Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Young
Private
Shoots
Long
Green
Tightly
Mind
Soon
Branch
World
Scene
Branches
Turn
Hidden
Turns
Substance
Upon
Spread
Part
Inner
Leafy

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

Image
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke
Image
What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
Theodore Roethke
Image
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
Image
How terrible the need for God.
Theodore Roethke
Image
What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
Image
A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
Image
The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
Theodore Roethke
Image
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Theodore Roethke
Image
What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
Theodore Roethke
Image
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
Image
I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke