All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“In the prison of his daysTeach the free man how to praise”

“He said he’d hurt himself against a wall or had fallen down.But there was probably some other reason for the wounded, the bandaged shoulder.With a rather abrupt gesture, reaching for a shelf to bring down some photographs he wanted to look at, the bandage came came undone and a little blood ran.I did it up again, taking my time over the binding; he wasn’t in pain and I liked looking at the blood. It was a thing of my love, that blood.When he left, I found, in front of his chair, a bloody rag, part of the dressing, a rag to be thrown straight into the garbage; and I put it to my lips and kept it there a long while- the blood of love against my lips.”

“He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker’s cough in the hall.”

“Next o’er his books his eyes began to roll,In pleasing memory of all he stole.”

“Hesitate once, hesitate twice, hesitate a hundred times before employing political standards as a device for the analysis and appreciation of poetry.”

“What is this life so full of care,We don’t have time to stand and stare.”

“Only–but this is rare–When a beloved hand is laid in ours,When, jaded with the rush and glareOf the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,When our world-deafen’d earIs by the tones of a loved voice caress’d–A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,And hears its winding murmur; and he seesThe meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.”

“Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it.”

“SPRING POEMIt is spring, my decision, the earthferments like rising breador refuse, we are burninglast year’s weeds, the smokeflares from the road, the clumped stalksglow like sluggish phoenixes / it wasn’tonly my fault / birdsongs burst fromthe feathered pods of their bodies, dandelionswhirl their blades upwards, from beneaththis decaying board a snakesidewinds, chained hidesmelling of reptile sex / the hensroll in the dust, squinting with bliss, frogbodiesbloat like bladders, contract, stringthe pond with living jellyeyes, can I be thisruthless? I plungemy hands and arms into the dirt,swim among stones and cutworms,come up rank as a fox,restless. Nights, while seedlingsdig near my headI dream of reconciliationswith those I have hurtunbearably, we move stilltouching over the greening fields, the futurewounds folded like seedsin our tender fingers, daysI go for vicious walks past the charredroadbed over the bashed stubbleadmiring the view, avoidingthose I have not hurtyet, apocalypse coiled in my tongue,it is spring, I am searchingfor the word:finishedfinishedso I can begin overagain, some yearI will take this word too far.”

“brave love, dreamnot of staunching such strict flame, but come,lean to my wound; burn on, burn on.”

“I fain would follow love, if that could be; I needs must follow death, who calls for me; Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.”

“Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despairOf not being able to expressWith a shout, an extreme and bitter shout,The bleeding of my heart.”

“This man has talent, that man geniusAnd here’s the strange and cruel difference:Talent gives pence and his reward is gold,Genius gives gold and gets no more than pence.”

“I Have Loved Hours at SeaI have loved hours at sea, gray cities,The fragile secret of a flower,Music, the making of a poemThat gave me heaven for an hour;First stars above a snowy hill,Voices of people kindly and wise,And the great look of love, long hidden,Found at last in meeting eyes.I have loved much and been loved deeply—Oh when my spirit’s fire burns low,Leave me the darkness and the stillness,I shall be tired and glad to go.”

“Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, ‘Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.”