Society and the World

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To everything on earth the compass round, And only by one’s going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family— But not much in between unless a college.

I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some say when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on, I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out.

My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” 1

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveler, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor.

It’s easy ’nough to titter w’en de stew is smokin’ hot, But hit’s mighty ha’d to giggle w’en dey’s nuffin’ in de pot.

Since thou 2 and those who died with thee for right Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!

It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core… I know why the caged bird sings! 1

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind.

A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”

I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme. But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician’s corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

Hear me, ambitious souls, Sex is the curse of life!

John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

A leveling, rancorous, rational sort of mind That never looked out of the eye of a saint Or out of drunkard’s eye.

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.