89 quotes
One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.
The dead may speak the truth only, even when it discredits themselves.
The Golden Fleece (1944)
I do not love the Sabbath,
The soapsuds and the starch,
The troops of solemn people
Who to Salvation march.
Country Sentiment (1920)
Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one.
Claudius the God (1935)
Kill if you must, but never hate:
Man is but grass and hate is blight,
The sun will scorch you soon or late,
Die wholesome then, since you must fight.
Country Sentiment (1920)
Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget.
Country Sentiment (1920)
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.
He roars in his anger, he scratches, he looks not up.
Country Sentiment (1920)
Hate is a fear, and fear is rot
That cankers root and fruit alike,
Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not,
Strike with no madness when you strike.
Country Sentiment (1920)
Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.
Country Sentiment (1920)
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.
She in left hand bears a leafy quince;
When with her right she crooks a finger, smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.
Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark — a shining space
With the grave's narrowness, though not its peace.
But old Death, who can't forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door.
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly.
Goodbye to All That (1929)
Let Cupid smile and the fiend must flee;
Hey and hither, my lad.
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
To the much-tossed Ulysses, never done
With woman whether gowned as wife or whore,
Penelope and Circe seemed as one:
She like a whore made his lewd fancies run,
And wifely she a hero to him bore.
Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.
Goodbye to All That (1929)
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.
Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such pain
At any hand but hers?