Poets From England

"A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment."

"Remember, my dear Evelina, nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman; it is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things."

"I can not sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low; ’T is that I can’t remember how They go."

"O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed! To be young once more and bite my thumb At the world and all its cares with you, I’d Give no inconsiderable sum."

"The farmer’s daughter hath soft brown hair (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And I met with a ballad, I can’t say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these."

"I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a Dun."

"White is the wold, and ghostly The dank and leafless trees; And 'M's and 'N's are mostly Pronounced like 'B's and 'D's: 'Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted, The sheep stands, mute and stolid: And ducks find out, disgusted, That all the ponds are solid."

"O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsop, Bass! Names that should be on every infant's tongue! Shall days and months and years and centuries pass, And still your merits be unrecked, unsung? Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass, And wished that lyre could yet again be strung Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her Misguided sons that "the best drink was water.""

"’T was ever thus from childhood’s hour! My fondest hopes would not decay: I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away."

"I have a liking old For thee, though manifold Stories, I know, are told Not to thy credit; How one (or two at most) Drops make a cat a ghost— Useless, except to roast— Doctors have said it:How they who use fusees All grow by slow degrees Brainless as chimpanzees, Meagre as lizards; Go mad, and beat their wives; Plunge (after shocking lives) Razors and carving knives Into their gizzards."

"Even without stimulant his theology conceded nothing to human weakness, and I can remember his saying with energy, "I wish those people who deny the eternity of punishment could realise their unspeakable vulgarity.""

"Johnson was stern by nature, strong by intellect, and always, I think, deliberately picked his company."

"For two hours he talked of Gallifet; Of Dowson; of the Rhymers' Club; Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died By falling from a high stool in a pub... But showed no trace of alcohol At the autopsy, privately performed— Tissue preserved—the pure mind Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed."

"He had the delicate strong features of a certain filleted head of a Greek athlete in the British Museum, an archaistic Graeco-Roman copy of a masterpiece of the fourth century, and that resemblance seemed symbolic of the austere nobility of his verse."

"Johnson's poetry, like Johnson himself before his last decay, conveys an emotion of joy, of intellectual clearness, of hard energy; he gave us of his triumph."

"Now the "rosy morn appearing" Floods with light the dazzled heaven; And the schoolboy groans on hearing That eternal clock strike seven:- Now the waggoner is driving Towards the fields his clattering wain; Now the bluebottle, reviving, Buzzes down his native pane."

"Forever; ’t is a single word! Our rude forefathers deemed it two: Can you imagine so absurd A view?"

"Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so, Dark Angel! triumph over me: Lonely, unto the Lone I go; Divine, to the Divinity."

"Dark Angel, with thine aching lust To rid the world of penitence: Malicious Angel, who still dost My soul such subtile violence!"

"Through thee, the gracious Muses turn, To Furies, O mine Enemy! And all the things of beauty burn With flames of evil ecstasy.Because of thee, the land of dreams Becomes a gathering place of fears: Until tormented slumber seems One vehemence of useless tears."

"The ardour of red flame is thine, And thine the steely soul of ice: Thou poisonest the fair design Of nature, with unfair device.Apples of ashes, golden bright; Waters of bitterness, how sweet! O banquet of a foul delight, Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!"

"King, tried in fires of woe! Men hunger for thy grace: And through the night I go, Loving thy mournful face. Yet, when the city sleeps; When all the cries are still: The stars and heavenly deeps Work out a perfect will."

"Which are more full of fate: The stars; or those sad eyes? Which are more still and great: Those brows; or the dark skies?"

"Vanquished in life, his death By beauty made amends: The passing of his breath Won his defeated ends."

"Thou art the whisper in the gloom, The hinting tone, the haunting laugh: Thou art the adorner of my tomb, The minstrel of mine epitaph."

"Our wearier spirit faints, Vexed in the world‘s employ: His soul was of the saints; And art to him was joy."

"What comes now? The earth awaits What fierce wonder from the skies? Thunder, trampling through the night? Morning, with illustrious eyes? Morning, from the springs of light: Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates.."

"Imageries of dreams reveal a gracious age: Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn. The courtesy of saints, their gentleness and scorn, Lights on an earth more fair, than shone from Plato's page: The courtesy of knights, fair calm and sacred rage: The courtesy of love, sorrow for love's sake borne. Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn, We hunger against hope for the lost heritage."

"Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls, Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls! Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace."

"Alone he rides, alone, The fair and fatal king: Dark night is all his own, That strange and solemn thing."

"The winds are sometimes sad to me, The starry spaces, full of fear; Mine is the sorrow on the sea, And mine the sigh of places drear. Some players upon plaintive strings Publish their wistfulness abroad; I have not spoken of these things, Save to one man, and unto God."

"To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintance and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal: a journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole heart!"

