Cecil Day-Lewis

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

"Do not expect again the phoenix hour, The triple-towered sky, the dove's complaining, Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown."

"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."

"They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom's cause."

"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."

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

"It's hard to believe a spirit could die Of such generous glow"

"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"

"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"

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

"Who will say farewell? The beating bell. Will anyone miss me? That I dare not tell — Quick, Rose, and kiss me."

"I have had worse partings, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly Saying what God alone could perfectly show — How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go."

"I am absolutely sure Cecil’s poetry is underrated. He persists in the mind."

"I have found the one great man in these lands - his name is Cecil Day-Lewis."

"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."

"Day-Lewis was a handsome man, in dress something of a dandy (in the best sense) and with a similar taste in such things as motor cars. In first coming into a room he might give the impression of austerity , but quite soon the mask would relax into its attractive lines of humour. He was, in fact, no mean anecdotalist, often against himself, at one time he had an hilarious story of catching his own dental plate before it could fly into the stalls after an impassioned end to a poetry reading."