You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.
For, dear me, why abandon a belief, Merely because it ceases to be true, Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt, It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation Then, in your exuberance and bounding energy you say you're going to add to that. Then you add rhyme and meter. And your delight is in that power.
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have out walked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet. When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly light, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.
There is the fear that we shan't prove worthy in the eyes of someone who knows us at least as well as we know ourselves. That is the fear of God. And there is the fear of Man -fear that men won't understand us and we shall be cut of from them.
Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take-and took.