Critics From The United Kingdom

"The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will do never again."

"I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds, Sniff them and think and sniff again and try Once more to think what it is I am remembering, Always in vain. I cannot like the scent, Yet I would rather give up others more sweet, With no meaning, than this bitter one."

"The simple lack Of her is more to me Than others' presence."

"I read Edward Thomas for a breath of air."

"My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost — that it is born again."

"As poets we do not ask permission before we begin to practise, for there is no authority to license us. We do not inquire whether it is still possible to pen a drama, for the answer to that question is ours alone to give. It is our drama, spoken or sung, that asserts our right to the title of poet. It is our decision that counts, and not the opinion of some theatre management, or the ponderings of the critic, or even the advice of our friendliest mentors."

"The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting."

"It normally happens that if you put two words together, or two syllables together, one of them will attract more weight, more emphasis, than the other. In other words, most so-called spondees can be read as either iambs or trochees."

"Can the ear hear a thirteen-syllable line as consisting of thirteen syllables? I don't think so, but I think that a series of thirteen-syllable lines (supposing that was the length chosen) would, after a while, begin to have a characteristic resemblance. For the most part, though, counting the syllables seems to be something that works, if it works, for the poet. It is a private method of organization."

"Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done."

"We are never such kleptomaniacs as in our juvenilia. We steal from our masters. We steal from our friends, from our enemies even. We try out tones of voice for which we are ill suited. We write as if we belong to some other period. We are suckers for gorgeous words such as nenuphar, asphodel, and pelf. And because we are not yet in command of our vehicle we get out of control. We reveal ourselves inadvertently and we inadvertently commit ourselves to some point of view that really isn't "us" at all."

"The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation."

"There is always a nasty surprise in store for the imperial mind. It is typical of the imperial point of view that it is ignorant of, or blind to, the other. The imperial mind keeps missing the point. It fails to appreciate, for all its benevolence, why it might come under attack, why it might, for instance, be worth a nation's while to rise up against it. The imperial mind has to be shocked out of its daydreams."

"Yes You have come upon the fabled lands where myths Go when they die, But some, especially the Brummagem capitalist Juju, have arrived prematurely."

"A serious mistake in a nightie, A grave disappointment all round Is all that you'll get from th'Almighty, Is all that you'll get underground. Oh he said: "If you lay off the crumpet I'll see you alright in the end. Just hang on until the last trumpet. Have faith in me, chum – I'm your friend.""

"Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most...are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so."

"Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world."

"Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in its origins, its transmission was oral."

"Poetry is not a metrical exercise."

"It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down. It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses. It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist."

"Tennyson follows his feelings in creating each line. He follows the music in his head. If you had asked him, at the end of the day, to describe the prosody of the poem to you, he would no doubt have had to think for a moment before he could answer you, not because he was ignorant of the terms, but because he had been writing a poem, not a metrical exercise. At every point, he was exerting his free will. And the outcome of that exertion was the form."

"I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear."

"Great writers arrive among us like new diseases – threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible."

"The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple – to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it."

"Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings And some are treasured for their markings – They cause the eyes to melt Or the body to shriek without pain."

"In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, That snores when you pick it up. If the ghost cries, they carry it To their lips and soothe it to sleep With sounds. And yet, they wake it up Deliberately, by tickling with a finger."

"He stood beside a cottage lone And listened to a lute, One summer’s eve, when the breeze was gone, And the nightingale was mute."

"A love that took an early root, And had an early doom."

"The tomb of him who would have made The world too glad and free."

"Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles, But never came to shore."

"Wake, soldier, wake, thy war-horse waits To bear thee to the battle back; Thou slumberest at a foeman’s gates,— Thy dog would break thy bivouac; Thy plume is trailing in the dust And thy red falchion gathering rust."

"A Hebrew knelt in the dying light, His eye was dim and cold, The hairs on his brow were silver-white, And his blood was thin and old."

"Gayly we glide in the gaze of the world With streamers afloat and with canvas unfurled, All gladness and glory to wandering eyes, Yet chartered by sorrow and freighted with sighs."

"Love is a practical desire for the good of another. It is much easier to talk about than to carry into action because it requires such sensitivity and unselfishness."

"Agnes Martin often speaks of joy; she sees it as the desired condition of all life. Who would disagree with her?... No-one who has seriously spent time before an Agnes Martin, letting its peace communicate itself, receiving its inexplicable and ineffable happiness, has ever been disappointed. The work awes, not just with its delicacy, but with its vigor, and this power and visual interest is something that has to be experienced."

"I believe in loyalty. We should respect our church, but never believe that the church has the last word. The church is saying 'this', but I believe that sooner or later 'this' will change. 'This' is not the mind of our Lord. God is all love. It's a delicate balancing thing. The Church has changed its position over the years, and because the spirit is with the Church, in the end the Church will always get it right. But in the end. The spirit of the Church is the meaning of love, which hasn't yet, perhaps, been fully understood."

"No seed shall perish which the soul hath sown."

"Gods fade; but God abides and in man’s heart Speaks with the clear unconquerable cry Of energies and hopes that can not die."

"These things shall be! A loftier race Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise With flame of freedom in their souls, And light of science in their eyes."

"She smiled, and the shadows departed; She shone, and the snows were rain; And he who was frozen-hearted Bloomed up into love again."

"Shades are we; and of shades we weave A trifling pleasant make-believe; Then pass into the shadowy night, Where formless shades blindfold the light."

"He certainly over-heated himself at Venice by walking at a season when it is said that only Dogs and Englishmen are seen out of doors at noon, all else lie down in the middle of the day."

"Now, as discord is allowable, and even necessarily opposed to concord, why may not noise, or a seeming jargon, be opposed to fixed sounds and harmonical proportion? Some of the discords in modern music, unknown till this century, are what the ear can but just bear, but have a very good effect as to contrast. The severe laws of preparing and resolving discord, may be too much adhered to for great effect; I am convinced that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it."

"With respect to excellence of Style and Composition, it may perhaps be said that to practised ears the most pleasing Music is such as has the merit of novelty, added to refinement, and ingenious contrivance; and to the ignorant, such as is most familiar and common."

"The umbrage given to Cuzzoni by her [ Faustina Bordoni's] coming hither, proves that as Turkish monarchs can bear no brother near the throne, an aspiring sister is equally obnoxious to a theatrical Queen."

"Bentley, like the anti-Miltonists, had a great gift for getting hold of the right thing—by the wrong end. Again and again he sees exactly what is happening in a passage of Milton. He then deplores it, but we need not do so, and can be grateful for his insight. He may be wrong-headed, but at least he is headed."

"The mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains."

"In the last decades of his life Bentley undertook two ambitious projects that had an immense effect on the future of scholarship, namely editions of the New Testament and of Homer ... [H]e would not present once again the received text with a farrago of readings from manuscripts of all ages, but would try to restore the oldest knowable text. This was in his opinion the text of the fourth century A.D. at the time of the Council of Nicaea. He proposed to restrict himself to the oldest Greek manuscripts, supplemented by the oldest manuscripts of the Vulgate, of the ancient Oriental versions, and of the earliest quotations in the writings of the Church Fathers. The edition was to become, as Bentley said, "a Charter, a Magna Carta to the whole Christian church". He collected material from manuscripts for more than twenty years, zealously assisted, among other fellow labourers, by the French Benedictines. Although personal difficulties, as well as the complexity of the problems, prevented Bentley from completing and publishing his edition, his project anticipated by a whole century the work of Lachmann and others."

"It is a maxim with me that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."

"“Whatever is, is not,” is the maxim of the anarchist, as often as anything comes across him in the shape of a law which he happens not to like."