So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

These woods are lovely, dark and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves.

Nor is there wanting in the pressSome spirit to stand simply forth,Heroic in it nakedness,Against the uttermost of earth.The tale of earth's unhonored thingsSounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;And the mind whirls and the heart sings,And a shout greets the daring one.

For, dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true?Cling to it long enough, and not a doubtIt will turn true again, for so it goes.Most of the change we think we see in lifeIs due to truths being in and out of favor.As I sit here, and often times, I wishI could be monarch of a desert landI could devote and dedicate foreverTo the truths we keep coming back and back to.––from "The Black Cottage

Life is too much like a pathless woodWhere your face burns and tickles with the cobwebsBroken across it, and one eye is weepingFrom a twig's having lashed across it open.