Quote

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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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Knew
River
Came
Rivers
Water
Stones
Ears
Sang
Rain
Veins
Summer
Waters
Early
Ran
Joy
Streams

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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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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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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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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.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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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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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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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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How terrible the need for God.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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