Roy Campbell Quotes
1901–1957 South Africa
Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell (2 October 1901 – 23 April 1957) was a South African poet, satirist and translator.
- South Africa
- Poets
- Satirists
- Translators
Random Roy Campbell quote
10 quotes
Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive.
The frost stings sweetly with a burning kiss
As intimate as love, as cold as death.
Adamastor (1930)
Of Tin Gods you may oft have heard or read. But this one was entirely made of lead.
Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.
Sons of the Mistral (1926)
South Africa, renowned both far and wide
For politics and little else beside.
The timeless, surly patience of the serf
That moves the nearest to the naked earth
And ploughs down palaces, and thrones, and towers.
Adamastor (1930)
I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive,
Winter, the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and feeling
Save what is pure and will survive.
Sons of the Mistral (1926)
The City of Giraffes!—a People
Who live between the earth and skies,
Each in his lone religious steeple,
Keeping a light-house with his eyes.
You praise the firm restraint with which they write –
I'm with you there, of course:
They use the snaffle and the curb all right,
But where's the bloody horse?
Adamastor (1930)
Of all the clever people round me here
I most delight in Me –
Mine is the only voice I care to hear,
And mine the only face I like to see.
Adamastor (1930)