Theodore Roethke - Love Quotes

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Beginnings start without shade,
Thinner than minnows.
The live grass whirls with the sun,
Feet run over the simple stones,
There's time enough.
Behold, in the lout's eye, love.

Theodore Roethke
Now I adore my life
With the Bird, the abiding Leaf,
With the Fish, the questing Snail,
And the Eye altering all;
And I dance with William Blake For love, for Love's sake.

Theodore Roethke
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

Theodore Roethke
Teaching is an act of love, a spiritual cohabitation, one of the few sacred relationships left in a crass secular world.

Theodore Roethke
Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:
Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.
Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;
The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;
And love, love sang toward.

Theodore Roethke
And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake; And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.

Theodore Roethke
My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.

Theodore Roethke
Teaching: one of the few professions that permit love.

Theodore Roethke
The night wind rises. Does my father live?
Dark hangs upon the waters of the soul.
My flesh is breathing slower than a wall.
Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.

Theodore Roethke
O who can be
Both moth and flame? The weak moth blundering by.
Whom do we love? I thought I knew the truth;
Of grief I died, but no one knew my death.

Theodore Roethke
I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another. With bats, weasels, worms...I rejoice in the kinship. Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin.

Theodore Roethke