Stevie Smith, Selected Poems
11 quotes
"Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood."
"Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died."
"If I lie down on my bed I must be here,But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere."
"Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go."
"My heart was full of softening showers,I used to swing like this for hours,I did not care for war or death,I was glad to draw my breath."
"Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know,I do not fear the night aboveAs I fear the friends below."
"Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,Sharp Roman road to Paradise,Come eat me up, I'll pay thy tollWith all my flesh, and keep my soul."
"I'll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I'll have your heart, your life."
"The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff."
"Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeplyMust take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.'Thus spake the awful aging coupleWhose heart the years had turned to rubble.But the little children, to save any brother,Let it in at one ear and out at the other."
"Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable."