"But in some canine Paradise Your wraith, I know, rebukes the moon,And quarters every plain and hill, Seeking its master... As for me This prayer at least the gods fulfill; That when I pass the flood and seeOld Charon by the Stygian coast Take toll of all the shades who land, Your little, faithful barking ghost May leap to lick my phantom hand."

"I use the word smile for lack of a better word, but how to convey the beauty of the indefinable expression that transfigured that time-worn face? Tender triumph: gentle joy: rapturous reverence. What mystery did I witness? It was like iron frost yielding to sunshine — the thawing of grief in the dawn-radiance of some unsurmisable redemption."

"I am beginning to rub my eyes at the prospect of peace. I think it will require more courage than anything that has gone before. ... One will have to look at long vistas again, instead of short ones, and one will at last fully recognise that the dead are not only dead for the duration of the war."

"Oh why was I born for this time? Before one is thirty to know more dead than living people."

"The Bee and Spider by a diverse power, Sucke Hony and Poyson from the selfe same flower."

"Cricket is an ancient pastime; it ripened sweetly, it has endured noblt."

"It did not last: the devil, shouting "Ho. Let Einstein be," restored the status quo."

"At last incapable of further harm, The lewd forefathers of the village sleep."

"Now there once was a lass, and a very pretty lass, And she was an isotope's daughter"

"And I've swallowed, I grant, a beer of lot - But I'm not so think as you drunk I am."

"The better production of our generation has been mainly lyrical and it has been widely diffused."

"God heard the embattled nations sing and shout "Gott strafe England" and "God save the King!" God this, God that, and God the other thing – "Good God!" said God, "I've got my work cut out!""

"Cupid has offered his arrows for Jesus to try; He has offered his bow for the game. But Jesus went weeping away, and left him there wondering why."

"His poetry, as a whole, is more nearly the real right thing than any of the poetry of a somewhat older generation than mine except Mr. Yeats's."

"The children eat and wriggle and laugh, The two old ladies stroke their silk; But the cat is grown small and thin with desire, Transformed to a creeping lust for milk."

"O cool glad pasture; living tree, tall corn, Great cliff, or languid sloping sand, cold sea, Waves: river curving; you, eternal flowers, Give me content, while I can think of you: Give me your living breath! Back to your rampart, Death!"

"This book — amber-clear, cool and with a good head — deserves a thoughtful swig even from people who never drink."

"Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking."

"How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!"

"The lesson is that dying men must groan; And poets groan in rhymes that please the ear."

"Only the heel Of splendid steel Shall stand secure on sliding fate, When golden navies weep their freight."

"O pastoral heart of England! like a psalm Of green days telling with a quiet beat."

"I could not find the way to God; There were too many flaming suns For signposts, and the fearful road Led over wastes where millions Of tangled comets hissed and burned— I was bewildered and I turned."

"Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."

"All the old statues of Victory have wings: but Grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not move or be dislodged."

"And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of the anthologist includes criticizing in silence."

"I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation."

"The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out and insert the second-rate merely because it happened to be recondite."

"Over the mountains, And over the waves, Over the fountains, And under the graves; Over the floods that are deepest, Which do Neptune obey; Over the rocks that are steepest, Love will find out the way."

"I told him, that I heard Dr. Percy was writing the history of the wolf in Great-Britain. . 'The wolf, Sir! why the wolf? Why does he not write of the bear, which we had formerly? Nay, it is said we had the beaver. Or why does he not write of the grey rat, the Hanover rat, as it is called, because it is said to have come into this country about the time that the family of Hanover came? I should like to see The History of the Grey Rat, by Thomas Percy, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty,' (laughing immoderately). . 'I am afraid a court chaplain could not decently write of the grey rat.' . 'Sir, he need not give it the name of the Hanover rat.' Thus could he indulge a luxuriant sportive imagination, when talking of a friend whom he loved and esteemed."

"My uncle [mother’s brother] wrote rather twee books of memoirs in the period between the two World Wars. They’d be deeply embarrassing to read today. In the 19th century my mother’s family were involved with the Pre-Raphaelites, and a direct ancestor of mine was Lady Byron’s lawyer, who advised her to leave the poet because of her husband’s affair with his half-sister. A much earlier ancestor on my mother’s side was chaplain to Richard Corbet, Bishop of Oxford, who wrote the poem ‘Farewell Rewards and Fairies’. In his ‘Brief Lives’ Aubrey describes them getting drunk together in the cellars of Christchurch, Oxford."

"It's ten years since I heard, and Then one day a letter comes. It's neutral stuff, until I Delve into the envelope Again and find your photo, Handsome still, and not a line To tell me why you sent it."

"A poet of my kind Skates on the thinnest ice."

"When once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely."

"I thought that the poets in the anthologies were the only real poets, that their being in the anthologies was proof of this, though some were classified as "great" and others as "minor." I owed much to those anthologies: Silver Pennies; the constant outflow of volumes edited by Louis Untermeyer; The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children; Palgrave's Golden Treasury; the Oxford Book of English Verse. But I had no idea that they reflected the taste of a particular time or of particular kinds of people."

"A thousand forms and passions glow Upon the world-wide canvas. So With larger scope our art we ply; And if the crown be harder won, Diviner rays around it run, With strains of fuller harmony."

"Shakespeare's stage must hold the glass to every age."

"Our hope is less to last through Art than deeper searching of the heart, than broader range of uttered truth."

"The monument outlasting bronze was promised well by bards of old."

"They bring back light on their faces; But they cannot bring back to me What the lilies say to the roses, Or the songs of the butterflies be."

"I may not enter the garden, Though I know the road thereto; And morn by morn to the gateway I see the children go."

"There is a garden where lilies And roses are side by side; And all day between them in silence The silken butterflies glide."

"Kiss and cling to them, kiss and leave them, Bright and beguiling:— Bright and beguiling, as She who glances Along the shore and the meadows along, And sings for heart's delight, and dances Crowned with apples, and ruddy, and strong:— Can we see thee, and not remember Thy sun-brown cheek and hair sun-golden, O sweet September?"

"The Sun whispers, O remember! You have but thirty days to run, O sweet September!"

"Follow, O follow!—and we follow"

"In the hollow Silver voices ripple and cry Follow, O follow!"

"With the cry I wake;—and around me The mother and child at her feet Breathe peace in even whispers; And the night falls heavy and sweet."

"Earth all one tomb lies round me, Domed with an iron sky: And God Himself in His power, God cannot save me! I cry."

"I see the lost Love in beauty Go gliding over the main: I feel the ancient sweetness, The worm and the wormwood again."