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

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
Endure
Lovers
Pure
Vision
Live
Summon
Declare
Longing

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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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.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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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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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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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.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
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