30 quotes
A precious place is Paradise and none may know its worth,
But Eden ever longeth for the knicknacks of the earth.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes,
Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
The world is growing gentle,
But few know what she owes
To the understanding lily
And the judgment of the rose.
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)
The rose has told In one simplicity.
That never life
Relinquishes a bloom
But to bestow
An ancient confidence.
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)
Every gaudy color
Is a bit of truth.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Let go the lure
The striving to unmake; Behold the truth
Whenever heart may ache
There is a glory
In a great mistake.
Swear By the Night and Other Poems (1936)
Great is the rose
That challenges the crypt,
And quotes milleniums
Against the grave.
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)
Across the downs a hummingbird
Came dipping through the bowers,
He pivoted on emptiness
To scrutinize the flowers.
Lava Lane and Other Poems (1925)
They lower pails from heaven's walls to catch the milk-maids mirth.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
A single-motored miracle, a lead mine on each flank;
Below a shadow swept and awed the hundred-fathom bank.
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)
Lo and behold! God made this
starry wold,
The maggot and the mold; lo and
behold!
He taught the grass contentment
blade by blade,
The sanctity of sameness in a shade.
The starry brocade of the summer night
Is linked to us as part of our estate;
And every bee that wings its sidelong flight
Assurance of a sweeter, fairer fate.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
You cannot choose your battlefield,
God does that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew. QOTD 2007·11·01 Sound file
The Singing Crow And Other Poems (1926)
He found the harem filled with rocking maids
Surrendered to the orgies of the sob.
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)
In the darkness, who would answer for the color of a rose,
Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes?
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Wore it in a churchyard,
All arrayed with care;
And a painted rainbow
Shone above her there.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May;
But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Once a pallid Vestal
Doubted truth in blue;
Listed red in ruin,
Harried every hue; Barricaded vision,
Garbed herself in sighs;
Ridiculed the birthmarks
Of the butterflies.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Great is the rose
Infected by the tomb,
Yet burgeoning
Indifferent to death.
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)
The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting,
For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line,
Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)