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Bounds should be set To ingenuity for being so cruel In bringing change unheralded on the unready.
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We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.
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Lovers, forget your love And list to the love of these She a window flower And he a winter breeze ...
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A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.
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The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.
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I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.
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Sarcastic Science, she would like to know, In her complacent ministry of fear, How we propose to get away from here When she has made things so we have to go Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show Us how by rocket we may hope to steer To some star off there, say, a half light-year Through temperature of absolute zero? Why wait for Science to supply the how When any amateur can tell it now? The way to go away should be the same As fifty million years ago we came- If anyone remembers how that was I have a theory, but it hardly does.
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I never feel more at home than at a ballgame.
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Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
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Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.
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Love has earth to which she clings....
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How are we to write The Russian novel in America As long as life goes so unterribly?
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He burned his house down for the fire insurance and spent the proceeds on a telescope.
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Poets like Shakespeare know more about poetry than any $25 an hour man.
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A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
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He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors.
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No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.
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Why make so much of fragmentary blue. In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
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You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.
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But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been - alone, As all must be, I said within my heart, Whether they work together or apart.
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(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) And go along with you ere you lose sight Of what you came for and become like me, Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
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To Time it never seems that he is brave To set himself against the peaks of snow To lay them level with the running wave, Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low, But only grave, contemplative and grave.
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The only way around is through.
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And one of the three great things in the world is gossip, you know. First there's religion; and then there's science; and there's-and then there's friendly gossip. Those are the three-the three great things.