"Then, seek a poet who your way does bend, And choose an author as you choose a friend; United by this sympathetic bond, You grow familiar, intimate and fond; Your thoughts, your words, your styles, your souls agree, No longer his interpreter, but he."

"Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense."

"Hail mighty Maro! may that sacred name Kindle my breast with thy celestial flame; Sublime ideas and apt words infuse, The Muse instruct my voice, and thou inspire the Muse!"

"The multitude is always in the wrong."

"Take pains the genuine meaning to explore, There sweat, there strain, tug the laborious oar; Search every comment that your care can find, Some here, some there, may hit the poet's mind."

"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."

"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."

"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"

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

"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"

"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"

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"Some write their wrongs in marble: he more just, Stoop’d down serene and wrote them in the dust,— Trod under foot, the sport of every wind, Swept from the earth and blotted from his mind. There, secret in the grave, he bade them lie, And grieved they could not ’scape the Almighty eye."

"Words are men’s daughters, but God’s sons are things."

"In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground."

"Let those love now who never loved before; Let those who always loved, now love the more."

"When Spring came on with fresh delight To cheer the soul, and charm the sight, While every easy breezes, softer rain And warmer suns salute the plain."

"A fresher green the smelling leaves display And glittering as they tremble, cheer the day."

"A sudden splendour seemed to kindle day A breeze came breathing in a sweet perfume Blown from eternal gardens, filled the room."

"We call it only pretty Fanny's way."

"Still an angel appear to each lover beside, But still be a woman to you."

"Remote from man, with God he passed the days; Prayer all his business, all his pleasure praise."

"The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ."

"I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land."

"How shall I a habit break? As you did that habit make. As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse. Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us, neck and wrist. Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine, ere free we stand. As we builded, stone by stoene, We must toil, unhelped, alone, Till the wall is overthrown."

"The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; O, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove.But I send you a cream-white rosebud With a flush on its petal tips, For the love that is purest and sweetest Has a kiss of desire on the lips."

"You gave me the key of your heart, my love; Then why did you make me knock? Oh that was yesterday, saints above! And last night—I changed the lock!"

"Though it lash the shallows that line the beach, Afar from the great sea-deeps, There is never a storm whose might can reach Where the vast leviathan sleeps. Like a mighty thought in a mighty mind In the clear cold depths he swims; Whilst above him the pettiest form of his kind With a dash o'er the surface skims."

"For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white."

"The world is large when weary leagues two loving hearts divide But the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side."

"Be silent and safe—silence never betrays you."

"Doubt is brother-devil to Despair."

"They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore."

"O, she walked unaware of her own increasing beauty That was holding men's thoughts from market or plough,"

"God pity me now and all desolate sinners Demented with beauty!"

"To-night she will spread her brown hair on his pillow, But I shall be hearing the harsh cries of wild fowl."

"To his teaching we owe it there is such a thing as Irish Nationalism and to the memory of the deed he nerved his generation to do, to the memory of ‘98, we owe it that there is any manhood left in Ireland."

"Think of Tone. . . Think of how he put virility into the Catholic movement, how this heretic toiled to make free men of Catholic helot, how as he worked among them he grew to know and love the real, the historic Irish people, and the great, clear, sane conception came to him that in Ireland there must be not two nations or three nations but one nation, that Protestant and Dissenter must be brought into amity with Catholic and that Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter must unite to achieve freedom for all."