Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
No one society and no one age of it realises all the values of civilisation. Not all of these values may be compatible with each other: what is at least as certain is that in realising some we lose the appreciation of others.
The nymphs are departed.
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
What life have you if you have not life together?
It is the just man who Like a bold lion, should be without fear.
She is deeply concerned with the ways of the mice – Their behaviour’s not good and their manners not nice; So when she has got them lined up on the matting, She teaches them music, crocheting and tatting.
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird meaning death.
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.
Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.
Wavering between the profit and the loss In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.
A restless shivering painted shadow In life, she is less than a shadow in death.
Family affection Was a kind of formal obligation, a duty Only noticed by its neglect.
The things I thought were real are shadows, and the real Are what I thought were private shadows.
It is not my conscience, Not my mind, that is diseased, but the world I have to live in.
Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things, It is what he can make, not what you would make for him.
The general ethos of the people they have to govern determines the behaviour of politicians.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree are of equal duration.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant – Among other things – or one way of putting the same thing: That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret, Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.