Poets From England

"Sorrow, misfortune's son, despair's foul sire."

"Nature gives beauty, fortune wealth, in vain."

"Patience, a praise; forbearance is a treasure; Sufferance, an angel is; a monster, rage."

"The throne of Cupid had an easy stair; His bark is fit to sail with every wind; The breach he makes no wisdom can repair."

"Base affections fall, when virtue riseth."

"Remembrance is the life of grief; his grave, Forgetfulness."

"Aurora bright her crystal gates unbarred, And bridegroom-like forth stept the glorious sun."

"The golden sun rose from the silver wave, And with his beams enamelled every green."

"The rose within herself her sweetness closed."

"It were to be wished that no youth of genius were suffered ever to look into Statius, Lucan, Claudian, or Seneca the tragedian; authors who, by their forced conceits, by their violent metaphors, by their swelling epithets, by their want of just decorum, have a strong tendency to dazzle and to mislead inexperienced minds, and tastes unformed, from the true relish of possibility, propriety, simplicity, and nature. [...] If I might venture to pronounce so rigorous a sentence, I would say, that the Romans can boast of but eight poets who are unexceptionably excellent,—namely, Terence, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Phaedrus. These only can be called legitimate models of just thinking and writing. Succeeding authors, as it happens in all countries, resolving to be original and new, and to avoid the imputation of copying, become distorted and unnatural. By endeavouring to open an unbeaten path, they deserted simplicity and truth; weary of common and obvious beauties, they must needs hunt for remote and artificial decorations..."

"This was the first Book I ever read with that Juvenile Avidity so delicious during the racy Season of Life. I felt its Beauties, repeated its Precepts,—wearied my Parents with Quotations and my Tongue with Praises of this—shall I call it unlucky Volume, which made a Writer & a Critic of H:L:P."

"Better sit still, men say, than rise to fall."

"Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile, They will, they will not, fools that on them trust, For in their speech is death, hell in their smile."

"He that peruses Homer, is like the traveller that surveys mount Atlas; the vastness and roughness of its rocks, the solemn gloominess of its pines and cedars, the everlasting snows that cover its head, the torrents that rush down its sides, and the wild beasts that roar in its caverns, all contribute to strike the imagination with inexpressible astonishment and awe. While reading the Aeneid is like beholding the Capitoline hill at Rome, on which stood many edifices of exquisite architecture, and whose top was crowned with the famous temple of Jupiter, adorned with the spoils of conquered Greece."

"Out of the hierarchies of angels sheen The gentle Gabriel called he from the rest, 'Twixt God and souls of men that righteous been Ambassador is he, forever blest, The just commands of Heaven's Eternal King, 'Twixt skies and earth, he up and down doth bring."

"The only complete translation is that of Fairfax, which is in stanzas that cannot be read with pleasure by the generality of those who have a taste for English poetry; of which no other proof is necessary than that it appears scarcely to have been read at all: it is not only unpleasant, but irksome, in such a degree, as to surmount curiosity; and more than counterbalance all the beauty of expression and sentiment, which is to be found in that work. I do not flatter myself that I have excelled Fairfax, except in my measure and verisification."

"Cupid's deep rivers have their shallow fords, His griefs, bring joys; his losses, recompenses; He breeds the sore, and cures us of the pain: Achilles' lance that wounds and heals again."

"O poverty, chief of the heavenly brood."

"Coward dread lacks order, fear wants art, Deaf to attend, commanded or desired."

"A narrow room our glory vain upties, A little circle doth our pride contain, Earth like an isle amid the water lies, Which sea sometime is called, sometime the main, Yet naught therein responds a name so great, It's but a lake, a pond, a marish strait."

"Sorrow, misfortune's son, despair's foul fire."

"Greatest praise, in greatest peril, wons."

"From whence with grace and goodness compassed round, He ruleth, blesseth, keepeth all he wrought, Above the air, the fire, the sea and ground, Our sense, our wit, our reason and our thought, Where persons three, with power and glory crowned, Are all one God, who made all things of naught, Under whose feet, subjected to his grace, Sit nature, fortune, motion, time and place.This is the place, from whence like smoke and dust Of this frail world the wealth, the pomp and power, He tosseth, tumbleth, turneth as he lust, And guides our life, our death, our end and hour: No eye, however virtuous, pure and just, Can view the brightness of that glorious bower, On every side the blessed spirits be, Equal in joys, though differing in degree."

"Two inward vultures, Sorrow and Disdain."

"They make their fortune who are stout and wise, Wit rules the heavens, discretion guides the skies."

"Oh vanity of man's unstable mind, Puffed up with every blast of friendly wind!"

"His diction is so pure, elegant, and full of graces, and the turn of his lines so perfectly melodious, that one cannot read [his translation] without rapture; and we scarcely imagine the original Italian has greatly the advantage in either, nor is it very probable that while Fairfax can be read, any author will attempt a new translation of Tasso with success."

