Poets From England

"The great, the vile, the coward, and the brave, Are food alike for worms, companions in the grave. The prince and parasite together lye, No fortune can exalt, but Death will climb as high."

"I'll be this abject thing no more, Love, give me back my heart again."

"Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give, And study how to die, not how to live."

"Youth is the proper time for love, And age is virtue's season."

"Since truth and constancy are vain, Since neither love, nor sense of pain, Nor force of reason, can persuade, Then let example be obey'd."

"Nature indulgent, provident, and kind, In all things that excell some use design'd; The radiant sun […] Sends from above ten thousand blessings down, Nor is he set so high for show alone; His beams, reviving with auspicious fire, Freely we all enjoy what all admire. The moon and stars, those faithful guides of night, Are plac'd to help, not entertain, the sight. Plants, fruits, and flow'rs, the fertile fields produce, Not for vain ornament, but wholesome use; Health they restore, and nourishment they give, We see with pleasure, but we taste to live."

"But ah! in vain from Fate we fly! For, first and last, as all must die, So 'tis as much decreed above, That, first or last, we all must love."

"Our present joy is sweeter by past pain, To love and heav'n, by suff'ring we attain."

"The sun is set—but see in bright array What hosts of heav'nly light recruit the day! Love in a shining galaxy appears Triumphant still."

"So sang the syrens, with enchanting sound, Enticing all to listen and be drown'd."

"Scarce hadst thou time t'unsheath thy conqu'ring blade; It did but glitter, and the rebels fled."

"Of all pains, the greatest pain Is to love, and love in vain."

"Beauty by no complexion is defin'd, Is of all colours, and to none confin'd."

"Marriage the happiest bond of love might be, If hands were only join'd when hearts agree."

"But ah! what mighty magick can assuage A woman's envy, and a bigot's rage?"

"The marigold, whose courtier's face Echoes the sun, and doth unlace Her at his rise, at his full stop Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop."

"He that to ancient wreaths can bring no more From his own worth, dies bankrupt on the score."

"Like an ambassador that beds a queen With the nice caution of a sword between."

"If I am lucky, the picture will paint itself."

"Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom; Not made him wander, but continued him home."

"The sands of time are sinking The dawn of heaven breaks; The summer morn I've sighed for, The fair, sweet morn, awakes. Dark, dark hath been the midnight, But dayspring is at hand, And glory, glory dwellth In Immanuel's hand"

"My old cat is dead, Who would butt me with his head."

"Four o’clock strikes, There’s a rising hum, Then the doors fly open, The children come."

"Yesterday is safe, Tomorrow's full of danger, Yesterday's a face I know, Tomorrow is a stranger."

"There is no absolute virtue in iambic pentameter as such..however well they may be done. There is no immediate virtue to rhythm even. These things are merely a means to an end."

"Every man's Free verse is different"

"Writers who are also artist's only think of themselves as truly living when they are engaged in their sweet labour."

"Expression, child of soul! I fondly trace Thy strong enchantment, when the poet's lyre, The painter's pencil cathch thy sacred fire, And beauty wakes for thee her touching grace"

"Pale moon ! thy mild benignant light May glad some other's captive sight Where are the years with pleasure gay How bright their course ! How short their stay !"

"No riches from his scanty store My lover could impart He gave a boon I valued more— He gave me all his heart !"

"the memoirs of poet Elsa Gidlow and civil rights and peace activist Barbara Deming evidenced the struggle with which so many have engaged for a lesbian identity rooted in self-esteem and dignity. In publicly affirming who they were, each encouraged the sense of continuity and tradition central to the formation of lesbian archives."

"Superficially, she suggested that she was a very respectable and demure maiden lady, but someone had put raven's blood in her mother's milk."

"We are returned to mystery and the power of cooperating with life—rather than, as so often now, working against it."

"We consider the artist a special sort of person. It is more likely that each of us is a special sort of artist."

"If there was a problem connected with my being a lesbian, even after I became aware of it, it was the loneliness, the fact that I didn't know anybody else like me."

"The most beautiful of all gardens is assuredly not that which is rather forest or field than garden, the 'landscape garden' of false taste; nor, on the other hand, the shaven and trimmed and weeded parterre with an unstarred lawn; but rather the garden long ago strictly planned, rigidly ordered, architecturally piled, smooth and delicate, but later set free, given over to time and the sun; not a wilderness, but having an enclosed wilderness, a directed liberty, a designed magnificence and excess."

"Life, light, and distance—in poetry—seem to leave on the mind's eye the impression of red, yellow, and blue, radiant less or more according as the life is less or more impassioned, the light celestial, and the space remote."

"The quality of poetry is not strained. It has not to abide our repeated questions. It tests and is not tested. Every true lover of poetry knows that when he cites great lines it is not the poetry but the hearer that is to be judged."

"[S]ome things must needs gain in mystery before we can at all undertake to think upon them. Without mystery they are all obscure. Who can think, for instance, of the infinity of space without adding inconceivable things to his meditation?"

"[S]he used her intellect, and that action is the vitality of all poetry that is not song only, but poetry and song."

"[A]n English wit has well said that affectation displeases us because it has not too much, but too little, art."

"[I]t would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like rhetoric and the arts, a habit."

" But in the eternities, Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien Gospels, in what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear."

"It is for fear of the grown-up, or at least out of respect towards them, that a chapter must be given to fairies. If the children do not care very much for fairies, they must be made to care. "Who is to care if they do not? Who is to be properly childlike if they are not?""

"Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos."

"It is not extravagance, it is not excitement, it is not excess, or dizziness, or delirium, that chastises habitual pleasure in art, but only dullness.[…] One of the Latin races, having the dullness and keeping wit enough to name it, has the word for it—banalité."

"[T]he sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter."

"She walks—the lady of my delight—  A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;  She guards them from the steep; She feeds them on the fragrant height,  And folds them in for sleep."

"Surely there is but one assumption […] wherewith nearly all thinkers […] have done their work—that is, the confession of the moral law: that there is a good, and that pure cruelty, mere hatred, and ingratitude, for example, are contrary thereto."

"From the shaken tower A flock of bells take flight And go with the hour."