Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Lord, I have loved Your sky,Be it said against or for me,Have loved it clear and high,Or low and stormy.

I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.