My Small Boat

To Althea, from Prison
WHEN Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fetter’d to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses […]

In my adult life, the time I have actually lived inside the present moment would amount to no more than a single day. If only I could have lived it as a single day; it would have thrown its light into all the others, like a brazier in a dark arcade. Instead I find my […]

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.

Dust of Snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.

Whatever you be, be a good one.

She was five and sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced that every word was revelation.
She said, “they were so poor, they only had one peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat, and they went a long way from home, without getting lost.
The lady rode on a donkey and […]

Santa Claus had the right idea, visit people once a year.

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Happiness isn’t something you experience. It’s something you remember.

The British Journalist
You cannot hope to bribe or twist
thank God! The British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, theres no occasion to.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.