Field (1964)

And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake; And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.

The Far Field (1964)

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire;
What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.

The Far Field (1964)

Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;
Too close immediacy an exhaustion

The Far Field (1964)

A terrible violence of creation,
A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;
Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,
The burning lake turns into a forest pool,
The fire subsides into rings of water,
A sunlit silence.

The Far Field (1964)

To whom does this terrace belong? —
With its limestone crumbling into fine greyish dust,
Its bevy of bees, and its wind-beaten rickety sun-chairs?
Not to me, but this lizard,
Older than I, or the cockroach.

The Far Field (1964)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Theodore Roethke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.