Quotes to inspire and reflect

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

His laughter tinkled among the teacups.

The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law.

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

And I must borrow every changing shape To find expression.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

I grow old… I grow old…. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

There will be time to murder and create.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

Lily O’Grady, Silly and shady, Longing to be A lazy lady.

Still falls the Rain— Dark as the world of man, black as our loss— Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross.

Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.

“Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy And the dogs that talk revolution, Drunk with talk, liars and believers. I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,” Said the gamey black-maned wild boar Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.

The strong lean upon death as on a rock.

A stone is a better pillow than many visions.

Pacific leans on the land, Feeling his cold strength To the outmost margins.

I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk.

Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you The wings of the future, for I have them.

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

Now, God be thanked, Who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.

If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.

Fish say, they have their stream and pond; But is there anything beyond?

Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes.

Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

Who will remember, passing through this gate, The unheroic dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate— Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. 1

Magnificently unprepared For the long littleness of life.

Crises of expression and spasms of eros: that’s the man of today, the inside a vacuum, the continuity of personality provided by his suit, which with stout cloth might be good for ten years.

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, The green casque has outdone your elegance.

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none? First came the seen, then thus the palpable What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.

No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.

It gives no man a sinecure. And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece. “And give up verse, my boy, There’s nothing in it.”