"Letters From Iceland" by W.H. Auden & Cecil Day Lewis

"Isn't it true however far we've wandered into our provinces of persecution, where our regrets accuse, we keep returning back to the common faith from which we've all dissented, back to the hands, the feet, the faces? Children are always there and take the hands, even when they are most terrified. Those in love cannot make up their minds to go or stay. Artist and doctor return most often. Only the mad will never, never come back. For doctors keep on worrying while away, in case their skill is suffering or deserted. Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they want belief again in their own size. And the artist prays ever so gently, let me find pure all that can happen. Only uniqueness is success. For instance let me perceive the images of history. All that I push away with doubt and travel, today's and yesterdays alike, like bodies."

"Letters From Iceland" by W.H. Auden and Cecil Day Lewis.

The Wisdom of George Herbert

Life is half spent before we know what it is. A gentle heart is tied with an easy thread.

Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie: a fault which needs it most, grows two thereby.

Do not wait; the time will never be "just right."
Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at
your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

Good words are worth much, and cost little.

He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge
over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for
everyone has need to be forgiven.

In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.

Living well is the best revenge.

Love and a cough cannot be hid.

None knows the weight of another's burden.

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

Punishment is lame, but it comes.

Sometimes the best gain is to lose.

There is an hour wherein a man might be happy all his life, could he find it.

There is great force hidden in a gentle command.

Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them.

George Herbert - "Clasping Hands"

Clasping of hands.

LOrd, thou art mine, and I am thine,
If mine I am: and thine much more,
Then I or ought, or can be mine.
Yet to be thine, doth me restore;
So that again I now am mine,
And with advantage mine the more,
Since this being mine, brings with it thine,
And thou with me dost thee restore.
      If I without thee would be mine,
      I neither should be mine nor thine.

Lord, I am thine, and thou art mine:
So mine thou art, that something more
I may presume thee mine, then thine.
For thou didst suffer to restore
Not thee, but me, and to be mine,
And with advantage mine the more,
Since thou in death wast none of thine,
Yet then as mine didst me restore.
      O be mine still! still make me thine!
      Or rather make no Thine and Mine! 

Geoffrey Hill, "Tristia" - "Tragedy has all under regard."

Tristia: 1891-1938

A Valediction to Osip Mandelstam

Difficult friend, I would have preferred
You to them. The dead keep their sealed lives
And again I am too late. Too late
The salutes, dust-clouds and brazen cries.

Images rear from desolation
Look...ruins upon a plain...
A few men glare at their hands; others
Grovel for food in the roadside field.

Tragedy has us all under regard.
It will not touch us but it is there -
Flawless, insatiate - hard summer sky
Feasting on this, reaching its own end.

"Tristia: 1891-1938" (12 lines) from "Four Poems Regarding the Endurance of Poets" first published in King Log and reprinted in Selected Poems by Geoffrey Hill (Penguin Books, 2006) - reprinted in Selected Poems by Geoffrey Hill (Yale University Press, 2009: pg43).

To Create Something Beautiful: Hart Crane

"... try to imagine working for the pure love of simply making something beautiful, - something that maybe can't be sold or used to help sell anything else, but that is simply a communication between man and man, a bond of understanding and human enlightenment - which is what real work is.... I only ask to leave behind me something that the future may find valuable... I shall make every sacrifice toward that end." Hart Crane in a letter to Clarence Arthur Crane (his father) January 12, 1924.
Hart Crane Complete Poems & Selected Letters. (Library of America Press, 2007)

"The Loon's Cry" Howard Nemerov

For sometimes, when our world is not our home
Nor we any home elsewhere, but all
Things look to leave us naked, hungry, cold
We suddenly may seem in paradise
Again, in ignorance and emptiness
Blessed beyond what we thought to know:
Then on sweet waters echoes the loon's cry.

Howard Nemerov, "The Loon's Cry"

Howard Nemerov, Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (University of Chicago Press, 1981).

Emily Dickinson on Pain

#1049

Pain has but one Acquaintance
And that is Death --
Each one unto the other
Society enough.

Pain is the Junior Party
By just a Second's right --
Death tenderly assists Him
And then absconds from Sight.

-------------------------------------------

#650

Pain - has an Elements of Blank -
It cannot recollect
When it begun - or if there were
A time when it was not -

It has no Future - but itself -
Its Infinite contain
Its Past - enlightenment to perceive
New Periods - of Pain.



The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Thomas H. Johnson Edition