Nothing Gold Can Stay.

I Have Never Started A Poem Yet Whose End I Knew. Writing A Poem Is Discovering.

Gathering Leaves Spades Take Up Leaves No Better Than Spoons, And Bags Full Of Leaves Are Light As Balloons. I Make A Great Noise Of Rustling All Day Like Rabbit And Deer Running Away. But The Mountains I Raise Elude My Embrace, Flowing Over My Arms And Into My Face. I May Load And Unload Again And Again Till I Fill The Whole Shed, And What Have I Then? Next To Nothing For Weight, And Since They Grew Duller From Contact With Earth, Next To Nothing For Color. Next To Nothing For Use. But A Crop Is A Crop, And Who's To Say Where The Harvest Shall Stop?

Oh, Give Us Pleasure In The Flowers To-day; And Give Us Not To Think So Far Away As The Uncertain Harvest; Keep Us Here All Simply In The Springing Of The Year. Oh, Give Us Pleasure In The Orchard White, Like Nothing Else By Day, Like Ghosts By Night; And Make Us Happy In The Happy Bees, The Swarm Dilating Round The Perfect Trees.

A Poem Begins With A Lump In The Throat; A Homesickness Or A Love Sickness. It Is A Reaching-out Toward Expression; An Effort To Find Fulfillment. A Complete Poem Is One Where An Emotion Has Found Its Thought And The Thought Has Found Words.

Of Course There Is Matter For Remark In Poems. Nobody Denies That. But It Must Be Solemnly Laid On Everybody In This World To Make His Own Observations And Remarks. That's What We Mean By Thinking, And That's About All We Mean. A Teacher Says To A Pupil "watch Me Notice A Few Things In The Next Few Months: Let's See You Notice A Few Things Too."