Poets From England

"This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven."

"It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt."

"Autumn returned to Gormenghast like a dark spirit re-entering its stronghold."

"It was not possible for him to visit his library as often as he wished, for the calls made upon him by the endless ceremonials which were his exacting duty to perform robbed him for many hours each day of his only pleasure—books."

"Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls."

"The summer was heavy with a kind of soft grey-blue weight in the sky—yet not in the sky, for it was as though there were no sky, but only air, an impalpable grey-blue substance, drugged with the weight of its own heat and hue."

"I saw all of a sudden No sign of any ship."

"It's not their fault if, in the heat Of their transactions, I repeat It's not their fault if vampires meet And gurgle in their spats."

"When Uncle Jake Became a snake He never found it out; And so as no one mentions it One sees him still about."

"O'er seas that have no beaches To end their waves upon, I floated with twelve peaches, A sofa and a swan."

"There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice."

"Each day I live in a glass room Unless I break it with the thrusting Of my senses and pass through The splintered walls to the great landscape."

"Leave the stronger and the lesser things to me! Lest that conger named Vanessa who is longer than a dresser visits thee."

"But we have seen it in the air, A fairy like a William Pear"

"“She thinks she’s a lady.” And then he grinned until the very lake seemed to be in danger of engulfment. “Oh, dear!” the poor thing. Tries so hard, and the more she tries, the less she is. Ha! ha! ha! Take it from me, Fuchsia dear, The only ladies are those to whom the idea of whether they are or not never occurs. Her blood’s all right—Irma’s—same as mine, ha, ha, ha! but it doesn’t go by blood. It’s equipoise, my Gipsy, equipoise that does it—with a bucketful of tolerance thrown in."

"There are times when the emotions are so clamorous and the rational working of the mind so perfunctory that there is no telling where the actual leaves off and the images of fantasy begin."

"To live at all is miracle enough."

"Art should be artless, not heartless."

"The paper is breathless Under the hand And the pencil is poised Like a warlock's wand."

"“You have a rough manner,” said Titus. “But you have saved me twice. Why are you helping me?” “I have no idea,” said Muzzlehatch. “There must be something wrong with my brain.”"

"The tremendous gulf between the sexes yawned—and an abyss, terrifying and thrilling, sheer and black as the arbour in which they sat; a darkness wide, dangerous, imponderable and littered with the wrecks of broken bridges."

"Poetry? It's a hobby. I run model trains. Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons. It's not work. You don't sweat. Nobody pays for it. You could advertise soap."

"Who says it's poetry, anyhow? My ten year old can do it and rhyme. Mr Hines says so, and he's a schoolteacher, he ought to know. Go and find work"

"There are the Alps. What is there to say about them? They don't make sense. Fatal glaciers, crags cranks climb, jumbled boulder and weed, pasture and boulder, scree, et l'on entend, maybe, le refrain joyeux et leger. Who knows what the ice will have scraped on the rock it is smoothing?There they are, you will have to go a long way round if you want to avoid them. It takes some getting used to. There are the Alps, fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble!"

"Never explain- your reader is as smart as you. Your reader is not just any reader, but is the rare one with ears in his head."

"All you can usually say about a poem or a picture is, 'Look at it, listen to it.' Whether you listen to a piece of music or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.""

"He whom we anatomized ‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things’ speaks to us, hatching marrow, broody all night over the bones of a deadman."

"Compose aloud: poetry is a sound."

"It's writ by somebody that knows the top and the bottom, the highest and lowest of mankind—It's very good language, and there's an infinite deal of fun in it."

"Johnson says, most judiciously, that the grand merit [of Cecilia] is in the general Power of the whole."

"Then he saw his ghosts glitter with golden hands, the Emperor sliding up and up from his tomb alongside Charles. These things are not obliterate. White gobs spitten for mockery; and I too shall have , written over me."

"It is clear enough, however, that the work of Miss Burney, the mother of English fiction, was not inspired by any single wish to redress a grievance: the richness of the human scene as Dr Burney's daughter had the chance of observing it provided a sufficient stimulus."

"Unused to the situations in which I find myself, and embarrassed by the slightest difficulties, I seldom, till too late, discover how I ought to act."

"Madame D'Arblay is, on the contrary, quite of the old school, a mere common observer of manners, and also a very woman. It is this last circumstance which forms the peculiarity of her writings, and distinguishes them from those masterpieces which I have before mentioned. She is a quick, lively, and accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is the particular business and interest of women to observe them. There is little in her works of passion or character, or even manners, in the most extended sense of the word, as implying the sum-total of our habits and pursuits; her forte is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external behaviour, or the manners of people in company. Her characters, which are ingenious caricatures, are, no doubt, distinctly marked, and well kept up; but they are slightly shaded, and exceedingly uniform. Her heroes and heroines, almost all of them, depend on the stock of a single phrase or sentiment, and have certain mottoes or devices by which they may always be known. They form such characters as people might be supposed to assume for a night at a masquerade. She presents, not the whole-length figure, nor even the face, but some prominent feature."

"Henry Fielding, too, would have been afraid of her: there is nothing so delicately finished in all of Harry Fieldings works as Evelina."

"To despise riches may, indeed, be philosophic; but to dispense them worthily must, surely, be more beneficial to mankind."

"Remember, my dear Evelina, nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman; it is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things."

"Doctor Johnson returned home last night full of the praises of the book [Evelina] I had lent him; protesting there were passages in it that might do honour to Richardson. We talk of it for ever; and he, Doctor Johnson, feels ardent after the denouement. He could not get rid of the Rogue! he said. I then lent him the second volume, which he instantly read; and he is, even now, busy with the third... Sir Joshua Reynolds had been fed while reading the little work, from refusing to quit it at table! and that Edmund Burke had sat up a whole night to finish it!!!"

"I am too inexperienced and ignorant to conduct myself with propriety in this town, where every thing is new to me, and many things are unaccountable and perplexing."

"Remember, imbeciles and wits, sots and ascetics, fair and foul, young girls with little tender tits, that is written over all. Worn hides that scarcely clothe the soul they are so rotten, old and thin, or firm and soft and warm and full— fellmonger Death gets every skin."

"I looked about for some of my acquaintance, but in vain, for I saw not one person that I knew, which is very odd, for all the world seemed there."

"A private ball this was called...but Lord! my dear Sir, I believe I saw half the world!"

"he said, 'Madam—may I presume?'—and stopped, offering to take my hand. I...could scarce forbear laughing. 'Allow me, Madam,' continuing he, affectedly breaking off every half moment, 'the honour and happiness...the happiness and honor...'"

"Look at your [English] ladies of quality—are they not forever parting with their husbands—forfeiting their reputations—and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls—who have politeness, sense and conversation—but these are few—and then look at your trademen's daughters—what are they?—poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly."

"I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility — I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling."

"To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintance and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal: a journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole heart!"

"Tired, ashamed, and mortified, I begged to sit down till we returned home, which I did soon after. Lord Orville did me the honour to hand me to the coach, talking all the way of the honour I had done him! O these fashionable people!"

"When once—which every body must be—you are convinced of the wickedness and deceit of men, it is impossible to preserve untainted your own innocence of heart. Experience will prove the depravity of mankind, and the conviction of it only serves to create distrust, suspicion—caution—and sometimes causelessly."

"O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed! To be young once more and bite my thumb At the world and all its cares with you, I’d Give no inconsiderable sum."

"The farmer’s daughter hath soft brown hair (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And I met with a ballad, I can’t say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these."