“To be a poet is to be lulled by the wind,
To follow the moon in dreams, and drift with the clouds.”
As quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 86, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), <small>ISBN 978-0520916586</small>, p. 161
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Xuân Diệu 5
Vietnamese poet 1916–1985Related quotes

The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1896)
Context: Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Source: Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979), p. 50

The Armies of the Wilderness, Pt. II, st. 5
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

Inscription: 12 September, 1821, written on the back of 'Hampstead Heath, Sun setting over Harrow,' his sketch in oil on paper; as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London. 1993), p. 221
1820s

“The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away, and the weather is clear again.”
Zen Poetics of Ryokan (2006)
Context: The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away, and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the Way.

“The wind is the moon's imagination wandering.”

" Hurrahing in Harvest http://www.bartleby.com/122/14.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

“Floating to shore… riding a low moon… on a slow cloud.”