"Dowson and Johnson most I praise— To troop with those the world's forgot, And copy their proud steady gaze."

"I fight thee, in the Holy Name! Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith: Tempter! should I escape thy flame, Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:The second Death, that never dies, That cannot die, when time is dead: Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries, Eternally uncomforted."

"Following daily such a dread- ful trade to earn a living, With every second on that cliff So cruel and unforgiving,"

"Is fine - as long as no one comes And asks us what we do there... We'd have to say, Without our toil, Just who would know it grew there?"

"At dawn, a railwaywoman On a country platform whirls on the end of a chain An irrelevant key, while a young guard makes to wipe A crumb from her lapel; and see, she smiles A permissory smile you take in from your corner seat: A cameo of unrehearsed perfection."

"Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie."

"Poetic trifles from solitary rambles whilst chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy..now written from memory, confined to fourteen lines, this seemed best adapted to the unity of sentiment, the verse flowed in unpremeditated harmony as my ear directed but are far from being mere elegiac couplets."

"Back o'er the deep I turn my longing eyes, And chide the wayward passions that rebel: Yet boots it not to think, or to complain, Musing sad ditties to the reckless main. To dreams like these, adieu! the pealing bell Speaks of the hour that stays not—and the day To life's sad turmoil calls my heart away."

"For as much as man is naturally prone. To evil from his youth, as scripture doth recite, It is necessary that he be spedely withdrawen, Frome concupiscence of syn, his naturall appetite, And ordre to bryng up youth, Ecclesiasticus doth writ[e], An untamed horse, wyl be harde saith he, And a wanton chylde wilfull wyl be."

"O harmony! thou tenderest nurse of pain, If that thy note's sweet magic e'er can heal Griefs which the patient spirit oft may feel, Oh! let me listen to thy songs again; Till memory her fairest tints shall bring; Hope wake with brighter eye, and listening seem With smiles to think on some delightful dream."

"Life is a play acted by dying men, Where, if its heroes seem to foot it well And go light-tongued without grimace of pain, Death will be found anon. And who shall tell Which part was saddest, or in youth or age, When the tired actor stops and leaves the stage?"

"Dark to me is the earth. Dark to me are the heavens. Where is she that I loved, the woman with eyes like stars? Desolate are the streets. Desolate is the city. A city taken by storm, where none are left but the slain."

"It [Undertones of War] is beautifully written and rich in literary references. More significantly, it is a lament for the destruction of the French and Belgian countryside, and by implication, the threat to natural peace and beauty everywhere by the savage, impersonal menace of war. As Paul Fussell has perceptively written, for Blunden the countryside was not merely beautiful; it was as magical and as precious to him as English literature: "For it to be brutally torn up by shells is a scandal close to murder". It is essentially in this poignant sense of natural destruction and needless waste (including the loss of animals and old buildings as well as people) that Blunden could be construed as "anti-war". He had little sense of political causation or strategic factors, seeing the conflict rather in terms of a natural disaster such as an earthquake or the effects of a drastic climate change."

"An extended pastoral elegy in prose is what Blunden's Undertones of War (1928) may be called. Whatever it is (G. S. Fraser once called it "the best war poem" and printed some of it as free verse in the London Magazine), no one disagrees that together with Sassoon's and Graves's "memoirs" it is one of the permanent works engendered by memoirs of the war. Its distinction derives in large part from the delicacy with which it deploys the properties of traditional English literary pastoral in the service of the gentlest (though not always the gentlest) kind of irony. If Spenser or Milton or Gray or Collins or Clare or the author of Thyrsis had fought in the Great War, any one of them could have used Blunden's final image to end a memoir of it. With a due sense of theatrical costume and an awareness of a young subaltern's loving responsibility for the flock under his care, Blunden brings Undertones of War to a close by calling himself "a harmless young shepherd in a soldier's coat" (314). That characterization is English to a fault, and beautiful."

"Therefore the earth is dark to me, the sunlight blackness, Therefore I go in tears and alone, by night and day; Therefore I find no love in heaven, no light, no beauty, A heaven taken by storm, where none are left but the slain!"

"I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even Better than all by this, that through my chase In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven I seem'd to see and follow still your face. Your face my quarry was. For it I rode, My horse a thing of wings, myself a god."

"Australia once produced poets who were English poets a little out of touch; now she has her own; and O'Reilly with ball in hand is quite the parallel of an Australian poet, territorially distinct in rhythm, passion, scheme and transition."

"In a herber grene, a slope where as I laye The byrdes sang swete in the myddes of the daye I dreamed fast of myrth and play In youth is pleasur, in youth is pleasure.Me thought I walked stil to and fro And from her company I could not go But when I waked it was not so, In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.Therfore my harte is surely pyght. Of her alone to haue a sight. Whiche is my joy and hartes delyght, In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure."