Poetry quotes

Come let us curse our Master ere we die,

For all our hopes in endless ruin lie. The good is dead. Let us curse God most High.

Laugh then and slay. Shatter all things of worth, Heap torment still on torment for thy mirth—

Thou art not Lord while there are Men on earth.

Leap in, and take thy fill Of all the cosmic good and ill, Be as the Living ones that know Enormous joy, enormous woe,

Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss:

For all thy study hunted this, On wings of magic to arise, And wash from off thy filmed eyes The cloud of cold mortality, To find the real life and be As are the children of the deep!

Thank God that there are solid folk Who water flowers and roll the lawn,

And sit and sew and talk and smoke, And snore all through the summer dawn.

But, by the very God, we know, we know That somewhere still, beyond the Northern snow

Waiting for us the red-rose gardens blow.

But this shall never be: to us remains One city that has nothing of the beast, That was not built for gross, material gains, Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast.

We are not wholly brute.

To us remains A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams, A place of visions and of loosening chains, A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.

She was not builded out of common stone But out of all men’s yearning and all prayer That she might live, eternally our own,

The Spirit’s stronghold⁠—barred against despair.

We need no barbarous words nor solemn spell To raise the unknown. It lies before our feet;

There have been men who sank down into Hell In some suburban street,

And some there are that in their daily walks Have met archangels fresh from sight of God, Or watched how in their beans and cabbage-stalks Long files of faerie trod.

This people were so pure, so law-abiding, So logical, they made the heavens afraid:

They sent the very swallows into hiding By their appalling chastity dismayed:

More soberly the lambs in spring time played Because of them: and ghosts dissolved in shame Before their common-sense—till Dymer came.

At Dymer’s birth no comets scared the nation, The public crêche engulfed him with the rest, And twenty separate Boards of Education Closed round him. He was passed through every test,

Was vaccinated, numbered, washed and dressed, Proctored, inspected, whipt, examined weekly,

And for some nineteen years he bore it meekly.

At Dymer’s birth no comets scared the nation, The public crêche engulfed him with the rest,

And twenty separate Boards of Education Closed round him.

He was passed through every test, Was vaccinated, numbered, washed and dressed, Proctored, inspected, whipt, examined weekly, And for some nineteen years he bore it meekly.

For nineteen years they worked upon his soul, Refining, chipping, moulding and adorning. Then came the moment that undid the whole— The ripple of rude life without a warning. It came in lecture-time one April morning —Alas for laws and locks, reproach and praise,

Who ever learned to censor the spring days?

A little breeze came stirring to his cheek. He looked up to the window. A brown bird Perched on the sill, bent down to whet his beak With darting head—Poor Dymer watched and stirred Uneasily. The lecturer’s voice he heard Still droning from the dais.

There was neither fence to pass Nor word of challenge given, nor bolted door, But where it’s open, open evermore, No knocker and no porter and no guard,

For very strangeness entering in grows hard.

Breath not! Speak not! Walk gently. Someone’s here, Why have they left heir house with the door so wide? There must be someone. … Dymer hung in fear Upon the threshold, longing and big-eyed.

Aha! …

Earth hates a miserable man:

Against him even the clouds and winds conspire.

And as poor as we’ve begun We end the richest day? What we have won, Can it all die like this? …

Joy flickers on The razor-edge of the present and is gone.

“What have I done to bear upon my name The curse of Bran? I was not of his crew, Nor any man’s. And Dymer has the blame— What have I done? Wronged whom? I never knew. What’s Bran to me?

I was not of his crew, Nor any man’s. And Dymer has the blame— What have I done? Wronged whom? I never knew. What’s Bran to me? I had my deed to do And ran out by myself, alone and free, —

Why should earth sing with joy and not for me?

“Ah, but the earth never did sing for joy … There is a glamour on the leaf and flower And April comes and whistles to a boy Over white fields:

then his soul Took the full swell and heaved a dripping prow Clear of the shattering wave-crest. He was whole. No veils should hide the truth, no truth should cow The dear self-pitying heart. “I’ll babble now No longer,” Dymer said. “I’m broken in.

Pack up the dreams and let the life begin.

”

“And she—she was no dream. It would be waste To seek her there, the living in that den Of lies.” The Master smiled. “You are in haste!

For broken dreams the cure is, Dream again And deeper.

If the waking world, and men, And nature marred your dream—so much the worse For a crude world beneath its primal curse.”