All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.
A black cat among roses, phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon, the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still. It is dazed with moonlight, contented with perfume...
For books are more than books, they are the life The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived and worked and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives.
You are ice and fire The touch of you burns my hands like snow
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you
All books are either dreams or swords.
Everything mortal has moments immortal
Even Pain pricks to livelier living.
Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease.
Christ! What are patterns for?
Only those of our poets who kept solidly to the Shakespearean tradition achieved any measure of success. But Keats was the last great exponent of that tradition, and we all know how thin, how lacking in charm, the copies of Keats have become.
I know that a creed is the shell of a lie.
The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.
Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.
Love is a game-yes? I think it is a drowning.
Great emotion always tends to become rhythmic, and out of that tendency the forms of art have been evolved. Art becomes artificial only when the forms take precedence over the emotion.
Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.
My! ain't men blinder'n moles?
All recurring joy is pain refined.
Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose.
Art is like politics. Any theory carried too far ends in sterility, and freshness is only gained by following some other line.
Brighter than fireflies upon the Uji River are your words in the dark, Beloved.
On the neck of the young man sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise. Youth condemns; maturity condones.
I should like to bring a case to trial: Prosperity versus Beauty, Cash registers teetering in a balance against the comfort of the soul.
Now you are come! You tremble like a star Poised where, behind earth's rim, the sun has set. Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb And mute, I have no tones to answer.
I shall go Up and down In my gown. Gorgeously arrayed, Boned and stayed.
Not a softness anywhere about me, Only whalebone and brocade.
Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin
Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented ...
