We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I could give all to Time except — exceptWhat I myself have held. But why declareThe things forbidden that while the Customs sleptI have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,And what I would not part with I have kept.
I’d like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate wilfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth’s the right place for love:I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.
The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.