British Poet Quotes

What men have done can still be done
And shall be done today.

We would be strangers in the Capitol;
this is our country also, no-where else;
and we shall not be outcast on the world.

The children eat and wriggle and laugh,
The two old ladies stroke their silk;
But the cat is grown small and thin with desire,
Transformed to a creeping lust for milk.

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.

then bite the tongue out by the root…
and chew, never swallow.
This is not sex, remember;
you are eating the sea.

Robin Robertson

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

A. S. J. Tessimond

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

Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes, come on, let us sway together, under the trees, and to hell with thunder.

Edwin Morgan (poet)

Come, swift-wing'd Fancy, airy maid,
In varied, dazzling vest array'd,
Inspire thy vot'ry's lay;
Grant me thy flow'ry walks to tread,
To range thy summer-painted mead,
Or near thy fountain play.
Now led by thy resistless hand,
Or guided by thy fairy wand,
O'er yet untrodden space;
Or on thy pinions borne along,
The bright Ideas' flitting throngs
Pursue th' aerial race.

Elizabeth Bentley

Foolish eyes, thy streams give over,
Wine, not water, binds the lover:
At the table then be shining,
Gay coquette, and all designing.

The starres, bright cent'nels of the skies.

William Habington

In the mind all things are written in pictures - there is no alphabetical combination of letters and words; all things are pictures and symbols.

Richard Jefferies

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

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.

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

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

In the gloaming, Oh my darling!
When the lights are dim and low,
And the quiet shadows falling
Softly come and softly go.

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

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

Claire Clairmont

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Harriette Wilson

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.

How sweet is harmless solitude!
What can its joys control?
Tumults and noise may not intrude,
To interrupt the soul.

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

The Lord descended from above
And bow'd the heavens high;
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky.

On cherubs and on cherubims
Full royally he rode;
And on the wings of all the winds
Came flying all abroad.

Thomas Sternhold

I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford
Against a pearl-grey sky;
My heart was with the Oxford men
Who went abroad to die.

Winifred Mary Letts