Robert Frost Quotes
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The Armful For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best. To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load.
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GATHERING LEAVES Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons. I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away. But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace, Flowing over my arms And into my face. I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed, And what have I then? Next to nothing for weight, And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color. Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop, And who's to say where The harvest shall stop?
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A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
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You know how cunningly mankind is planned: We have one loving and one hating hand. The loving's made to hold each other like, While with the hating other hand we strike.
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A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.
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Of all crimes the worst Is to steal the glory From the great and brave, Even more accursed Than to rob the grave.
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The trees that have it in their pent-up buds To darken nature and be summer woods.
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No, in country money, the country scale of gain, The requisite lift of spirit has never been found....
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... A nation has to take its natural course Of Progress round and round in circles From King to Mob to King to Mob to King Until the eddy of it eddies out.
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Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.
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I have miles to go before I sleep...
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Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?
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Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt - above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever.
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All great things are done for their own sake.
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We get twitted now and then on how we made this country. Well, we took the whole business, of course. It's not just that corner that we took from Mexico. When we got it all together, we got a very shapely country-the best continental cut in all the world, between the two oceans and in the right temperature zone.
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I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.
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Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
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An earthly dog of the carriage breed; Who, having failed of the modern speed, Now asked asylum and I was stirred To be the one so dog-preferred.
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Nature's never quite Sure she hasn't erred In her vague design....
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When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don't stand still and look around On all the hills I haven't hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall, And plod: I go up to the stone wall For a friendly visit.
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Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
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Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
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Diplomacy, n : 1. The patriotic art of lying for one's country. 2. The art of letting someone have your way. 3. The art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a rock. A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
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The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength. To feel the earth as rough to all my length.