“What we have to consider is the brevity of life.”

His reason for neglecting the farm and attending to wonder instead · Conversation, reported in Time magazine, 1958

• Life
• Mortality
• Time

“A sparrow in a snowstorm with a feather in his bill: that is Faith.”

Belief pictured as a small bird still building in impossible weather · Flying Scrolls, collected in The Skylark and Other Poems

• Animals
• Faith
• Hope

“He was annoyed by my wanting to talk about Black and Tan terriers instead of poetry, but his Black and Tan is poetry.”

Dogs ranked with verse as a serious subject · Remark to Siegfried Sassoon about Arthur Quiller-Couch

• Animals
• Conversation
• Poetry