“A pear should come to the table popped with juice,Ripened in warmth and served in warmth. On termsLike these, autumn beguiles the fatalist.”

“Divinity must live within herself:Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow;Grievings in loneliness, or unsubduedElations when the forest blooms; gustyEmotions on wet roads on autumn nights;All pleasures and all pains, rememberingThe boughs of summer and the winter branch.These are the measures destined for her soul.”

“People should like poetry the way a child likes snow, and they would if poets wrote it.”

“After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.”

“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreamsAnd our desires.”

“After the leaves have fallen, we returnTo a plain sense of things. It is as ifWe had come to an end of the imagination,Inanimate in an inert savoir.”

“The Poem That Took The Place Of A MountainThere it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactness Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged Where he could lie and gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.”