Quotes From "Collected Poems" By W.h. Auden

I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime. Unknown

I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The wind is westerly, Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly Into the apparitions of the sky, They purpose nothing but their ease and die Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea; Robert Lowell

These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing, I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant, Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting With various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go. . Stevie Smith

God the EaterThere is a god in whom I do not believe Yet to this god my love stretches, This god whom I do not believe in is My whole life, my life and I am his. Everything that I have of pleasure and pain( Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt) I give this god for him to feed upon As he is my whole life and I am his. When I am dead I hope that he will eat Everything I have been and have not been And crunch and feed upon it and grow fat Eating my life all up as it is his. Stevie Smith

Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I! Unknown

Άλλα ζητεί η ψυχή σου, γι’ άλλα κλαίει· Constantinos P. Cavafis

And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see, --A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, --I know not how such things can be! --I breathed my soul back into me. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang IAnd hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky. Unknown

Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes – ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded. W.h. Auden

On No Work of WordsOn no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven, The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft. To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark. To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work. . Dylan Thomas

When this book is mould, And a book of many Waiting to be sold For a casual penny, In a little open case, In a street unclean and cluttered, Where a heavy mud is spattered From the passing drays, Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters, finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I! . Unknown

If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white Mervyn Peake

When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my coat and fangs Had ripping times in the dark. The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues. Don't read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who's yellow and keeps the store Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.( A Study Of Reading Habits) . Philip Larkin

I know not how such things can be; I only know there came to me A fragrance such as never clings To aught save happy living things; A sound as of some joyous elf Singing sweet songs to please himself, And, through and over everything, A sense of glad awakening. The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear, Whispering to me I could hear; I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips Brushed tenderly across my lips, Laid gently on my sealed sight, And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see! – A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, – I know not how such things can be! – I breathed my soul back into me. Unknown

Lie down beside these waters That bubble from the spring; Hear in the desert silence The desert sparrow sing; Draw from the shapeless moment Such pattern as you can; And cleave henceforth to Beauty;Expect no more from man. Man, with his ready answer, His sad and hearty word, For every cause in limbo, For every debt deferred, For every pledge forgotten, His eloquent and grim Deep empty gaze upon you, – Expect no more from him. Unknown

Even the most misfitting child Who's chanced upon the library's worth, Sits with the genius of the EarthAnd turns the key to the whole world.--" Hear It Again Ted Hughes

I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am; Maelström of passions in that hidden sea Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me; And in small compass the dark waters Mervyn Peake

If the truth is inside, And the form is outside, What is the truth of sleep? Kenneth Patchen

To live at all is miracle enough. Mervyn Peake

What living occasion can, Be just to the absent? W.h. Auden

Not Waving but Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning. Stevie Smith

The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore. Jack Gilbert

I turn away reluctant from your light, And stand irresolute, a mind undone, A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight From having looked too long upon the sun. Then is my daily life a narrow room In which a little while, uncertainly, Surrounded by impenetrable gloom, Among familiar things grown strange to me Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark, Till I become accustomed to the dark. Unknown

Once she said the world was an astonishing animal: light was its spirit and noise was its mind. That it was composed to feed on honor, but did not. Jack Gilbert

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image. Jack Gilbert

We should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time. Philip Larkin

I am too rich already, for my eyes mint Mervyn Peake

We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos. Jack Gilbert

Each day we live is a glass room Until we break it with the thrusting Of the spirit and pass through The splintered walls to the green pastures Where the birds and buds are breaking Into fabulous song and hue By the still w Mervyn Peake

And so beneath the weight lay IAnd suffered death, but could not die. Unknown

Coincidences undeniably imply meaning. I am rereading Hart Crane.I notice the date On which he stepped off that boat Was April 26.Tomorrow is April 26.The year of his suicide was 1932.I was four. I am now fifty-one. One undeniable implication in this case then Is that the year, today, Is 1979.Afterward, Crane’s mother scrubbed floors. Eventually, I may or may not Jump overboard. Are there questions? . David Markson

Overheard on a Saltmarsh"Nymph, nymph, what are your beads? Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them? Give them me. No. Give them me. Give them me. No. Then I will howl all night in the reeds, Lie in the mud and howl for them. Goblin, why do you love them so? They are better than stars or water, Better than voices of winds that sing, Better than any man's fair daughter, Your green glass beads on a silver ring. Hush, I stole them out of the moon. Give me your beads, I want them. No. I will howl in the deep lagoon For your green glass beads, I love them so. Give them me. Give them. No. Harold Monro

I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance. W.h. Auden

Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table .... W.h. Auden

Dreams have always expanded our understanding of reality by challenging our boundaries of the real, the possible. Henry Reed

They find me odd, and whisper behind hands… And my brutal desires sink hooks into their lips… Arthur Rimbaud

Law & order embrace on hate's border. Kenneth Patchen

When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?' 'Silence, ' he finally told me. Jack Gilbert

We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics. An endless, endless of going on. No habitat where the brain can recognize itself. No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication. Jack Gilbert

I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost. Jack Gilbert

When I was a child, I thought, Casually, that solitude Never needed to be sought. Something everybody had, Like nakedness, it lay at hand, Not specially right or specially wrong, A plentiful and obvious thing Not at all hard to understand. Then, after twenty, it became At once more difficult to get And more desired -- though all the same More undesirable; for what You are alone has, to achieve The rank of fact, to be expressed In terms of others, or it's just A compensating make-believe. Much better stay in company! To love you must have someone else, Giving requires a legatee, Good neighbours need whole parishfuls Of folk to do it on -- in short, Our virtues are all social; if, Deprived of solitude, you chafe, It's clear you're not the virtuous sort. Viciously, then, I lock my door. The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside Ushers in evening rain. Once more Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what . Philip Larkin

I avoid the looming visitor, Flee him adroitly around corners, Hating him, wishing him well; Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise true: That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied; And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the sonnet cools Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since I was a child. Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt, There may be. But not enough to keep a bird alive. There is a flaw amounting to a fissure In such behaviour. . Unknown