Witter Bynner > Quotes

“Name me no names for my disease,
With uninforming breath;
I tell you I am none of these,
But homesick unto death —Homesick for hills that I had known,
For brooks that I had crossed,
...Before I met this flesh and bone
And followed and was lost… .And though they break my heart at last,
Yet name no name of ills.
Say only, "Here is where he passed,
Seeking again those hills.”
― Witter Bynner, Grenstone Poems: A Sequence

“She never moved in pieces
like a mosaic
She moved whole like a sculpture

But it was next to impossible
With her limited means
even if she had started

And besides
They were watching”
― Witter Bynner, New Poems 1960

“Lightning
- 1881-1968

There is a solitude in seeing you,
Followed by your company when you are gone.
You are like heaven’s veils of lightning.
I cannot see till afterward
How beautiful you are.
There is a blindness in seeing you,
Followed by the sight of you when you are gone.”
― Witter Bynner

“Still must I tamely
Talk sense with these others?

How long
Before I shall be with you again,
Magnificently saying nothing!”
― Witter Bynner, Selected Poems