“He thought he kept the universe alone;For all the voice in answer he could wakeWas but the mocking echo of his ownFrom some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.Some morning from the boulder-broken beachHe would cry out on life, that what it wantsIs not its own love back in copy speech,But counter-love, original response.And nothing ever came of what he criedUnless it was the embodiment that crashedIn the cliff's talus on the other side,And then in the far-distant water splashed,But after a time allowed for it to swim,Instead of proving human when it nearedAnd someone else additional to him,As a great buck it powerfully appeared,Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,And landed pouring like a waterfall,And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,And forced the underbrush--and that was all.”

“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 change to darkness in the sky.Murmuring something quiet in her breast,One bird begins to close a faded eye;Or overtaken too far from his nest,Hurrying low above the grove, some waifSwoops just in time to his remembered tree.At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!Now let the night be dark for all of me.Let the night be too dark for me to seeInto the future. Let what will be, be.”

“The objective idea is all I ever cared about. Most of my ideas occur in verse... To be too subjective with what an artist has managed to make objective is to come on him presumptuously and render ungraceful what he in pain of his life had faith he had made graceful.”

“Back out of all this now too much for us,Back in a time made simple by the lossOf detail, burned, dissolved, and broken offLike graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,There is a house that is no more a houseUpon a farm that is no more a farmAnd in a town that is no more a town.The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct youWho only has at heart your getting lost,May seem as if it should have been a quarry—Great monolithic knees the former townLong since gave up pretense of keeping covered.And there’s a story in a book about it:Besides the wear of iron wagon wheelsThe ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,The chisel work of an enormous GlacierThat braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.You must not mind a certain coolness from himStill said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.Nor need you mind the serial ordealOf being watched from forty cellar holesAs if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.As for the woods’ excitement over youThat sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,Charge that to upstart inexperience.Where were they all not twenty years ago?They think too much of having shaded outA few old pecker-fretted apple trees.Make yourself up a cheering song of howSomeone’s road home from work this once was,Who may be just ahead of you on footOr creaking with a buggy load of grain.The height of the adventure is the heightOf country where two village cultures fadedInto each other. Both of them are lost.And if you’re lost enough to find yourselfBy now, pull in your ladder road behind youAnd put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.Then make yourself at home. The only fieldNow left’s no bigger than a harness gall.First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,The playthings in the playhouse of the children.Weep for what little things could make them glad.Then for the house that is no more a house,But only a belilaced cellar hole,Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.Your destination and your destiny’sA brook that was the water of the house,Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,Too lofty and original to rage.(We know the valley streams that when arousedWill leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)I have kept hidden in the instep archOf an old cedar at the watersideA broken drinking goblet like the GrailUnder a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)Here are your waters and your watering place.Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”

“The Trial By ExistenceEven the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore’er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life’s little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth’s unhonored things Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end: ’One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.’ And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified.”

“He thought that I was after him for a feather---The white one in his tail: like one who takes everything said as personal to himself.”

“He had gone right through fear and come out the other side in some place cold. Anger was all that kept him warm. They could gentle him, or burn him to a crisp where he stood, and he no longer cared.”