A good looking book indeed. And a good read.
“I will arise and go now, go to Innisfree.” (Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree).
“I will arise and go now, go to Innisfree.” (Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree).
“Turning and
turning in the widening gyre
The falcon
cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall
apart; the centre cannot hold.
(…)
The best lack
all conviction, while the worst
Are full of
passionate intensity.” (Yeats, The
Second Coming).
“A starlit or a
moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere
complexities,
The fury and the
mire of human veins.” (Yeats, Byzantium).
“Many times man
lives and dies
Between his two
eternities,
That of race and
that of soul,
(…)
Though
grave-diggers toil is long,
Sharp their
spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust
their buried men
Back in the
human mind again.” (Yeats, Under Ben
Bulben).
“So I, as I grow
stiff and cold
To this and that
say Good-bye too;
And everybody
sees that I am old
But you.”
(Charlotte Mew, A Quoi Bon Dire).
A fine wind is
blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it
bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive,
subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most
lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine,
fine, wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine,
exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted.” (D.H. Lawrence. The Song of a Man
who has Come Through).
“And if tonight
my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and
sink in good oblivion,
and in the
morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been
dipped again in God, and new-created.” (D.H. Lawrence, Shadows).
“I feel remorse
for all that time has done
To you, my love,
as if myself, not time,
Had set you the
never-resting sun
And the little
deadly days, to work this crime.” (Edwin Muir, Love’s Remorse).
“There will be
time, there will be time
To prepare a
face to meet the faces that you meet.
(…)
And time yet for
a hundred indecisions,
And for a
hundred visions and revisions,
Before the
taking of a toast and tea.” (T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock).
“He who was living
is now dead
We who were
living are now dying
With a little
patience.” (T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land).
“ (…) And every
phrase
And every
sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place
to support the others,
The word neither
diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce
of the old and the new,
The common word
exact without vulgarity,
The formal word
precise but not pedantic,
The complete
consort dancing together)” (T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding).
“I love to see,
when leaves depart,
The clear
anatomy arrive,
Winter, the
paragon of art,
That kills all
forms of life and feeling
Save what is
pure and will survive.” (Roy Campbell, Autumn).
“God’s truth is
life – even the grotesque shapes of its foulest fire.” (Patrick Kavanagh, The
Great Hunger).
“Time and fever
burn away
Individual
beauty from
Thoughtful
children, and the grave
Proves the child
ephemeral:
But in my arms
till break of day
Let the living
creature lie,
Mortal, guilty,
but to me
The entirely
beautiful.” (W.H. Auden Lullaby).
“But for him it
was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of
nurses and rumours;
The provinces of
his body revolted
The squares of
his mind were empty,
Silence invaded
the suburbs,
The current of
his feelings failed, he became his admirers.” (W.H. Auden, In Memory of W.B.
Yeats).
“Rid me, death,
Of the words I
have used.” (Kathleen Raine, Two Invocation of Death).
“While I remain
The world is
ending,
Forests are
falling,
Suns are fading,
While I am here
Now is ending
And in my arms
The living are
dying.
Shall I come at
last
To the lost
beginning?” (Kathleen Raine, Two Invocation of Death).
“You in anger
tried to make us new
To cancel all
the warmth and loving-kindness
With which
maturing time has joined us two
And re-infect
love with his former blindness.” (James Reeves, You in anger).
“Now as I was
young and easy under the apple boughs
About the
lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above
the dingle starry,
Time let me hail
and climb
Golden in the
heydays of his eyes,
And honoured
among the wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a
time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies
and barley
Down the rives
of the windfall light.
(…)
In the sun that
is young once only,
Time let me play
and be
Golden in the
mercy of his means.
(…)
And nightly
under the simple stars
As I rode to
sleep the owls were bearing the farm away.
(…)
I ran my
heedless ways,
My wishes raced
through the house high hay.” (Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill).
“To take life is
always to die a little: to stop
any feeling and
moving contrivance, however ugly,
unnecessary, or
hateful, is to reduce by so much the total
of life there
is. And that is to die a little.” (John Wain, A Song About Major Eatherly).
