Poetry quotes

Drums And fifes were playing “The British Grenadiers.” The men, the music piercing that solitude And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

Under the after-sunset sky

Two pewits sport and cry, More white than is the moon on high Riding the dark surge silently; More black than earth. Their cry Is the one sound under the sky.

Under the after-sunset sky

Two pewits sport and cry,

More white than is the moon on high Riding the dark surge silently; More black than earth. Their cry Is the one sound under the sky.

Die, and forget The hill of trees, The gleam, the wet, This roaring peace.

Like the touch of rain she was

On a man’s flesh and hair and eyes When the joy of walking thus Has taken him by surprise:

With the love of the storm he burns, He sings, he laughs, well I know how, But forgets when he returns As I shall not forget her “Go now.”

Those two words shut a door

Between me and the blessed rain That was never shut before And will not open again.

Those two words shut a door

Between me and the blessed rain

That was never shut before And will not open again.

A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head. “A fine morning, sir,” a shepherd said.

I could not return from my liberty,

To my youth and my love and my misery.

I could not return from my liberty,

To my youth and my love and my misery.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet. I’m bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever.

I could not return from my liberty, To my youth and my love and my misery.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet,

The only sweet thing that is not also fleet. I’m bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet. I’m bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever.

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding

On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed.

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed.

It rains, and nothing stirs within the fence

Anywhere through the orchard’s untrodden, dense Forest of parsley. The great diamonds Of rain on the grass-blades there is none to break, Or the fallen petals further down to shake.

Unless alone, so happy shall I walk In the rain. When I turn away, on its fine stalk Twilight has fined to naught, the parsley flower Figures, suspended still and ghostly white,

The past hovering as it revisits the light.

He has a hump like an ape on his back; He has of money a plentiful lack; And but for a gay coat of double his girth There is not a plainer thing on the earth This fine May morning.

And shall I let all go, Glad, weary, or both? Or shall I perhaps know That I was happy oft and oft before, Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent, How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to, Is Time?

I cannot bite the day to the core.

The rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly. On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude Far more I feared all company:

Or shall I perhaps know That I was happy oft and oft before, Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent, How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to, Is Time? I cannot bite the day to the core.

The rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly.

On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude Far more I feared all company: too sharp, too rude, Had been the wisest or the dearest human voice.

… the strange sweetness, while through the wild air All day long I heard a distant cuckoo calling And, soft as dulcimers, sounds of near water falling, And, softer, and remote as if in history, Rumours of what had touched my friends, my foes, or me.

Yes. I remember Adlestrop⁠—

The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.

And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest, And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song.

The sun blazed while the thunder yet

Added a boom: A wagtail flickered bright over The mill-pond’s gloom:

She startled me, standing quite close Dressed all in white:

Ages ago I was angry till

She passed from sight.

And all were silent. All was old, This morning time, with a great age untold, Older than Clare and Cobbett, Morland and Crome, Than, at the field’s far edge, the farmer’s home, A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree.

Under the heavens that know not what years be

The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements Uttered even what they will in times far hence— All of us gone out of the reach of change— Immortal in a picture of an old grange.

Under the heavens that know not what years be The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements Uttered even what they will in times far hence— All of us gone out of the reach of change—

Immortal in a picture of an old grange.

How at once should I know, When stretched in the harvest blue I saw the swift’s black bow, That I would not have that view Another day Until next May Again it is due?

Under the heavens that know not what years be The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements Uttered even what they will in times far hence— All of us gone out of the reach of change— Immortal in a picture of an old grange.

How at once should I know,

When stretched in the harvest blue I saw the swift’s black bow, That I would not have that view Another day Until next May Again it is due?

Of the footsteps of life, The friendliness, the strife; In its beds have lain Youth, love, age and pain:

I am something like that;

Only I am not dead, Still breathing and interested In the house that is not dark:—

I am something like that: Not one pane to reflect the sun, For the schoolboys to throw at— They have broken every one.

The sun used to shine while we two walked

Slowly together, paused and started Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked As either pleased, and cheerfully parted

Up from the dirty earth men stare: One imagines a refuge there Above the mud, in the pure bright

Of the cloudless heavenly light:

Another loves earth and November more dearly Because without them, he sees clearly, The sky would be nothing more to his eye Than he, in any case, is to the sky; He loves even the mud whose dyes Renounce all brightness to the skies.

… midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying to-night or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of …

And August, September, October, and December Have equal days, all different from November. No day of any month but I have said— Or, if I could live long enough, should say— “There’s nothing like the sun that shines to-day.”

There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead.

