Poetry

All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Renascence

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror

— Derek Walcott · Love After Love

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

— Robert Frost · Fire and Ice

But there are times the pupils of his eyes Dilate, the strong limbs stand alert, apart, Tense with the flood of visions that arise Only to sink and die within his heart.

— Rainer Maria Rilke · The Panther

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body

— Mary Oliver · Wild Geese

and squander the power of the noblest gift, only to make men worse, more skeptical, and sadder? Is this your sacred calling as prophets and as artists?… Where are our enthusiasts, our dreamers, our troubadours, to sing us the meaning of the world and the splendors of nature?

— Alexandru Vlahuță · Where Are Our Dreamers

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive.

— Billy Collins · Introduction To Poetry

Who is Jeremy Lord? There are degrees of madness. And the matter you are, the more obvious it will be to other

— Charles Bukowski · My Madness

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow upon the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go free. Command the last fruits to be full;

— Rainer Maria Rilke · Autumn Day

you shall above all things be glad and young For if you’re young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become.

— e.e. cummings · [you shall above all things be glad]

(Poet’s Obligation) [https://youtu.be/aJ8yTw2v434?si=Td99WllijelN66gf\&t=51](https://youtu.be/aJ8yTw2v434?si=Td99WllijelN66gf&t=51) Translated by Alastair Reid To whoever is not listening to the seathis Friday morning, to whoever is cooped upin house or office, factory or woman…

— Pablo Neruda · Deber Del Poeta (Poet's Obligation)

When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;

— William Shakespeare · Sonnet 12: When I Do Count

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.

— Theodore Roethke · The Waking

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting

— Mary Oliver · The Journey

Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday.

— Andrea Gibson · Birthday

What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire\! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

— Theodore Roethke · In a Dark Time

Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing?

— Mary Oliver · Lead

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted.

— Andrea Gibson · The Nutritionist

This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Bluebeard