Quote

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.

Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Beats
Bird
Immeasurable
Place
Dares
Light
Stops
Live
Immense
Things
Emptiness
Dare
Wings

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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In a dark time, the eye begins to see / I meet my shadow in the deepening shade...Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
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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.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
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A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominableYet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,The burning lake turns into a forest pool,The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
Theodore Roethke
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And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
Theodore Roethke
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What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
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I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swamplandDisturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planetAs if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
Theodore Roethke