British Poet Quotes

The fool that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.

Walking about? With a hole in his forehead full of maggots" "Aye. It were like a damn fisherman's tub.

Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years … according to some people she became a Sufi. Others say she entered a closed order. Others imagine her footloose and anonymous, travelling the wide world. In any event, no trace of her seems to survive - apart from the writing she left behind.

The church of the elect, which is partly militant on earth, and partly triumphant in heaven, resembles a city built on both sides of a river. There is but the stream of death between grace and glory. Death, to God's people, is but a ferry-boat.

Augustus Toplady
Augustus Toplady
The lesson is that dying men must groan;
And poets groan in rhymes that please the ear.

The impulse here is to make everything larger than life, almost to overrespond, maybe because, habituated to life written down, in both senses, we become inured and have to be awakened with something almost intolerably vivid. When the deep purple blooms, you are looking at a dimension, not a posy.

Paul West
Paul West
Expression, child of soul! I fondly trace
Thy strong enchantment, when the poet's lyre,
The painter's pencil cathch thy sacred fire,
And beauty wakes for thee her touching grace

Helen Maria Williams
Helen Maria Williams
I woke early like a condemned man to the naivety of birdsong.

During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius.

Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!…
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!

Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves.

Our job is to try
To change things.
After Hiroshima
You ask a poet to sing.

All trades did shew their skill in this, Each wise an Engineer: The Mairess took the tool in hand, The maids the stones did bear.

Did I, my lines intend for public view,How many censures, would their faults pursue,Some would, because such words they do affect,Cry they're insipid, empty, uncorrect.And many, have attained, dull and untaught,The name of wit, only by finding fault.True judges, might condemn their want of wit,And all might say, they're by a woman writ.

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

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.

A slow psalm of two nations
Mourning a common pain
—Hebrew and Arabic mingling
Their silver-rooted vine;
Olives and roses falling
To sweeten Palestine.

And bold and hard adventures t' undertake,
Leaving his country for his country's sake.

Strew your gladness on earth's bed,
So be merry, so be dead.

Charles Hamilton Sorley
Charles Hamilton Sorley
But a house is much more to my mind than a tree,
And for groves, O! a good grove of chimneys for me.

She sleeps up in the attic there
Alone, poor maid. 'Tis but a stair
Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,
The soft young down of her, the brown,
The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!

I shall ever remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance.

Claire Clairmont
Claire Clairmont
Again the violet of our early days Drinks beauteous azure from the golden sun, And kindles into fragrance at his blaze.

I know I could enchain him with a smile:
And lead him captive with a gentle word,
I scorn my look should ever man beguile,
Or other speech, than meaning to afford.

Even the simplest poem
May destroy your immunity to human emotions.
All poems must carry a Government warning. Words
Can seriously affect your heart.