R. S. Thomas - Time Quotes

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Hate takes a long time
To grow in, and mine
Has increased from birth;
…I find
This hate's for my own kind…

R. S. Thomas
A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes.

R. S. Thomas
They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes: rather they wrote
On men's hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.

R. S. Thomas
I had looked forward
to old age as a time
of quietness, a time to draw
my horizons about me,
to watch memories ripening
in the sunlight of a walled garden.
But there is the void
over my head and the distance
within that the tireless signals
come from. And astronaut
on impossible journeys
to the far side of the self
I return with messages
I cannot decipher.

R. S. Thomas
She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies.

R. S. Thomas
Is there a place
here for the spirit? Is there time
on this brief platform for anything
other than mind's failure to explain itself?

R. S. Thomas
Somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.

R. S. Thomas
Art is recuperation
from time. I lie back
convalescing upon the prospect
of a harvest already at hand.

R. S. Thomas
I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.

R. S. Thomas