Quotes to inspire and reflect

I carry the sun in a golden cup, The moon in a silver bag. 8

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead… That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

What were all the world’s alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen’s arms?

But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.

I had wild Jack for a lover.

“Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,” I cried. “My friends are gone, but that’s a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.”

Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.

Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

Things said or done long years ago, Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

No man has ever lived that had enough Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song After great cathedral gong.

At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit.

Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast, Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty.

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

A leveling, rancorous, rational sort of mind That never looked out of the eye of a saint Or out of drunkard’s eye.

Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch.

What they undertook to do They brought to pass; All things hang like a drop of dew Upon a blade of grass.

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love’s pleasure drives his love away, The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.

Whatever flames upon the night Man’s own resinous heart has fed.

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.

Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.

O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

But is there any comfort to be found? Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?

What shall I do with this absurdity— O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog’s tail?

Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 6

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress.

The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will.

An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?

And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

If there’s no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.

It’s certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.

Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.