Cecil Day Lewis Quotes

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.

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 August And flicked his life away: We had not time to bargain, mope, Moralize, or pray.

The river this November afternoon Rests in an equipoise of sun and cloud: A glooming light, a gleaming darkness shroud Its passage. All seems tranquil, all in tune.

And yet this self, contains Tides, continents and stars―a myriad selves, Is small and solitary as one grass-blade Passed over by the wind Amongst a myriad grasses on the prairie.

I don't write to be understood; I write to understand.

Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul? Is it fine your way, With tall moon-daisies alight, and the mole Busy, and elegant hares at play By meadow paths where once you would stroll In the flush of day?

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

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

When bullying April bruised mine eyes With sleet-bound appetites and crude Experiments of green, I still was wise And kissed the blossoming rod.

Hardy’s astonishing technical versatility has won the admiration of major poets from Ezra Pound and Cecil Day Lewis to Philip Larkin. Among other genres he employs the lyric, narrative, ballads, and the sonnet. He also moves easily between the amplitude of dramatic monologue and the compression of imagism. He experiments continually with an ingenious variety of stanza forms and rhyme schemes, rejecting the fluidity of contemporary poetry for his own idiosyncratic style, based on a real understanding of the variety of speech rhythms and registers. Each individual poem is designed to express in its language and form, and with utter honesty, Hardy’s impressions of life.

It is the logic of our times, No subject for immortal verse – That we who lived by honest dreams Defend the bad against the worse. *'Where Are The War Poets? (1943)

And hosts of other memories would have followed, crowding: a thousand skyscapes, day and night, the gay or sombre garments of the blue; the way the earth looked, falling; the wonder at first coming out above the clouds; the rush of engines starting; swallowing to stop deafness in a dive; the scream of wires; shadows of clouds on hills; rain, sweeping like veils over the sea, far off; sunlight; stars between wings; friends, close in formation, swaying, hand on throttle, as they rode ten feet away a mile above the earth. And many others: grass blown down when engines were run up; the smell of dope, and castor oil, and varnish in new cockpits; moonlight shining on struts; sunset clouds, gold-braided; the gasp before the dive; machine-guns; chasing wild duck; the feel of bumps, and all the mastery over movement, pride in skill.

The white floor, several thousand feet below, rose up towards me, turned at last from a pavement of pearl to just a plain bank of fog. I plunged into it. I might be going back from paradise to purgatory, so grey and cold and comfortless it was. And as I sand through it, listening to the singing of the wires, I was thinking how some day men might no longer hug the earth, but dwell in heaven, draw power and sustenance from the skies, whirl at their will among the stars, and only seek the ground as men go down to the dark mysteries of the sea-floor, glad to return, sun-worshipers, up to the stainless heaven.

He looked at us coldly / And his eyes were dead and his hands on the oar / Were black with obols and varicose veins / Marbled his calves and he said to us coldly: / If you want to die you will have to pay for it