When he should laugh the wise man knows full well: For he knows what is truly laughable. But wiser is the man who laughs also, Or holds his laughter, when the foolish do.

I’ll go no more a-roving With you, fair maid: A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin, I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.

The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle

In the naked frosty blue; And the ghylls of the forest, already blackened By Winter, are blackened anew.

The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle

In the naked frosty blue;

And the ghylls of the forest, already blackened By Winter, are blackened anew.

And her brother who hides apart in a thicket, Slowly and surely playing On a whistle an olden nursery melody, Says far more than I am saying.

I have come to the borders of sleep,

The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

I have come to the borders of sleep,

The unfathomable deep

Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

The tall forest towers; Its cloudy foliage lowers Ahead, shelf above shelf; Its silence I hear and obey That I may lose my way And myself.

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night

To be cut down by the sharp axe of light— Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow:

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night

To be cut down by the sharp axe of light⁠—

Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms:

I should use, as the trees and birds did, A language not to be betrayed; And what was hid should still be hid Excepting from those like me made Who answer when such whispers bid.

Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead

Hang stars like seeds of light In vain, though not since they were sown was bred Anything more bright.

Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead

Hang stars like seeds of light

In vain, though not since they were sown was bred Anything more bright.

I cannot like the scent, Yet I would rather give up others more sweet, With no meaning, than this bitter one.

I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray

And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing; Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait For what I should, yet never can, remember:

Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait For what I should, yet never can, remember: No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush Of Lad’s-love, or Old Man, no child beside, Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;

Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.

When Winter’s ahead, What can you read in November That you read in April When Winter’s dead?

While you love what is kind, What you can sing in And love and forget in All that’s ahead and behind.

I built myself a house of glass:

It took me years to make it: And I was proud. But now, alas, Would God someone would break it. But it looks too magnificent. No neighbour casts a stone From where he dwells, in tenement Or palace of glass, alone.

I built myself a house of glass: It took me years to make it: And I was proud. But now, alas,

Would God someone would break it.

But it looks too magnificent. No neighbour casts a stone From where he dwells, in tenement Or palace of glass, alone.

… plough So that the first are last until a caw Commands that last are first again—a law Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how A thousand years might dust lie on his brow Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.

Time swims before me, making as a day

A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned, And God still sits aloft in the array That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.

Time swims before me, making as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned,

And God still sits aloft in the array

That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.

Time swims before me, making as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned, And God still sits aloft in the array

That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.

What matter makes my spade for tears or mirth, Letting down two clay pipes into the earth? The one I smoked, the other a soldier Of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet Perhaps.

Time swims before me, making as a day

A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak

Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned, And God still sits aloft in the array That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.

Night makes the difference. In calm moonlight, Gloom infinite,

The sound comes surging in upon the sense:

Solitude, company— When it is night— Grief or delight By it must haunted or concluded be.

All was foretold me; naught Could I foresee; But I learned how the wind would sound After these things should be.

Now I know that Spring will come again,

Perhaps to-morrow: however late I’ve patience After this night following on such a day.

We lived in clouds, on a cliff’s edge almost (You see), and if clouds went, the visible earth Lay too far off beneath and like a cloud.

I did not know it was the earth I loved

Until I tried to live there in the clouds And the earth turned to cloud.” “You had a garden Of flint and clay, too.” “True; that was real enough. The flint was the one crop that never failed.

We lived in clouds, on a cliff’s edge almost (You see), and if clouds went, the visible earth Lay too far off beneath and like a cloud. I did not know it was the earth I loved

Until I tried to live there in the clouds

And the earth turned to cloud.” “You had a garden Of flint and clay, too.” “True; that was real enough. The flint was the one crop that never failed. The clay first broke my heart, and then my back; And the back heals not.

I did not know it was the earth I loved Until I tried to live there in the clouds

And the earth turned to cloud.

” “You had a garden Of flint and clay, too.” “True; that was real enough. The flint was the one crop that never failed. The clay first broke my heart, and then my back; And the back heals not. There were other things Real, too.

I did not know it was the earth I loved Until I tried to live there in the clouds And the earth turned to cloud.” “You had a garden Of flint and clay, too.” “True; that was real enough.

The flint was the one crop that never failed.

The clay first broke my heart, and then my back; And the back heals not. There were other things Real, too. In that room at the gable a child Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn:

“You had a garden Of flint and clay, too.” “True; that was real enough. The flint was the one crop that never failed.

The clay first broke my heart, and then my back;

And the back heals not. There were other things Real, too. In that room at the gable a child Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn: Never looked grey mind on a greyer one Than when the child’s cry broke above the groans.”

This surely I know, that I who listened then, Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering A heavy body and a heavy heart, Now straightway, if I think of it, become

Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.

