It has frequently been said that we never desire what we think absolutely inapprehensible: it is however true that some of our sharpest agonies are those in which the object of desire is regarded as both possible and imaginary.
One thing you cannot know: The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope: You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other.
Genuine blasphemy, genuine in spirit and not purely verbal, is the product of partial belief, and is as impossible to the complete atheist as to the perfect Christian.
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
Because I know that time is always time and place is always place and only place. And what is actual is actual only for one time. And only for one place. I rejoice that things are as they are.
The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes; It is always the same, wherever one goes. And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people say that they do not like fighting, will often display Every symptom of wanting to join in the fray. And they Bark bark bark bark bark bark Until you can hear them all over the park.
Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.
But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey's end.
The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise.