To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.
Even nowadays an archaic sense of love-innocence recurs, however briefly, among most young men and women. Some few of these, who become poets, remain in love for the rest of their lives, watching the world with a detachment unknown to lawyers, politicians, financiers, and all other ministers of that blind and irresponsible successor to matriarchy and patriarchy — the mechanarchy.
After nine months he’s shed all fear, all faith, all hate, all hope.
As you are woman, so be lovely:
As you are lovely, so be various,
Merciful as constant, constant as various,
So be mine, as I yours for ever.
War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air.
It doesn't matter what's the cause,
What wrong they say we're righting,
A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,
When we're to do the fighting!
You'll find me buried, living-dead
In these verses that you've read.