To-day I want the sky, The tops of the high hills, Above the last man’s house, His hedges, and his cows, Where, if I will, I look Down even on sheep and rook, And of all things that move See buzzards only above:— Past all …

It is enough To smell, to crumble the dark earth, While the robin sings over again Sad songs of Autumn mirth.

But these things also are Spring’s⁠—

On banks by the roadside the grass Long-dead that is greyer now Than all the Winter it was;

To-morrow they cut it down. They will leave The barn, as I shall be left, maybe. What holds it up? ’Twould not pay to pull down. Well, this place has no other antiquity.

No abbey or castle looks so old

As this that Job Knight built in ’54, Built to keep corn for rats and men. Now there’s fowls in the roof, pigs on the floor.

Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales.

I should like to be lying under that foam,

Dead, but able to hear the sound of the bell, And certain that you would often come And rest, listening happily. I should be happy if that could be.

Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and the ghost That in the echo lives and with the echo dies.

The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I not lost;

Though I know none of these doors, and meet but strangers’ eyes.

In flowerless hours Never will the bank fail, With everlasting flowers On fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.

The Past is a strange land, most strange.

Wind blows not there, nor does rain fall: If they do, they cannot hurt at all. Men of all kinds as equals range

The Past is a strange land, most strange.

Wind blows not there, nor does rain fall:

If they do, they cannot hurt at all. Men of all kinds as equals range

“Who was the lady that rode the white horse With rings and bells to Banbury Cross? Was there no other lady in England beside That a nursery rhyme could take for a ride? The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.

There are two million things for me to learn.

“Was there a man once who straddled across The back of the Westbury White Horse Over there on Salisbury Plain’s green wall? Was he bound for Westbury, or had he a fall? The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.

if At sound of any wind of the world In grass-blades stiff They would not startle and shudder cold Under the sun. When gods were young This wind was old.

I never had noticed it until

’Twas gone—the narrow copse Where now the woodman lops The last of the willows with his bill.

I never had noticed it until

’Twas gone⁠—the narrow copse

Where now the woodman lops The last of the willows with his bill.

Only, that once I loved By this one argument Is very plainly proved: I, loving not, am different.

Not the end: but there’s nothing more.

Sweet Summer and Winter rude I have loved, and friendship and love, The crowd and solitude:

But I know them: I weary not; But all that they mean I know. I would go back again home Now. Yet how should I go?

This is my grief. That land,

My home, I have never seen; No traveller tells of it, However far he has been.

This is my grief. That land,

My home, I have never seen;

No traveller tells of it, However far he has been.

This is my grief. That land, My home, I have never seen;

No traveller tells of it,

However far he has been.

But laughing, storming, scorning, Only the bugles know What the bugles say in the morning,

And they do not care, when they blow

The call that I heard and made words to early this morning.

The ages made her that made us from the dust: She is all we know and live by, and we trust She is good and must endure, loving her so:

And as we love ourselves we hate her foe.

“Is this the road that climbs above and bends Round what was once a chalk-pit: now it is By accident an amphitheatre. Some ash-trees standing ankle-deep in brier And bramble act the parts, and neither speak Nor stir.” “But see:

I could not be as the sun. Nor should I be content to be As little as the bird or as mighty as the sun.

For the bird knows not of the sun,

And the sun regards not the bird. But I am almost proud to love both bird and sun, Though scarce this Spring could my body leap four yards.

I could not be as the sun. Nor should I be content to be As little as the bird or as mighty as the sun. For the bird knows not of the sun,

And the sun regards not the bird.

But I am almost proud to love both bird and sun, Though scarce this Spring could my body leap four yards.

I could not be as the sun. Nor should I be content to be As little as the bird or as mighty as the sun. For the bird knows not of the sun, And the sun regards not the bird.

But I am almost proud to love both bird and sun,

Though scarce this Spring could my body leap four yards.

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph— “

Here lies all that no one loved of him

And that loved no one.” Then in a trice that whim Has wearied.

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph— “Here lies all that no one loved of him

And that loved no one.

” Then in a trice that whim Has wearied.

He waved good-bye to hide A sigh that he converted to a laugh.

He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half

Ghost-like, half like a beggar’s rag, clean wrung And useless on the brier where it has hung Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.

But why I call back man and house again Is that now on a beech-tree’s tip I see As then I saw—I at the gate, and he In the house darkness—a magpie veering about,

A magpie like a weathercock in doubt.

A fortnight before Christmas Gypsies were everywhere: Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair. “My gentleman,” said one, “you’ve got a lucky face.” “And you’ve a luckier,” I thought, “if such a grace And impudence in rags are lucky.”