“That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
He said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”

Bk. XI, l. 121.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Desolation Island (1979)

So, the flowers of your field, in so far as I am gardener, shall come from my heart where they reside in much good will; and my eye and hand shall attend merely to the cultivating, the weeding, the fungous blight, the noxious insect of the air, and the harmful worm below.
And so shall your garden grow; from the rich soil of the humanities it will rise up and unfold in beauty in the pure air of the spirit.
So shall your thoughts take up the sap of strong and generous impulse, and grow and branch, and run and climb and spread, blooming and fruiting, each after its kind, each flowing toward the fulfillment of its normal and complete desire. Some will so grow as to hug the earth in modest beauty; others will rise, through sunshine and storm, through drought and winter's snows year after year, to tower in the sky; and the birds of the air will nest therein and bring forth their young.
Such is the garden of the heart: so oft neglected and despised when fallow.
Verily, there needs a gardener, and many gardens.
Source: Kindergarten Chats (1918), Ch. 4 : The Garden

Source: Euphues and his England, P. 314. Compare: "The rose is fairest when 't is budding new", Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake, canto iii. st. 1.

The Burden (1956)

Poem "Ice"
Poetry Quotes

Source: 1984

Act IV, scene i.
Œdipus (1679)

Source: Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time