Theodore Roethke Quotes - Page 2

I came where the river Ran over stones; My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.

Wake the happy words.

I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.

The self says, I am; The heart says, I am less; The spirit says, you are Nothing.

Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul?

I learned not to fear infinity, The far field, the windy cliffs of forever, The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, The wheel turning away from itself, The sprawl of the wave, The on-coming water.

Love begets love. This torment is my joy.

All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world.

Civilization is over-rated, but there isn't much else.

My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I'm naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield.

In this place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.

Art is our defense against hysteria and death.

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire

And I rejoiced in being what I was.

The body and the soul know how to play In that dark world where gods have lost their way.

Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.

The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped.

I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.

All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.

I have gone into the waste lonely places

You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.

What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

What falls away is always. And is near.

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.