Quotes From "Complete Poems" By Christina Rossetti

... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ...... if you demand on one hand, the raw material of poetry inall its rawness andthat which is on the other handgenuine, then you are interested in poetry. Marianne Moore

Wolf's wool is the best wool, but it cannot be sheared, because the wolf will not comply. With knowledge as with wolves' surliness, the student studies voluntarily, refusing to be less than individual. He "gives his opinion and then rests upon it"; he renders service when there is no reward, and is too reclusive for some things to seem to touch him; not because he has no feeling but because he has so much. Marianne Moore

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts Make of so noble individual parts One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts. John Donne

You are not male or female, but a plandeep-set within the heart of man. Marianne Moore

TO VICTOR HUGO OF MY CROW PLUTO “Even when the bird is walking we know that it has wings.”– V I C T O R HUGO Of: my crow Pluto, the true Plato, azzurronegro green-blue rainbow– Victor Hugo, it is true we know that the crow “has wings, ” however pigeon-toe- inturned on grass. We do. (adagio) Vivorosso “corvo, ” although con dizionario io parlo Italiano– this pseudo Esperanto which, savio ucello you speak too– my vow and motto (botto e totto) io giuro è questo credo: lucro è peso morto. And so dear crow– gioièllo mio– I have to let you go; a bel bosco generoso, tuttuto vagabondo, serafino uvaceo Sunto, oltremarino verecondo Plato, a. Marianne Moore

TO A GIRAFFE If it is unpermissible, in fact fatal to be personal and undesirable to be literal–detrimental as well if the eye is not innocent-does it mean that one can live only on top leaves that are small reachable only by a beast that is tall?– of which the giraffe is the best example– the unconversational animal. When plagued by the psychological, a creature can be unbearable that could have been irresistible; or to be exact, exceptional since less conversational than some emotionally-tied-in-knots animal. After all consolations of the metaphysical can be profound. In Homer, existence is flawed; transcendence, conditional; “the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual. . Marianne Moore

ROSEMARY Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary– Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly– born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary– since the flight to Egypt, blooming differently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, its flowers–white originally– turned blue. The herb of memory, imitating the blue robe of Mary, is not too legendary to flower both as symbol and as pungency. Springing from stones beside the sea, the height of Christ when thirty-three– it feeds on dew and to the bee “hath a dumb language”; is in reality a kind of Christmas-tree. Marianne Moore

In the days of Prismatic Colornot in the days of Adam and Eve, but when Adam was alone; when there was no smoke and color was fine, not with the refinement of early civilization art, but because of its originality; with nothing to modify it but the mist that went up, obliqueness was a variation of the perpendicular, plain to see and to account for: it is no longer that; nor did the blue-red-yellow band of incandescence that was color keep its stripe . Marianne Moore

You weresunrise to merise and warm and streaming.' - Praise Song For My Mother by Charlotte Mew Charlotte Mew

You werewater to medeep and bold and fathoming' - Praise Song For My Mother by Charlotte Mew Charlotte Mew

Then a hundred sad voices lifted a wail, And a hundred glad voices piped on the gale:' Time is short, life is short, ' they took up the tale: 'Life is sweet, love is sweet, use to-day while you may; Love is sweet, and to-morrow may fail; Love is sweet, use to-day. Christina Rossetti

Give me the lowest place: not that I dare Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died That I might live and share Thy glory by Thy side. Give me the lowest place: of if for me That lowest place too high, make one more low Where I may sit and see My God and love Thee so. Christina Rossetti

For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge, I live alone, I look to die alone: Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge, Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back, My heart goes sighing after swallows flown On sometime summer's unreturning track. Christina Rossetti

The sated day is never first The best day is a day of thirst Yes, there is goal and meaning in our path -but it is the way that is the labour's worth. Karin Boye

Yule–Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner–of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner. Marianne Moore

I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it Marianne Moore