Kathleen Raine Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

I couldn't claim that I have never felt the urge to explore evil, but when you descend into hell you have to be very careful.

Kathleen Raine
In rose with petals soft as air
I bind for you the tides and fire —
the death that lives within the flower,
oh, gladly love, for you I bear.

Kathleen Raine
The air is full of a farewell- deserted by the silver lake lies the wild world, overturned. Cities rise where the mountains fell, the furnace where the phoenix burned

Kathleen Raine
I make no apology for writing in nature's age-old and unaging language, of whose images we build our paradises, Broceliande and Brindavan, the Forest of Arden, Xanadu, Shelley's Skies, or even Wordsworth's Grasemere, which can be found on no map.

Kathleen Raine
I've read all the books but one
Only remains sacred: this
Volume of wonders, open
Always before my eyes.

Kathleen Raine
Intent on one great love, perfect,
Requited and for ever,
I missed love's everywhere
Small presence, thousand-guised.

Kathleen Raine
Death is the last
Secret implicit within you, the hidden, the deepest
Knowledge of all you will ever unfold
In this body of earth.

Kathleen Raine
Unwise we feel, but wise we know
Living in time is but to seem –
Like green leaves on a tree we grow,
But each must fall and fade alone.

Kathleen Raine
Home, home,
Strayed ones home,
Rabbit to burrow
Fox to earth,
Mouse to the wainscot,
Rat to the barn,
Cattle to the byre,
Dog to the hearth,
All beasts home!

Kathleen Raine
Strangers have crossed the sound, but not the sound of the dark oarsmen
Or the golden-haired sons of kings,
Strangers whose thought is not formed to the cadence of waves,
Rhythm of the sickle, oar and milking pail

Kathleen Raine
The ghosts are hungry, the ghosts are divine,
but the pigs eat the meal, and the priests drink the wine.

Kathleen Raine
Meanings, moods, the whole scale of our inner experience, finds in nature the 'correspondences' through which we may know our boundless selves.

Kathleen Raine
Nature is the common, universal language, understood by all.

Kathleen Raine
Oh Love forgive the happiness
That overgrows and seals my grief.

Kathleen Raine
Of all created things the source is one, Simple, single as love; remember The cell and seed of life, the sphere That is, of child, white bird, and small blue dragon-fly Green fern, and the gold four-petalled tormentilla The ultimate memory. Each latent cell puts out a future, Unfolds its differing complexity As a tree puts forth leaves, and spins a fate Fern-traced, bird feathered, or fish-scaled.

Kathleen Raine
O never harm the dreaming world, the world of green, the world of leaves, but let its million palms unfold the adoration of the trees It is a love in darkness wrought obedient to the unseen sun, longer than memory, a thought deeper than the graves of time. The turning spindles of the cells weave a slow forest over space, the dance of love, creation, out of time moves not a leaf, and out of summer, not a shade.

Kathleen Raine
Love mourns its dead
Not by number, but, one by one, each by name.

Kathleen Raine
Home, home,
Wanderers home,
...
Boys and girls
From the roads come home,
...
Young ones home!

Kathleen Raine
Chemistry dissolves the goddess in the alembic,
Venus, the white queen, the universal matrix,
Down to the molecular hexagons and carbon-chains.

Kathleen Raine
Being a poet is not a job or a profession but a way of life.

Kathleen Raine
He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water
Whose ripples spread from the heart of the sea,
He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter
Broadcast on the swift river.

Kathleen Raine
Cameras and motor-cars
Spin on the hub of nothingness
On which revolve the years and stars.

Kathleen Raine
Let in the wound,
Let in the pain,
Let in your child tonight.

Kathleen Raine