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“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” ―Mary Oliver
Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.
Emily Dickinson
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me.
Emily Dickinson
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
---Emily Dickinson
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
----William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
I can connect
Nothing with nothing
T.S. Eliot
Sleep after Toil, Port after stormy Seas,
Ease after War, Death after Life, does greatly please.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene,
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
T.S. Eliot
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
----William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio: And so did I.
Romeo: Well, what was yours?
Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.
Romeo: In bed asleep while they do dream things true.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.
----T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.
A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King.
---Emily Dickinson
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
For you know only a heap of broken images
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
---William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Datta, dayadhvam, damyata
(Give, sympathize, control)
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
T.S. Eliot
There is no method but to be very intelligent.
T. S. Eliot
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
----Alfred Lord Tennyson
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations
It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.
T.S. Eliot
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.
T.S. Eliot
Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.
---William Butler Yeats
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 do not think that they will sing to me.
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
I am moved by fancies that are curled, around these images and cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.
T.S. Eliot
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
---W.B. Yeats
A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.
T. S. Eliot
Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it
T.S. Eliot
Knowledge is Life with wings.
---William Blake
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man...
---William Wordsworth
time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
----William Wordsworth
I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
As in plain terms (yet cunningly) he crav'd it; / Love always makes those eloquent that have it (II.71-2).
Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality.
T. S Eliot
life is first boredom, then fear.
whether or not we use it, it goes,
and leaves what something hidden from us chose,
and age, and then the only end of age.
---Philip Larkin
The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence
can never retract.
by this, and only this, we have existed.
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Live still, my love, and so conserve my life,
Or, dying, be the author of my death.
Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great Part II
The journey not the arrival matters.
T.S. Eliot
Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.
----Philip Larkin
And indeed there will be time to wonder, 'Do I dare?', and 'Do I dare?
But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
My mind may be American but my heart is British.
T. S. Eliot
Truth I pursued,as Fancy sketch'd the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray.
----Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Forbid me not to weep; he was my father;
And, had you lov'd him half so well as I,
You could not bear his death thus patiently.
Christopher Marlowe
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
This tottered ensign of my ancestors
Which swept the desert shore of that dead sea
Whereof we got the name of Mortimer,
Will I advance upon these castle-walls.
Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport,
And sing aloud the knell of Gaveston!
Christopher Marlowe, Edward II
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.
----Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
---William Shakespeare, Illustrated
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's
The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
You have succeeded in life when all you want is only what you need.” —Vernon Howard
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils
----by William Wordsworth
No; cowards and faint-hearted runaways
Look for orations when the foe is near:
Our swords shall play the orators for us.
Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great
One fire burns out another's burning,
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Be silent then, for danger is in words.
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
----Maya Angelou
A reaching thought will search his deepest wits,
And cast with cunning for the time to come;
For evils are apt to happen every day.
Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)
William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
Break heart, drop blood, and mingle it with tears.
Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
---- Alexander Pope
Time passeth swift away;
Our life is frail, and we may die to-day.
Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great
If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
For whilst I live, here lives my soul's sole hope,
And when I die, here shall my spirit walk.
Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
-----Robert Browning, Men and Women
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
----J.R.R. Tolkien
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part Two
Many a true word hath been spoken in jest.
William Shakespeare, King Lear
What's done, is done
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby,
Rock them, rock them, lullaby …
Thomas Dekker
A diamond set in lead his worth retains.
Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander
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How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!
William Shakespeare, King Lear
Our swords shall play the orators for us.
Christopher Marlowe
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees...........
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
------Ulysses
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."
Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
---+William Yeats
The prince of darkness is a gentleman!
William Shakespeare, King Lear
As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
----Anne Sexton
Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Thine face is not worth sunburning.
William Shakespeare, Henry V
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.
Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost
Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.
----Percy Bysshe Shelley: Prometheus Unbound
fools that will laugh on earth, must weep in hell
--Marlowe Christopher, Fausto: Drama
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?
Christopher Marlowe, Hero & Leander
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.
---John Milton
Something still buzzeth in mine ears
And tells me if I sleep I never wake;
This fear is that which makes me tremble thus.
Christopher Marlowe, Edward II
O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me t'untie.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
The god thou serv'st is thine own appetite
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
Nice thread
The Albatross by Baudelaire
The Poet is like the prince of the clouds,
Haunting the tempest and laughing at the archer;
Exiled on earth amonst the shouting people,
His giant's wings hinder him from walking.
Being PoeticBeing Poetic
But first let me tell ya, Robert Browning wrote it challenging death, that's inevitable but .....here ....
I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more, The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past.
---Robert Browning, Prospice