“Follow, poet, follow rightTo the bottom of the night,With your unconstraining voiceStill persuade us to rejoice;With the farming of a verseMake a vineyard of the curse,Sing of human unsuccessIn a rapture of distress;In the deserts of the heartLet the healing fountain start,In the prison of his daysTeach the free man how to praise.”

“In the prison of his daysTeach the free man how to praise”

“In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.”

“Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.”

“no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.”

“The Three Wiseman:The weather has been awful,The countryside is dreary,Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock,Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help alongYours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners,that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners,and miss our wives, our books, our dogs,but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are.To discover how to be human nowIs the reason we follow this star.”

“Far from his illnessThe wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;By mourning tonguesThe death of the poet was kept from his poems.”