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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Cecil Day-Lewis

Cecil Day-Lewis

See this abdicated beast, once kingOf them all, nibble his claws:Not anger enough left—no, nor despair—To break his teeth on the bars.

animal-rights, animal-welfare, captivity, circus, circus-lion, compassion, jail, king-of-the-jungle, lion, lions, prison, slavery, the-lion-king, vegan, zoo, zoos

Cecil Day-Lewis

In June we picked the clover,And sea-shells in July:There was no silence at the door,No word from the sky.A hand came out of AugustAnd flicked his life away:We had not time to bargain, mope,Moralize, or pray.

august, death, july, june, seashells, summer

Cecil Day-Lewis

poetry is not—except in a very limited sense—a form of self-expression. Who on earth supposes that the pearl expresses the oyster?

oyster, pearl, poems, poetry, poets, writing-poetry

Cecil Day-Lewis

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-A sunny day with the leaves just turning,The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you playYour first game of fotball, then, like a satelliteWrenched from its orbit, go drifting awayBehind a scatter of boys. I can seeYou walking away from me towards the schoolwith the pathos of a half-fledged thing set freeInto a wilderness, the gait of oneWho finds no path where the path should be.That hesitant figure, eddying awayLike a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,Has something I never quite grasp to conveyAbout nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorchingOrdeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.I had worse partings, but none that soGnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughlySaying what God alone could perfectly show-How selfhood begins with a walking away,And love proved in the letting go.

children, growing-up, love, parenthood

Cecil Day-Lewis

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Cecil Day-Lewis

And yet this self, containsTides, continents and stars―a myriad selves,Is small and solitary as one grass-bladePassed over by the windAmongst a myriad grasses on the prairie.

Cecil Day-Lewis

A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.

Cecil Day-Lewis

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-A sunny day with the leaves just turning,The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you playYour first game of fotball, then, like a satelliteWrenched from its orbit, go drifting awayBehind a scatter of boys. I can seeYou walking away from me towards the schoolwith the pathos of a half-fledged thing set freeInto a wilderness, the gait of oneWho finds no path where the path should be.That hesitant figure, eddying awayLike a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,Has something I never quite grasp to conveyAbout nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorchingOrdeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.I had worse partings, but none that soGnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughlySaying what God alone could perfectly show-How selfhood begins with a walking away,And love proved in the letting go.

children, growing-up, love, parenthood

Cecil Day-Lewis

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Cecil Day-Lewis

And yet this self, containsTides, continents and stars―a myriad selves,Is small and solitary as one grass-bladePassed over by the windAmongst a myriad grasses on the prairie.

Cecil Day-Lewis

A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.