“No poem gives me such an idea of the heartlessness of Nature. The poem is Death within and Summer without—light girdling darkness—and it leaves a picture and impression on the mind never to be effaced.”

Admiring the unforgettable contrast between natural beauty and human grief · Letter to Louise Chandler Moulton, on The House of Death

• Death
• Nature
• Poetry

“I want to tell them of what the flowers talk about when the garden is very still.”

A characteristic expression of Marston's imaginative intimacy with the natural world · Letter, quoted in an 1887 reminiscence

• Imagination
• Nature
• Wonder

“Much as we all love and admire your work, it seems to me we have not yet fully realized the unostentatious loveliness of your lyrics, as fine for lyrics as your best sonnets are for sonnets.”

Praising lyric poetry whose artistry works without display or self-consciousness · Letter to Louise Chandler Moulton, quoted in Representative Women of New England

• Beauty
• Poetry
• Style