Joyce Kilmer
5 quotes
Biography
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was an American writer and poet mainly remembered for a short poem titled "Trees" (1913), which was published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his Catholic faith, Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor.
"I think that I shall never seeA poem lovely as a tree.A tree whose hungry mouth is pressedAgainst the earth's sweet flowing breast;A tree that looks at God all dayAnd lifts her leafy arms to pray;A tree that may in summer wearA nest of robins in her hair;Upon whose bosom snow has lain;Who intimately lives with rain.Poems are made by fools like me,But only God can make a tree."
"At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier. To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of something beautiful … The only sort of book I care to write about the war is the sort people will read after the war is over — a century after it is over."
"If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him wrong,For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home along.And the only reason a road is good, as every wanderer knows,Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes to which it goes."
"Things have a terrible permanence when people die."
"Poems are made by fools like me But only God can make a tree."