Quotes About Poetry

When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.

there are times when silence is a poem.

Between skin and skin there is only light. And there was my poetry.

Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind.

Poetry had always seemed something I could turn to in need - an emergency exit, a lifebuoy, as well as a justification.

To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape. And my feelings, at the end of that wretched term, were those of a man who knows he's in a cage, exposed to the jeers of all his old ambitions until he dies.

To fully express their feelings, women assume poetic license and use various superlatives, metaphors, and generalizations. Men mistakenly take these expressions literally. Because they misunderstand the intended meaning, they commonly react in an unsupportive manner.

Poems are the chorus of our lives. the poet sets the words to the music of our souls. Each poem has its own rhythm that drums like a heartbeat.

Poetry...is full of visions pulled more from our hearts than from our minds. Our greatest poems are written in the dust of our deepest memories.

They were William Blake's words, set to song

was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

I still don't know how to work out a poem. A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.

And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes.

I find I cannot exist without Poetry

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,—- That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Softly the breezes from the forest came, Softly they blew aside the taper's flame; Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower; Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower; Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone; Lovely the moon in ether, all alone: Sweet too, the converse of these happy mortals, As that of busy spirits when the portals Are closing in the west; or that soft humming We hear around when Hesperus is coming. Sweet be their sleep.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath.

O let me lead her gently o'er the brook, Watch her half-smiling lips and downward look; O let me for one moment touch her wrist; Let me one moment to her breathing list; And as she leaves me, may she often turn Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburne.

Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.

I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!

No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.

The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in rhyme.