1. “And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.”
2. “And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead,
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fall, --- this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.”
3. “Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.”
4. "Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is."
5. ”Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.”
6. “I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion.”
7. "I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year."
8. “Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.”
9. “It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It’s one damn thing over and over.”
10. “Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry. Let us renew our faith and pledge to Man his right to be Himself, and free.”
11. “Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolutions power,
I might be driven to sell you love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.”
12. “My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends -
it gives a lovely light.”
13. “Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; / Men a longer life than dogs do; / Dogs a longer life than love does.”
14. “Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.”
15. “No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.”
16. “Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.”
17. “Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”
18. "Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world -- it is thin."
19. “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, -- so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his boot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”
20. “Not Truth, but Faith it is that keeps the world alive.”
21. “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings so more.”
22. “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.”
23. Why do you follow me?-- / Any moment I can be / Nothing but a laurel-tree. // Any moment of the chase / I can leave you in my place / A pink bough for your embrace. // Yet if over hill and hollow / Still it is your will to follow, / I am off; -- to heel, Apollo!
