"Put out the lights now! Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled In oriole plumes of flame, Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled With stars and moons"

"The image," says C. Day-Lewis in The Poetic Image, "is a method of asserting or reasserting spiritual control over the material." And he makes a very suggestive definition of what the critics have called "pure poetry" as "poetry whose meaning is deliberately concentrated within its images."

"Shall I be gone long? For ever and a day To whom there belong? Ask the stone to say Ask my song."

"So feast your eyes now On mimic star and moon-cold bauble: Worlds may wither unseen, But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable, A phoenix in evergreen"

"Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul? Is it fine your way"

"Tempt me no more, for I Have known the lightning's hour, The poet's inward pride, The certainty of power."

"It is the logic of our times, No subject for immortal verse— That we who lived by honest dreams Defend the bad against the worse."

"Nigel's six feet sprawled all over the place; his gestures were nervous and little uncouth; a lock of sandy coloured hair dropping over his forehead, and the deceptive naïveté of his face in repose gave him a resemblance to an overgrown prep. schoolboy. His eyes were the same blue as his uncle's, but shortsighted and noncommittal. Yet there was an underlying similarity between the two. A latent, sardonic humor in their conversation, a friendliness and simple generosity in their smiles, and that impression of energy in reserve which is always given by those who possess an abundance of life directed towards consciously-realised aims."

"Whist upon whist upon whist upon whist drive, in Institute, Legion and Social Club. Horny hands that hold the aces which this morning held the plough."

"Spirits of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky."

"The Church’s Restoration In eighteen-eighty-three Has left for contemplation Not what there used to be."

"Broad of Church and ‘broad of Mind’, Broad before and broad behind, A keen ecclesiologist, A rather dirty Wykehamist."

"Old men in country houses hear clocks ticking Over thick carpets with a deadened force."

"It's strange that those we miss the most Are those we take for granted."

"The dread of beatings! Dread of being late! And, greatest dread of all, the dread of games!"

"Oh! Chintzy, Chintzy cheeriness, Half dead and half alive!"

"Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!"

"He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer As he gazed at the London skies Through the Nottingham lace of the curtains Or was it his bees-winged eyes? He rose, and he put down The Yellow Book. He staggered—and, terrible-eyed, He brushed past the palms on the staircase And was helped to a hansom outside."

"I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner; I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina."

"Within the human world I know Such goings-on could not be so, For human beings only do What their religion tells them to. [...] But all the same it’s strange to me How very full the church can be With people I don’t see at all Except at Harvest Festival."

"Safe were those evenings of the pre-war world When firelight shone on green linoleum, I heard the church bells hollowing out the sky, Deep beyond deep, like never-ending stars."

"Sing on, with hymns uproarious, Ye humble and aloof, Look up! and oh how glorious He has restored the roof!"

"Old men who never cheated, never doubted, Communicated monthly, sit and stare At the new suburb stretched beyond the run-way Where a young man lands hatless from the air."

"Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans. Spare their women for Thy Sake, And if that is not too easy, We will pardon Thy Mistake. But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be, Don't let anyone bomb me."

"All I can say is that with age I find myself enjoying more and more the words and rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer. Apart from their meaning, they sound right and they are not talking down to us by being matey, and where they're a bit vague and archaic, that makes them grand and historic. The words give me time to meditate and pray; they are so familiar, they are like my birthplace, and I don't want them pulled down. We are all of us preservationists who have had the luck to come out of the womb and with all our faculties."

"Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station."

"Yes, I haven't had enough sex."

"I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think."

"Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music."

"Ghastly Good Taste, or a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture."

"Christmas and Easter may be feasts For congregations and for priests, And so may Whitsun. All the same, They do not fill my meagre frame. For me the only feast at all Is Autumn’s Harvest Festival."

"History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side."

"It was through looking at churches that I came to believe in the reason churches were built."

"Hymns are the poetry of the people."

""I think the mystery of its winding drive gave me a respect for the system of hereditary land owing which I have never shaken off. (Rawsden Manor Wilts.)"

"The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living."

"There are two things you need for a jolly good hymn. The first is a set of words that expresses the mood or sentiment of the worshipper. The second—and perhaps even more important—is a good tune ... with a simple popular melody."

"One mark of good verse is surprise."

"A large and most unfriendly rat Comes in to see what we are at. He says he thinks there is no God And yet he comes... it’s rather odd."

"A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I Am too papistical, and High."

"Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry...about the country, the suburbs and the seaside...then there comes love...and increasingly, the fear of death."

"Think of what our Nation stands for, Books from Boots and country lanes, Free speech, free passes, class distinction, Democracy and proper drains. Lord, put beneath Thy special care One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square."

"[Standing in centre of the pitch at Wembley] This was where London's failed Eiffel Tower stood. Watkins' Folly as it was called. Here on this Middlesex turf, and since then the site has become quite well-known."

"And here, screened by shrubs, Walled in from public view, Lived the kept women. What puritan arms have stretched within these rooms To touch what tender breasts, As the cab-horse stamped in the road outside. Sweet secret suburb on the City's rim, St John's Wood."

"[Standing in front of a house in Harrow] A verge in front of your house and grass and a tree for the dog. Variety created in the façades of each of the houses — in the colouring of the trees. In fact, the country had come to the suburbs. Roses are blooming in Metro-Land just as they do in the brochures."

"Child of the First War, Forgotten by the Second. We called you Metro-Land. We laid our schemes Lured by the lush brochure, down byways beckoned, To build at last the cottage of our dreams, A City clerk turned countryman again, And linked to the Metropolis by train."

"There was sun enough for lazing upon beaches, There was fun enough for far into the night. But I’m dying now and done for, What on earth was all the fun for? For God’s sake keep that sunlight out of sight."

"[Sitting at table] Is this Buckingham Palace? Are we at the Ritz? No. This is the Chiltern Court Restaurant, built above Baker Street station, the gateway between Metro-land out there and London down there. The creation of the Metropolitan Railway."

"Steam took us onwards, through the ripening fields, Ripe for development. Where the landscape yields Clay for warm brick, timber for post and rail Through Amersham to Aylesbury and the Vale. In those wet fields the railway didn't pay. The Metro stops at Amersham to-day."

"Milk and then just as it comes dear? I’m afraid the preserve’s full of stones; Beg pardon, I’m soiling the doileys With afternoon tea-cakes and scones."