“We love the things we love for what they are.”
"Hyla Brook" (1920)
1920s
Robert Frost: Quotes about love
Robert Frost was American poet. Explore interesting quotes on love.
Robert Frost:
530
quotes
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“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
As quoted in a review of A Swinger of Birches (1957) by Sydney Cox in Vermont History, Vol. 25 (1957), p. 355
1950s
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
Variant: A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
The portion of "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." is often misquoted as: Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep”
General sources
Source: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621
Context: The 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.
The Lesson for Today (1942)
Context: I may have wept that any should have died
Or missed their chance, or not have been their best,
Or been their riches, fame, or love denied;
On me as much as any is the jest.
I take my incompleteness with the rest.
God bless himself can no one else be blessed.
I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori.
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.
“Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.”
Variant: Come over the hills and far with me
And be my love in the rain.
Source: Complete Poems Of Robert Frost, 1949
“It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.”
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Variant: A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.
“A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.”
BBC Interview with Cecil Day Lewis (13 September 1957); transcripts published in "It Takes a Hero to Make a Poem" in the Claremont Quarterly (Spring 1958) http://www.frostfriends.org/FFL/Periodicals/Interview-lewis.html
1950s
“Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
"Birches" (1920)
General sources
Source: Swinger of Birches
Context: I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
"Two Tramps in Mud Time" (1936), st. 9
General sources
1960s, Dedication (1960)
"To Earthward" (1923), st. 5,6
General sources
“Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air”
" To Earthward http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-earthward-2/", st. 1 (1923)
1920s