Hope Is Not Optimism, Which Expects Things

Now It’s High Watermark And Floodtide In The Heart And Time To Go. The Sea-nymphs In The Spray Will Be The Chorus Now. What’s Left To Say? Suspect Too Much Sweet-talk But Never Close Your Mind. It Was A Fortunate Wind That Blew Me Here. I Leave Half-ready To Believe That A Crippled Trust Might Walk And The Half-true Rhyme Is Love.

One Of The Very First Poems I Wrote Was Docker That Fist Would Drop A Hammer On A Catholic And One Of The Sturdiest Was Requiem For The Croppies, Written 50 Years After 1916 [the Year Of The Easter Rising]. Being Responsible And What It Means, What It Demands, Have Indeed Preoccupied Me Maybe Too Much. But This Is It, This Is The Thing, This Is What You're Up Against.

My Point Is There's A Hidden Scotland In Anyone Who Speaks The Northern Ireland Speech. It's A Terrific Complicating Factor, Not Just In Northern Ireland, But Ireland Generally.

I Have Begun To Think Of Life As A Series Of Ripples Widening Out From An Original Center.

Harvard Created Wonderful Conditions For Me As A Writerbut The Writing Was Done, Almost Entirely, When I Got Home.