Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth.
The city is all right. To live in one
Is to be civilized, stay up and read
Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise
By waiting up instead of getting up.
A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." - W. H. Auden
"A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness...It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.
Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.
The style is the man. Rather say the style is the way the man takes himself; and to be at all charming or even bearable, the way is almost rigidly prescribed. If it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness. No other way will do.