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They who in folly or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom's cause.

— Cecil Day-Lewis Where are the War Poets? (1943)

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More quotes by Cecil Day-Lewis

Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.

Tempt Me No More (1933)

Do not expect again a phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.

It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse—
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.

Where are the War Poets? (1943)

Hurry! We burn
For Rome’s so near us, for the phoenix moment
When we have thrown off this traveller’s trance
And mother-naked and ageless-ancient
Wake in her warm nest of renaissance.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show —
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

Requiem for the Living (1964)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Cecil Day-Lewis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.