“Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman-But who is that on the other side of you?”

“Yet when we came back, from the hyacinth garden,Yours arms full, and your hair wet, I could notSpeak, and my eyes failed, I was neitherLiving nor dead, and I knew nothing.Looking into the heart of light, the silence.Oed und leer das Meer ('waste and empty in the sea')""I rememberThose are pearls that were his eyes.""Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead, up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside you,Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a womanBut who is that on the other side of you?”

“I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

“There was a doorAnd I could not open it. I could not touch the handle.Why could I not walk out of my prison?What is hell? Hell is oneself,Hell is alone, the other figures in itMerely projections. There is nothing to escape fromAnd nothing to Escape to. One is always alone.”

“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.”

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,And how, how rare and strange it is, to findIn a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!)To find a friend who has these qualities,Who has, and givesThose qualities upon which friendship lives.How much it means that I say this to you-Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar!”

“Because I know that time is always timeAnd place is always and only place...”