British Poet Quotes

The words you spoke were frenzied prayers to chemistry..

Carol Ann Duffy

Pig sit still in the strainer
I must have my Pig tea

My mother bids me bind my hair
With bands of rosy hue,
Tie up my sleeves with ribbons rare,
And lace my bodice blue.

Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent
Of odours in unhaunted deserts.

William Chamberlayne

Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, And all things are made young with your desires.

Francis Thompson

A fine morning's killing, ay! All their necks wrung - all dead birds! Once they could fly - fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now - and sold cheap in the open market!

As I go musing through this mournful land
Soothed by the pine-tree's solemn harmony,
Thy well-loved image comes and walks by me.
I seem to hold thee by the gentle hand
And talk of things I dimly understand,
That thy dear spirit set to mine may be
As to an intricate lock the simple key.

The purity is a question of
names. We are here to utter them. This is
a prayer. I have it now between my
teeth and my eyes, on my forehead. Know
the names. It is as simple as the purity
of sentiment: it is as simple
as that.

Wouldst thou view the Lion's den? Search afar from haunts of men — Where the reed-encircled rill, Oozes from the rocky hill, By its verdure far descried 'Mid the desert brown and wide.

And this was your Cradle? Why, surely, my Jenny,
Such cozy dimensions go clearly to show
You were an exceedingly small pickaninny,
Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.

Frederick Locker-Lampson

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
And some are treasured for their markings –
They cause the eyes to melt
Or the body to shriek without pain.

Let brisker youths their active nerves prepare
Fit their light silken wings and skim the buxom air.

Richard Owen Cambridge

When the voice of Christ speaks through the Word, then you will arise, and leave all, and follow Him.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne

There's a fount about to stream, There's a light about to beam, There's a warmth about to glow, There's a flower about to blow; There's a midnight blackness changing Into gray; Men of thought and men of action, Clear the way.

O yowthe allas why wilt thow nat enclyne,
And un-to reuled reform bowe thee?
Syn resoun is the verray streighte lyne
Þat ledith folk un-to felicitee.

A female mind like a rude fallow lies;
No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise.
As well might we expect, in winter, spring,
As land untilled a fruitful crop should bring.

Anne Ingram, Viscountess Irvine

The name is history.
The thick Miljacka flows
Under its bridges through a canyon's breadth
Fretted with minarets and plump with domes,
Cupped in its mountains, caught on a drawn breath.

Anthony Thwaite

Grief, I have cursed thee often — now at last
To hate thy name I am no longer free;
Caught in thy bony arms and prisoned fast,
I love no love but thee.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawney die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Shall know the reason why!

Poetry is a second translation of the soul's feeling; it must be rendered into thought, and thought must change its nebulous robe of semi-wording into definite language, before it reaches another heart. Music is a first translation of feeling, needing no second, but entering the heart direct.

Frances Ridley Havergal

There are so many kinds of awful men One can't avoid them all. She often said She'd never make the same mistake again: She always made a new mistake instead.

Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm.

Over-excitement and boredom are states of mind which I equally shun.

What is the life of a man more than the life of a lamb, or any guiltless animal?

There is practically no difference at all between a family and a nation, except the difference in size. A family is a nation seen through the wrong end of a telescope; a nation is a family seen through the right end of a telescope, and I don't believe it is possible to achieve a happy and successful family life, or a happy and successful national life, unless we bear this simple fact in mind and behave accordingly.