It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.
If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.
Yes, and even for the past...that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was. Something I can accept. Mistakes made by the self I had to be or was not able to be.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been - alone, As all must be, I said within my heart, Whether they work together or apart.