Robert Frost

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To every thing on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

They are that that talks of going
But never gets away.

One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.

Hope is not found in a way out but a way through.

Unless I'm wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I'm—bound—away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died.

You've often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.

Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.

Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long. — You come too.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

My Sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She's glad the birds are gone away, She's glad her simple worsted gray Is silver now with clinging mist.

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.