If we see light at the end of the tunnel,
It's the light of the oncoming train.
Robert Lowell Quotes
1917–1977 United States
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. Among his relatives were James Russell Lowell, Percival Lowell and Amy Lowell.
- United States
- Activists
- Poets
43 quotes
We are like a lot of wild
spiders crying together,
but without tears.
For the Union Dead (1964)
No one like one's mother and father ever lived.
History (1973)
I will catch Christ with a greased worm.
Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
Your old-fashioned tirade—
loving, rapid, merciless—
breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.
Life Studies (1959)
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
Day by Day (1977)
After loving you so much, can I forget
you for eternity, and have no other choice?
Notebook 1967–68 (1969)
Now Paris, our black classic, breaking up
like killer kings on an Etruscan cup.
Life Studies (1959)
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant.
Life Studies (1959)
Life Studies (1959)
Near the Ocean (1967)
The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.
Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed.
Life Studies (1959)
Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age,
must lay his heart out for my bed and board.
Life Studies (1959)
For the Union Dead (1964)
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
For the Union Dead (1964)
You said:
"We poets in our youth begin in sadness;
thereof in the end come despondency and madness."
Life Studies (1959)
I—
really I can do little,
as little now as then,
about the infernal fires—
I cannot blow out a match.
Day by Day (1977)
Oh my Petite,
clearest of all God's creatures, still all air and nerve.
Life Studies (1959)
Life Studies (1959)
Attribution
Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Lowell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.