"How have I sat, where piped the pensive wind, To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung; Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders which he sung. Hence at each sound imagination glows; [Hence, at each picture, vivid life starts here!] Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows; Melting it flows, pure, num'rous, strong and clear; And fills th' impassion'd heart, and wins th' harmonious ear."

"Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth: great masters in our language, and who saw much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax, for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original, and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax."

"Fairfax was, it must be confessed, an unfaithful translator, who, if he sometimes expanded the germ of his author to a bright, consummate flower, just as often spoiled what he was trying to improve."

"I shall first cite Fairfax, who understood the harmony of numbers better than any person then living, except Spenser. All the world knows his excellent version (or paraphrase rather) of Tasso's Gierusalem liberata."

"She was dead, but her very death heightened that word "supernatural"; it was what she, not being, was."

"Christianity and life ought to be one."

"Why like a tender girl dost thou complain! That strives to reach the mother's breast in vain; Mourns by her side, her knees embraces fast, Hangs on her robes, and interrupts her haste; Yet, when with fondness to her arms she's rais'd, Still mourns and weeps, and will not be appeas'd!"

"Deep, deeper than we believe, lie the roots of sin; it is in the good that they exist; it is in the good that they thrive and send up sap and produce the black fruit of hell."

"There were no Calvinists or Dominics or Augustines. The man who was most like those great ones was a Dane, a contemporary of Hans Andersen, but though Hans Andersen achieved world-wide repute at once, Soren Kierkegaard had to wait for his through some seventy years. It has taken Christendom that long to catch him up; it took fifty years to catch up St. Thomas, and it has not caught up Dante yet. He coordinated experiences in a new manner; say, using the old word, that he caused alien and opposite experience to coinhere. ... No doubt as soon as Kierkegaard becomes fashionable he will be explained. His imagination will be made to depend on his personal history, and his sayings will be so moderated in our minds that they will soon become not his saying but ours. It is a very terrible thing to consider how often this has happened with the great, and how often we are contented to understand what we have neatly supposed that they have said."

"If one is anxious to write about God, one ought to be anxious to write well."

"For malice will with joy the lie receive, Report, and what it wishes true, believe."

"The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse."

"An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy."

"He said: "If I thought more of myself?" "You wouldn't have much difficulty in finding it," she answered. "Let's walk." He didn't understand the first phrase, but he turned and went by her side, silent while he heard the words. Much difficulty in finding what? in finding it? the it that could be found if he thought of himself more; that was what he had said or she had said, whichever had said that the thing was to be found, as if Adela had said it, Adela in her real self, by no means the self that went with Hugh; no, but the true, the true Adela who was apart and his; for that was the difficulty all the while, that she was truly his, and wouldn't be, but if he thought more of her truly being, and not of her being untruly away, on whatever way, for the way that went away was not the way she truly went, but if they did away with the way she went away, then Hugh could be untrue and she true, then he would know themselves, two, true and two, on the way he was going, and the peace in himself, and the scent of her in him, and the her, meant for him, in him; that was the she he knew, and he must think the more of himself."

"I may write only what I know in space: I am that I am."

"Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?"

"He covered tons of paper with his words and made them his very own words... he branded them like cattle he rustled out there on the free ranges of Literature... Used by another writer who was attempting cut-ups, one single word of Burroughs vocabulary could ruin a whole barrel of good everyday words, run the literary rot right through them. One sniff of that prose and you'd say, 'Why, that's a Burroughs.'"

"Of course the sands of Present Time are running out from under our feet. And why not? The Great Conundrum: 'What are we here for?' is all that ever held us here in the first place. Fear. The answer to the Riddle of the Ages has actually been out in the street since the First Step in Space. Who runs may read but few people run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you, right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!"

"The Way Is Nor This Nor That."

"Language is an abominable misunderstanding which makes up a part of matter. The painters and the physicists have treated matter pretty well. The poets have hardly touched it. In March 1958, when I was living at the Beat Hotel, I proposed to Burroughs to at least make available to literature the means that painters have been using for fifty years. Cut words into pieces and scramble them. You'll hear someone draw a bow-string. Who runs may read, To read better, practice your running. Speed is entirely up to us, since machines have delivered us from the horse. Henceforth the question is to deliver us from that other so-called superior animal, man. It's not worth it to chase out the merchants: their temple is dedicated to the unsuitable lie of the value of the Unique. The crime of separation gave birth to the idea of the Unique which would not be separate. In painting, matter has seen everything: from sand to stuffed goats. Disfigured more and more, the image has been geometrically multiplied to a dizzying degree. A snow of advertising could fall from the sky, and only collector babies and the chimpanzees who make abstract paintings would bother to pick one up."

"I view life as a fortuitous collaboration ascribable to the fact that one finds oneself at the right place at the same time."

"I Am the Artist when I am Open. When I am closed I am Brion Gysin."

"I enjoy inventing things out of fun. After all, life is a game, not a career."