The rain to the wind said,You push and I’ll pelt.’They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged–though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.

More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd...

I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the...

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to uniteMy avocation and my vocationAs my two eyes make one in sight.

Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

Nobody was ever meant to remember or invent what he did with every cent.

There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and even after the second. Much that you will think of in connection will...

These woods are lovely, dark and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.

Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by...

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloudAnd goes down burning into the gulf below,No voice in nature is heard to cry aloudAt what has happened. Birds, at least must knowIt is the...

God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown,But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown.And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live,And said “To you, my children, These lovely flowers I...

Freedom lies in being bold.

If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.

The way a crowShook down on meThe dust of snowFrom a hemlock treeHas given my heartA change of moodAnd saved some partOf a day I had rued.

But bid life seize the present? It lives less in the present Than in the future always, And less in both together Than in the past. The present Is too much for the senses, Too...

By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

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.

I’ve given offense by saying I’d as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

The mind-is not the heart.I may yet live, as I know others live,To wish in vain to let go with the mind-Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells meThat I need learn to...

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all.

Fire and IceSome say the world will end in fire,Some say ice.From what I’ve tasted of desire,I hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough to hate.To...

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village, though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without...

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Two such as you with such a master speedCannot be parted nor be swept awayFrom one another once you are agreedThat life is only life forevermoreTogether wing to wing and oar to oar

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has...

La strada non presaDue strade divergevano in un bosco d’autunnoe dispiaciuto di non poterle percorrere entrambe,essendo un solo viaggiatore, a lungo indugiaifissandone una, più lontano che potevofin dove si perdeva tra i cespugli.Poi presi l’altra,...

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

INTO MY OWNOne of my wishes is that those dark trees,So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,But stretched away unto the edge of doom.I should...

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.

Part of a moon was falling down the west,Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.Its light poured softly in her lap. She sawAnd spread her apron to it. She put out her handAmong...

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

Where had I heard this wind beforeChange like this to a deeper roar?What would it take my standing there for,Holding open a restive door,Looking down hill to a frothy shore?Summer was past and day was...

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won’t, and that’s a wife who can’t cook and will.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

We ran as if to meet the moon.

They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars—on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.

Lodged”The rain to the wind said,’You push and I’ll pelt.’They so smote the garden bed.That the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged — though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.

Tree at my window, window tree,My sash is lowered when night comes on;But let there never be curtain drawnBetween you and me.Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,And thing next most diffuse to cloud,Not all...