Poets From England

""Good morning, Pooh Bear", said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning", he said. "Which I doubt", said he."

"Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie, A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. Ask me a riddle and I reply, Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie."

"And how are you?", said Winnie-the-Pooh. (...) "Not very how", he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time."

""H–hup!" said Roo accidentally. "Roo, dear!" said Kanga reproachfully. "Was it me?" asked Roo, a little surprised."

"Kanga said to Roo, "Drink up your milk first, dear, and talk afterwards." So Roo, who was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do both at once . . . and had to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time afterwards."

"It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water."

"Owl was telling Kanga an Interesting Anecdote full of long words like Encyclopædia and Rhododendron to which Kanga wasn't listening."

"It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal."

"Because my spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."

"It was just as if somebody inside him were saying, "Now then, Pooh, time for a little something.""

"I'm giving this to Eeyore," he explained, "as a present. What are you going to give?" "Couldn't I give it too?" said Piglet. "From both of us?" "No," said Pooh. "That would not be a good plan."

"These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST."

"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All."

""What?" said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn't been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an exercising sort of way."

"Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so excited that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, "But don't bother about the bread, please.""

""If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee." Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey." And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it." So he began to climb the tree."

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think about it."

"Halfway down the stairs Is a stair Where I sit. There isn't any Other stair Quite like It. I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top; So this is the stair Where I always Stop. Halfway up the stairs Isn't up, Isn't down. It isn't in the nursery, It isn't in the town. And all sorts of funny thoughts Run round my head: "It isn't really Anywhere! It's somewhere else Instead!""

"James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree Took great care of his mother Though he was only three. James James said to his mother Mother he said, said he: You mustn't go down to the end of the town if you don't go down with me. James James Morrison's Mother Put on a golden gown. James James Morrison's Mother Went to the end of the town James James Morrison's Mother Said to herself, said she: I can go right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea!"

"They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace — Christopher Robin went down with Alice. They've great big parties inside the grounds. "I wouldn't be king for a hundred pounds", Says Alice."

"I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking."

"Tell the innocent visitor from another world that two people were killed at Serajevo, and that the best that Europe could do about it was to kill eleven million more."

"They have almost brought it off, the War to End Peace, for which they have been striving for three years. What an incredible joke! A war 'to defend the freedom of the Straits and the sanctity of our graves in Gallipoli', says Punch magnificently. Of course you can think of it like that, and it sounds quite dignified and natural. But you may also think, as I do, of those five or ten or twenty men, our chosen statesmen, sitting round a table; the same old statesmen; each with his war memories thick upon him; each knowing his own utter incompetence to maintain a war or to end a war."

"Had he chosen to devote himself wholly to letters during that decade, his reputation would, perhaps, be more solid today. For there can be no question at all that Belloc was one of the finest prose-writers of the century; one of the most distinctive minor poets and the most accomplished practitioner of ‘light’ or ‘comic’ verse. He is out of fashion, out of print, in most cases out of mind, not because of the quality of his literary output, but, very largely, because of the nature of his political and religious beliefs. He regarded politics as far too important a matter to be taken wholly seriously. He was rewarded by not being taken seriously himself. Although we can now see that many of his political judgements were right, that was not to prevent him being a complete political failure. Being in the right is not infrequently the unforgivable sin in politics. He began as a republican. He ended as an authoritarian monarchist. At no stage did he have any noticeable sympathy with parliamentary institutions. This angered people. He regarded ‘the party system’ as humbug, and said so."

"Between Lord Lundy and the Dodo, Belloc's genius as a light versifier stands unchallenged after half a century. The English find it hard to believe that a master of light verse can also be a serious poet. Nevertheless, a serious poet he was, and the master of a warmth and range which at their best even excel most of his work in prose. In fine, if he left no single masterpiece except, perhaps, the Cautionary Tales and their parallel volumes, if even The Path to Rome and the collected essays are too discursive to rank with the unimpeachable books of their period, it is impossible to withhold a pre-eminent place among the masters of the twentieth century to a writer who resumed in his single person the high spirits of Mr. Evelyn Waugh at his best, the political vigour of a Mallock, the satire of Mr. Maugham, a forthright, fresh and lively style in all his many-sided prose, and a lyrical note rarely heard since the close of the century before."

"I suppose that if you asked a hundred people who knew him, what struck them most about him they would answer: "His physical and intellectual vitality.""

"His wit was French, but his humour English. He was profoundly moved by the beauty of English landscape, but preferred the French way of living. His military temper, his love of justice rather than order, the logical processes of his thought were French. At sea he was English, but Irish in that recurring dream of a landfall which is not of this world. Some have called him, for his hearty pugnacity, a figure as English as Cobbett. Others have emphasized his many un-English qualities. In appearance he seemed to be an Englishman dressed as a Frenchman."

"Beyond those deservedly famous, witty cautionary verses, Belloc's reputation has not survived. His views were unpopular: he was Roman Catholic of the continental tradition, anti-Jew, and a trenchant critic of Parliament despite sitting as a MP for South Salford. And in his craft, although a prolific writer, he was careless. Many books were dictated, and though full of inspired passages, were patchy and repetitive; perhaps they should be declaimed. His book on Milton...was dictated over the space of ten days in his study at Kingsland, his Sussex home... It is precisely the unevenness of Belloc's work which confines him to the lower Parnassian slopes."

"Finally, and indeed from beginning to end, there is his Catholicism: the heart of his preposterousness. Obviously, one might say, Englishmen cannot ultimately be anything but foggy Anglicans—anything else will not really do. One might recall how Belloc wound himself in indignant knots summoning up ideas of Catholic Christendom which were already centuries out of date when Voltaire attacked them (Europe and The Faith). Or how he convinced himself that English roofs nestling together meant barbarity, while a long straight row of French houses along a paved round meant civilization (The Path to Rome)."

"In his history, theoretically the most objective genre, he is like a wonderful quick-change artist, for beneath the period paint of each protagonist we see the familiar square features: the hidden reliance of Cromwell the campaigner on his family life; the uplifting physical presence of Danton in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine."

"I don't know if I told you, that in Rome Hilaire Belloc turned up (a wonderful old man!) ... He is a very great writer and with Maurras and Daudet in France, and his friend Chesterton, they have all been forerunners of the Right movement. He thinks I have done a really good thing with Flowering Rifle, and that my other work will not even count beside it in the long run. His word is worth more than the whole of Fleet Street."

"The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie."

"All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men."

"Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death."

"Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing."

"The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam."

"Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties, And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise."

"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right."

"Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one. There falls no shadow where there shines no sun."

"How slow the Shadow creeps: but when 'tis past, How fast the Shadows fall. How fast! How fast!"

"In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night."

"Torture will give a dozen pence or more To keep a drab from bawling at his door. The public taste is quite a different thing— Torture is positively paid to sing."

"That I grow sour, who only lack delight; That I descend to sneer, who only grieve: That from my depth I should contemn your height; That with my blame my mockery you receive; Huntress and splendour of the woodland night, Diana of this world, do not believe."

"So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep: So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep, And, sacramental, raise me the Divine: Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine."

"When the ephemeral vision's lure is past All, all, must face their Passion at the last."

"By thee do seers the inward light discern; By thee the statue lives, the Gods return."

"To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend, To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend Wine, true begetter of all arts that be; Wine, privilege of the completely free; Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong; Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong, Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!"

"Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring."

"Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else."

"[I]n words lie the seeds of all dissension, and love at its most profound is silent."