May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995), an American poet, novelist and memoirist.
We saw the strong trees struggle and their plumes do down, The poplar bend and whip back till it split to fall, The elm tear up at the root and topple like a crown, The pine crack at the base - we had to watch them all. The ash, the lovely cedar. We had to watch them fall. They went so softly under the loud flails of air, Before that fury they went down like feathers, With all the hundred springs that flowered in their hair, and all the years, endured in all the weathers - To fall as if they were nothing, as if they were feathers.
In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance.
If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked.
The only way through pain…is to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means. To close the door on pain is to miss the chance for growth.
"How does one grow up?" I asked a friend. She answered, "By thinking!"
The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.
When it comes to the important things one is always alone.
I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.
Mountains define you. You cannot define Them.
The tragic thing about learning from experience is I fear that one can only learn from one's own experience. Other people's - other nations' - experiences simply do not help. They can be imaginatively learned from. But people do not act on other people's experiences.
A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.
The poet must be free to love or hate as the spirit moves him, free to change, free to be a chameleon, free to be an enfant terrible. He must above all never worry about this effect on other people.
People who are always thinking of the feelings of others can be very destructive because they are hiding so much from themselves.
I tell the gods are still alive And they are not consoling.
One of the good elements of old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are.
One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.
At any moment solitude may put on the face of loneliness.
I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become. . . but there are always a few saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress.
Nobody stays special when they're old, Anna. That's what we have to learn.
There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.