“Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.”

“Our life runs down in sending up the clock.The brook runs down in sending up our life.The sun runs down in sending up the brook.And there is something sending up the sun.It is this backward motion toward the source,Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,The tribute of the current to the source.It is from this in nature we are from.It is most us.”

“What are we?Young or new?We must be something.”

“Revelation WE make ourselves a place apartBehind light words that tease and flout,But oh, the agitated heartTill someone find us really out.’Tis pity if the case require(Or so we say) that in the endWe speak the literal to inspireThe understanding of a friend.But so with all, from babes that playAt hide-and-seek to God afar,So all who hide too well awayMust speak and tell us where they are”

“Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed.”

“We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.”

“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.”