Quotes About Indirections

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,With windlasses and with assays of bias,By indirections find directions out.

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, grace metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, Why don't you say what you mean? We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth, And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.

Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me. Ah lover and perfect equal, I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections.