"You ask my love completest, As strong next year as now, The devil take you, sweetest, Ere I make aught such vow. Life is a masque that changes, A fig for constancy! No love at all were better, Than love which is not free."

"When this, our rose, is faded, And these, our days, are done, In lands profoundly shaded From tempest and from sun: Ah, once more come together, Shall we forgive the past, And safe from worldly weather Possess our souls at last?"

"I was not sorrowful, but only tired Of everything that ever I desired."

"I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine."

"I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng."

"I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion."

"Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion."

"Better than mortal flowers, Thy moon-kissed roses seem."

"Say, doth she weep for very wantonness? Or is it that she dimly doth foresee Across her youth the joys grow less and less, The burden of the days that are to be: Autumn and withered leaves and vanity And winter bringing end in barrenness."

"Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild, But there, beside the altar, there, is rest."

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.They are not long, the days of wine and roses; Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream."

"I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder."

"What I do is me: for that I came."

"The tension of Hopkins is nearer to activity: it is activity, muscular, violent, and formal."

"There are basically three kinds of poetry: first, poetry which is divine (inspired); secondly, poetry which is crafted; and thirdly, poetry which is inherited. It reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins. He has a letter to a friend of his in which he speaks of writing and how there are three voices of the poet: the Olympian (inspired); the Parnassian (when you're really a good poet, you don't write bad poetry but sometimes you write so-so poetry), and finally, there's jargon."

"For human nature, being more highly pitched, selved, and distinctive than anything in the world, can have been developed, evolved, condensed, from the vastness of the world not anyhow or by the working of common powers but only by one of finer or higher pitch and determination than itself."

"I consider my selfbeing … that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man."

"Searching nature I taste self but at one tankard, that of my own being."

"I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see."

"When I compare myself, my being-myself, with anything else whatever, all things alike, all in the same degree, rebuff me with blank unlikeness."

"It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty."

"Any day, any minute we bless God for our being or for anything, for food, for sunlight, we do and are what we were meant for, made for — things that give and mean to give God glory."

"He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. So then, my brethren, live."

"The best ideal is the true And other truth is none. All glory be ascribed to The holy Three in One."

"The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim Now known and hand at work now never wrong. Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this; I want the one rapture of an inspiration."

"Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain."

"Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end?"

"I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond."

"My own heart let me have more have pity on; let Me live to my sad self hereafter kind, Charitable; not live this tormented mind With this tormented mind tormenting yet."

"Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks Our ruins of wrecked past purpose."

"I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see The lost are like this, and their scourge to be As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse."

"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent This night!"

"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep."

"No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring."

"That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God."

"Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be."

"World-mothering air, air wild, Wound with thee, in thee isled, Fold home, fast fold thy child."

"I say that we are wound With mercy round and round As if with air."

"Wild air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere, That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixt The fleeciest, frailest-fixed Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed With, riddles, and is rife In every least thing’s life."

"Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver."

"How to keep—is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?"

"What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

"Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for."

"Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, not spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why."

"Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving?"

"Poor Felix Randal; How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!"