“I was one day punished in school for crying and that punishment ever afterwards haunted the master like an evil dream, for I was only crying over Goldsmith's Deserted Village.”

Reveals the intensity of his emotional response to literature even as a child · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Childhood
• Emotion
• Reading

“I have taken up arms for the fields and rivers along the Boyne, for the birds and the blue sky over them.”

Defines military service through attachment to the landscape of home · Letter to his publisher, 9 April 1915

• Duty
• Home
• Nature

“I am of a family who were ever soldiers and poets.”

Places his two defining identities within a family tradition · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Family
• Poetry
• War