#poetry

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. ↗

— Kahlil Gibran

#poetry #thought

Gains for all our losses There are gains for all our losses There are balms for all our pains But when youth the dream departs It takes some thing from our hearts And never comes again We are stronger and are better Under manhood’s sterner reign Still we feel that some thing sweet Followed youth with flying feet And will never come again. Some thing beautiful has vanished And we sigh for it in vain We behold it every where---- On the earth and in the air---- But it never comes again. ↗

— R.H. Stoddard

#poetry #beauty

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder ↗

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#wonder

In pale moonlight / the wisteria's scent / comes from far away. ↗

— Yosa Buson

#meditations #observation #perception #poetry #zen

Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#poetry #woman #woman

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#mistakes

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ↗

— Robert Frost

#writing #effort

She Was A Phantom of Delight She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament: Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death: The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light. ↗

— William Wordsworth

#women #death

How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And doesn't care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity. ↗

— Emily Dickinson

#poems #poetry #career

The longer I live the more I mistrust theatricality, the false glamour cast by performance, the more I know its poverty beside the truths we are salvaging from the splitting-open of our lives. -from "Transcendental Etude ↗

— Adrienne Rich

#dreams