“Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter — and the Bird is on the Wing.”

“Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.”

“To a Young Poet

Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.

No thing that ever flew,
Not the lark, not you,
Can die as others do.”

“It felt like spring time on this February morning
In a courtyard birds were singing your praise…”

“It's strange that all birds don't fly in the same way... I've heard that the wings of aeroplanes all conform to the same formula, whereas birds each conform to a formula of their own... All birds are perhaps a little wrong, because an absolute once-and-for-all formula for a bird has never been found, just as all novels are bad because the correct formula for a novel has never been found.”

“The bird that would soar above the plane of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.”

“Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.”

“Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrow.”

“Do all you can to become a bird of the Way to God;
Do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers.”

“Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses?
How soft is this one, how subtle this is,
How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is,
As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice;
How this one clings and how that uncloses
From bud to flower in the way of roses.”