Poets From England

""Look here," Gerald said, "what do you think of Giants?" There was the kind of pause that happens when people do not like to say what they really think."

"You wouldn't believe how lonely you get."

"Mitt did not quite forget his perfect land. He remembered it, though a little fuzzily, next time the wind dropped, but he did not set off to look for it again. It was plain to him that soldiers only brought you back again if you went. It made him sad. When an inkling of it came to him in silence, or in scents, or, later, if the wind hummed a certain note, or a storm came shouting in from the sea and he caught the same note in the midst of its noise, he thought of his lost perfect place and felt for a moment as if his heart would break."

"The only good Dorig is a dead Dorig."

"People may wonder how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end."

"Things we are accustomed to regard as myth or fairy story are very much present in people’s lives. Nice people behave like wicked stepmothers. Every day."

"If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever."

"One does not want glory accepted as a matter of course. One wants to shock and astonish people with it."

"Adara was impressed. "How do you know that?" "I learnt it," said Hathil. "It pays to learn things.""

"To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much."

"The Northmen are often said to have burst out of their coastal settlements in what is now Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the end of the eighth century. The most famous account of their arrival into the Christian realms of the west comes from Britain. In 793 warriors appeared off the coast of Northumbria, leaped from their ships, and robbed the island of Lindisfarne, desecrating the monastery and murdering its brothers. This ferocious raid sent shock waves rippling out from Britain. When the news reached Charlemagne’s court in Aachen, Alcuin of York wrote to the king of Northumbria, deploring the fact that “the church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans.” He suggested to the king that he and his noblemen might mend their ways, starting by adopting more Christian haircuts and clothing styles. But it was too late for any of that. The Northmen had announced themselves as a major power in the western world. The next year, 794, raiders appeared on the other side of the British Isles, in the Hebrides. In 799 Vikings raided the monastery of Saint-Philibert at Noirmoutier, just to the south of the river Loire."

"What makes bitter things sweet? Hunger."

"Quapropter potius animam curare memento, quam carnem, quoniam haec manet, illa perit"

"I, your Flaccus, am busy carrying out your wishes and instructions at St. Martin's, giving some the honey of the holy scriptures, making others drunk on the old wine of ancient learning."

"Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit."

"O, my son's my son till he gets him a wife, But my daughter's my daughter all her life."

"Down in the deep, up in the sky, I see them always, far or nigh, And I shall see them till I die — The old familiar faces."

"There never was night that had no morn."

"The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever.Pause, my soul, On these strange words — for ever — whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time. O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens — Thee we wait!"

"Awakener, come! Fling wide the gate of an eternal year, The April of that glad new heavens and earth Which shall grow out of these, as spring-tide grows Slow out of winter's breast. Let Thy wide hand Gather us all — with none left out (O God! Leave Thou out none!) from the east and from the west. Loose Thou our burdens: heal our sicknesses; Give us one heart, one tongue, one faith, one love. In Thy great Oneness made complete and strong — To do Thy work throughout the happy world — Thy world, All-merciful — Thy perfect world."

"And all day long, so close and near, As in a mystic dream I hear Their gentle accents kind and dear — The old familiar voices. They have no sound that I can reach — But silence sweeter is than speech."

"All that we know of Thee, or knowing not Love only, waiting till the perfect time When we shall know even as we are known;— O Thou Child Jesus, Thou dost seem to say By the soft silence of these heavenly eyes (That rose out of the depths of nothingness Upon this limner's reverent soul and hand) We too should be about our father's business — O Christ, hear us!"

"Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, — Outward bound."

"This, this is Thou. No idle painter's dream Of aureoled, imaginary Christ, Laden with attributes that make not God; But Jesus, son of Mary; lowly, wise, Obedient, subject unto parents, mild, Meek — as the meek that shall inherit earth, Pure — as the pure in heart that shall see God.O infinitely human, yet divine! Half clinging childlike to the mother found, Yet half repelling — as the soft eyes say, "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not That I must be about my Father's business?""

"Drink, my jolly lads, drink with discerning, Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning; Never was owl more blind than a lover, Drink and be merry, lads, half seas over."

"God rest ye, little children; let nothing you afright, For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night; Along the hills of Galilee the white flocks sleeping lay, When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas day."

"Sweet April-time — O cruel April-time! Year after year returning, with a brow Of promise, and red lips with longing paled, And backward-hidden hands that clutch the joys Of vanished springs, like flowers."

"I have nothing to say against uncles in general. They are usually very excellent people, and very convenient to little boys and girls."

"It seemed as if she had given these treasures and left him alone — to use them or lose them, apply them or misapply them, according to his own choice. That is all we can do with children, when they grow into big children, old enough to distinguish between right and wrong, and too old to be forced to do either."

"To accept the inevitable, neither to struggle against it nor murmur at it, simply to bear it — this is the great lesson of life."

"A parent, unlike a poet, is not born, he is made."

"Those whose own light is quenched are often the light-bringers."

"One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else."

"To-morrow is — ah, whose?"

"Two hands upon the breast, And labour’s done; Two pale feet crossed in rest, The race is won."

"Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty! Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty: Love given willingly, full and free, Love for love's sake — as mine to thee. Duty's a slave that keeps the keys, But Love, the master, goes in and out Of his goodly chambers with song and shout, Just as he please — just as he please."

"Thus King Dolor's reign passed, year after year, long and prosperous. Whether he was happy — "as happy as a king" — is a question no human being can decide. But I think he was, because he had the power of making everybody about him happy, and did it too; also because he was his godmother's godson, and could shut himself up with her whenever he liked, in that quiet little room in view of the Beautiful Mountains, which nobody else ever saw or cared to see. They were too far off, and the city lay so low. But there they were, all the time. No change ever came to them; and I think, at any day throughout his long reign, the King would sooner have lost his crown than have lost sight of the Beautiful Mountains."

"A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without vision is but drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope of the world."

"[T]here is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness."

"Autumn to winter — winter into spring — Spring into summer — summer into fall — Thus rolls the changing year, and thus we change; Motion so swift we know not that we move."

"Lo! all life this truth declares! Laborare est orare; And the whole earth rings with prayers."

"Thus ended our little talk: yet it left a pleasant impression. True, the subject was strange enough; my sisters might have been shocked at it; and at my freedom in asking and giving opinions. But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. Somebody must have done a good deal of the winnowing business this afternoon; for in the course of it I gave him as much nonsense as any reasonable man could stand."

"[T]here are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young."

"The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand, wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it — in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness."

"The buttercups across the field Made sunshine rifts of splendour."

"No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs — the truth from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whomsoever you need to make it, and then — face the world."

"The only way to make people good, is to make them happy."

"It may often be noticed, the less virtuous people are, the more they shrink away from the slightest whiff of the odour of un-sanctity. The good are ever the most charitable, the pure are the most brave."

"Immortality Alone could teach this mortal how to die."

"This is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: "God may forgive you, but we never can!" — a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world."