Poetry quotes

Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that …

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes;

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate;

“How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirtsleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers. Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the …

Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old⁠ ⁠… I grow old⁠ ⁠… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.

“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know What life is, you should hold it in your hands”; (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks) “You let it flow from you, you let it flow,

And youth is cruel, and has no remorse And smiles at situations which it cannot see.

” I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea. “Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the Spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

“I have been wondering frequently of late (But our beginnings never know our ends!) Why we have not developed into friends.” I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark Suddenly, his expression in a glass.

My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

“For everybody said so, all our friends, They all were sure our feelings would relate So closely! I myself can hardly understand. We must leave it now to fate. You will write, at any rate. Perhaps it is not too late.

This music is successful with a “dying fall” Now that we talk of dying— And should I have the right to smile?

The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots;

I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Twelve o’clock.

… the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Disolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, “Regard that woman Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin.”

The memory throws up high and dry A crowd of twisted things;

A twisted branch upon the beach Eaten smooth, and polished As if the world gave up The secret of its skeleton, Stiff and white.

The lamp hummed: “Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners. She smooths the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, And tear from a passerby with muddy skirts An aimless smile that hovers in the air And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

When evening quickens faintly in the street, Wakening the appetites of life in some And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript, I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were …

Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked And danced all the modern dances;

And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, But they knew that it was modern.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law.

Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon.

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.

I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles.

Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. And I wonder how they should have been together! I should have lost a gesture and a pose. Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

I was neither at the hot gates Nor fought in the warm rain Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, Bitten by flies, fought.

I an old man, A dull head among windy spaces.

Signs are taken for wonders.

“We would see a sign!” The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger

By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles Weave the wind. I have no ghosts, An old man in a draughty house Under a windy knob.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving.

Gives too late What’s not believed in, or if still believed, In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think

Neither fear nor courage saves us.

Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Think at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any concitation Of the backward devils. I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.

I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated?

I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: How should I use them for your closer contact?

And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid droppings fall To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain;

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du?

I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone,

She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

“This music crept by me upon the waters” And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

… the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But …

Hieronymo’s mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and The winter sun creeps by the snow hills; The stubborn season has made stand.

My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.

Dust in sunlight and memory in corners Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

The heavy burden of the growing soul Perplexes and offends more, day by day; Week by week, offends and perplexes more With the imperatives of “is and seems” And may and may not, desire and control.

The pain of living and the drug of dreams Curl up the small soul in the window seat Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Issues from the hand of time the simple soul Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame, Unable to fare forward or retreat, Fearing the warm reality, the offered good, Denying the importunity of the blood, Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom, Leaving disordered …

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

If space and time, as sages say, Are things that cannot be, The fly that lives a single day Has lived as long as we. But let us live while yet we may, While love and life are free,

For time is time, and runs away, Though sages disagree.

The flowers I sent thee when the dew Was trembling on the vine Were withered ere the wild bee flew To suck the eglantine.

This morning’s flowers and flowers of yesterday Their fragrance drifts across the room at dawn, Fragrance of bloom and fragrance of decay, Fresh flowers, withered flowers, flowers of dawn.

Around her fountain which flows With the voice of men in pain, Are flowers that no man knows.

Their petals are fanged and red With hideous streak and stain. They sprang from the limbs of the dead.— We shall not come here again.