Cecil Day-Lewis Quotes

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

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

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.

~ 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.

~ 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?

~ 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.

~ Cecil Day-Lewis

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

~ Cecil Day-Lewis