Selected Poems Quotes

“It is not so much trying to keep alive
As trying to keep from blowing apart
From inner explosions every day.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“There are some griefs so loud
They could bring down the sky,
And there are griefs so still
None knows how deep they lie,
Endured, never expended.
There are old griefs so proud
They never speak a word;
They never can be mended.
And these nourish the will
And keep it iron-hard.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“...when the petals fall
Say it is beautiful and good, say it is well”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“So let the world go, but hold fast to joy.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“...The means of choice:
She might choose to ascend
The falling dream,
By some angelic power without a name
Reverse the motion, plunge into upwardness,
Know height without an end,
Density melt to air, silence yield a voice--
Within her fall she felt the pull of Grace.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“It is time I came back to my real life
After this voyage to an island with no name,
Where I lay down at sunrise drunk with light.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“But tears are an indulgence. Memory sings.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“What we have not has made us what we are.
Those surface consolations have to go.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“Fighting dragons is my holy joy.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“It is alarming to feel the soul
Leap to the surface and find no sheltering wall.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“What does myself now say to me?
"Open the door of Mystery.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“And now we who are writing women and strange monsters
Still search our hearts to find the difficult answers,
Still hope that we may learn to lay our hands
More gently and more subtly on the burning sands.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“I felt pain like an assault,
The old pain again
When the world thrusts itself inside,
When we have to take in the outside,
When we have to decide
To be the crazy-human with hope
Or just plain crazy
With fear.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“For only the ill are well,
Only the hunted, free”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“A bolt that raised her heart to blazing height
And made the vertical the very thrust of hope,
And found its path at last
(Slow work of Grace).”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“It feels a long way up and down from zero.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems