• Richard Lovelace

    To Althea, from Prison

    WHEN Love with unconfined wings
    Hovers within my gates,
    And my divine Althea brings
    To whisper at the grates;
    When I lie tangled in her hair
    And fetter’d to her eye,
    The birds that wanton in the air
    Know no such liberty.

    When flowing cups run swiftly round
    With no allaying Thames,
    Our careless heads with roses bound,
    Our hearts with loyal flames;
    When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
    When healths and draughts go free-
    Fishes that tipple in the deep
    Know no such liberty.

    When, like committed linnets, I
    With shriller throat shall sing
    The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
    And glories of my King;
    When I shall voice aloud how good
    He is, how great should be,
    Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
    Know no such liberty.

    Stone walls do not a prison make,
    Nor iron bars a cage;
    Minds innocent and quiet take
    That for an hermitage;
    If I have freedom in my love
    And in my soul am free,
    Angels alone, that soar above,
    Enjoy such liberty.

  • Don Paterson

    In my adult life, the time I have actually lived inside the present moment would amount to no more than a single day. If only I could have lived it as a single day; it would have thrown its light into all the others, like a brazier in a dark arcade. Instead I find my way by sparks, and what they briefly make visible.

  • Ben Hecht

    Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.

  • Robert Frost

    Dust of Snow

    The way a crow
    Shook down on me
    The dust of snow
    From a hemlock tree

    Has given my heart
    A change of mood
    And saved some part
    Of a day I had rued.

  • John Shea

    She was five and sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced that every word was revelation.

    She said, “they were so poor, they only had one peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat, and they went a long way from home, without getting lost.

    The lady rode on a donkey and the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady.

    They had to stay in a stable with an ox and an ass (hee-hee), but the three Rich Men found them because a star lifted the roof.
    Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them.

    Then the baby was borned. And do you know who it was? With that her quarter eyes inflated to silver dollars. She said, “The baby was God.”

    And then Sharon jumped into the air, whirled around, dove into the sofa and buried her head under the cushion, which is the only proper response to the Good news of the Incarnation.

  • Nadia Boulanger

    Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

  • Humbert Wolfe

    The British Journalist

    You cannot hope to bribe or twist
    thank God! The British journalist.
    But, seeing what the man will do
    unbribed, theres no occasion to.

  • Paul Dira

    In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.

  • T S Elliot

    The Hollow Men

    I

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats’ feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar

    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
    Remember us — if at all — not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

    II

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
    In death’s dream kingdom
    These do not appear:
    There, the eyes are
    Sunlight on a broken column
    There, is a tree swinging
    And voices are
    In the wind’s singing
    More distant and more solemn
    Than a fading star.

    Let me be no nearer
    In death’s dream kingdom
    Let me also wear
    Such deliberate disguises
    Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
    In a field
    Behaving as the wind behaves
    No nearer —

    Not that final meeting
    In the twilight kingdom

    III

    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man’s hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    Is it like this
    In death’s other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

    IV

    The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death’s twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.

    V

    Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o’clock in the morning.

    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow

    For Thine is the Kingdom

    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow

    Life is very long

    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
    For Thine is the Kingdom

    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the

    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

  • Leonardo da Vinci

    Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

  • Adrian Mitchell

    Celia Celia

    When I am sad and weary,
    When I think all hope has gone,
    When I walk along High Holborn
    I think of you with nothing on.

  • Wang Tai-Hai

    The Monkey of the Inkpot

    This animal, common in the north, is four or five inches long; its eyes are scarlet and its fur is jet black, silky, and soft as a pillow. It is marked by a curious instinct – the taste for India ink. When a person sits down to write, the monkey squats cross-legged near by with one forepaw folded over the other, waiting until the task is over. Then it drinks what is left of the ink, and afterwards sits back on its haunches, quiet and satisfied.

    From George Luis Borges “A Book of Imaginary Beings”.

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    Kubla Khan

    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure-dome decree :
    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
    Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
    So twice five miles of fertile ground
    With walls and towers were girdled round :
    And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
    Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
    And here were forests ancient as the hills,
    Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

    But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
    Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
    A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
    As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
    By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
    And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
    As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
    A mighty fountain momently was forced :
    Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
    Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
    Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :
    And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
    It flung up momently the sacred river.
    Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
    Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
    Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
    And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
    And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
    Ancestral voices prophesying war !
    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves ;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
    It was a miracle of rare device,
    A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

    A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw :
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
    Could I revive within me
    Her symphony and song,
    To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
    That with music loud and long,
    I would build that dome in air,
    That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
    And all who heard should see them there,
    And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
    His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
    Weave a circle round him thrice,
    And close your eyes with holy dread,
    For he on honey-dew hath fed,
    And drunk the milk of Paradise.

  • William Temple

    Spelling is one of the decencies of life, like the proper use of knives and forks. But intellectually, spelling – English spelling – does not matter. Intellectually, stops matter a great deal. If you’re getting your commas, semi-colons and full-stops wrong, it means you’re not getting your thoughts right and your mind is muddled.

  • Robert Frost

    The Secret Sits

    We dance round in a ring and suppose,
    But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

  • Roger McGough

    Cabbage

    John Wayne died of it
    People are terrified of it
    cancer
    I hate that stuff

    Groucho was laid low with it
    One in five of us will go with it
    heart attack
    I hate that stuff

    Monroe’s life turned sour on it
    Hancock spent his last half hour on it
    sleeping pills
    I hate that stuff

    Mama Cass choked on it
    Blankets get soaked in it
    vomit
    I hate that stuff

    Hendrix died from it
    Chemists stay open late for it
    Heroin
    I hate that stuff

    Women learn to live with it
    No one can live without it
    blood
    I hate that stuff

    Hospitals are packed with it
    Saw my mother racked with it
    pain
    I hate that stuff

    Few like to face the truth of it
    We’re living proof of it
    death
    I hate that stuff

    Schoolboys are force-fed with it
    Cattle are served dead with it
    cabbage
    I hate that stuff