Joyce Kilmer Quotes

#1. But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

#2. It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun
And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men:
But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.

Joyce Kilmer

#3. In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet,
There is a new-made grave today,
Built by never a spade nor pick,
Yet covered with earth ten meteres thick.
There lie many fighting men.
Dead in their youthful prime.

Joyce Kilmer

#4. The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.

Joyce Kilmer

#5. For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.

Joyce Kilmer

#6. The only reason a road is good as every wanderer knows / Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes to which one goes

Joyce Kilmer

#7. I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time. But I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental - in fact I wanted faith.

Joyce Kilmer

#8. The fairy poet takes a sheet Of moonbeam, silver white; His ink is dew from daisies sweet, His pen a point of light.

Joyce Kilmer

#9. I suppose I passed it a hundred times, But I always stop for a minute. And look at the house, the tragic house, The house with nobody in it.

Joyce Kilmer

#10. I think that I shall never scan A tree as lovely as a man ... A tree depicts divinest plan, But God himself lives in a man.

Joyce Kilmer

#11. What matters Death, if Freedom be not dead?
No flags are fair, if Freedom's flag be furled.
Who fights for Freedom, goes with joyful tread
To meet the fires of Hell against him hurled.

Joyce Kilmer

#12. They say that life is a highway and its milestones are the years,And now and then there's a toll-gate where you buy your way with tears.It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches broad and far,But at last it leads to a golden Town where golden Houses are.

Joyce Kilmer

#13. There is no peace to be taken
With poets who are young,
For they worry about the wars to be fought
and the songs that must be sung.

Joyce Kilmer

#14. I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

#15. Things have a terrible permanence when people die.

Joyce Kilmer

#16. When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed daughter. Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny feet still know beautiful paths.

Joyce Kilmer

#17. Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree

Joyce Kilmer

#18. There is no place in which to hide when Age comes seeking for his bride.

Joyce Kilmer