Modern Writers Quote IDs

And thereupon That BEAUTIFUL MILD WOMAN for whose sake There's many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, 'To be born woman is to know— Although they do not talk of it at school— That we must labour to be beautiful.'

Adam's Curse - Yeats

Better go down upon your marrow-bones And SCRUB A KITCHEN PAVEMENT, or break stones Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather; For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.'

Adam's Curse - Yeats

I had a thought for no one's but your ears: That you were beautiful, and that I strove To love you in the OLD HIGH WAY OF LOVE; That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown As weary-hearted as that hollow moon

Adam's Curse - Yeats

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring. There have been lovers who thought love should be So much compounded of high courtesy That they would sigh and quote with learned looks Precedents out of BEAUTIFUL OLD BOOKS; Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

Adam's Curse - Yeats

We sat GROWN QUIET AT THE NAME OF LOVE; We saw the last embers of daylight die, And in the trembling blue-green of the sky A moon, worn as if it had been a shell Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell About the stars and broke in days and years.

Adam's Curse - Yeats

We sat together at one summer's end, That BEAUTIFUL MILD WOMAN, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and unsticking has been naught.

Adam's Curse - Yeats

Alien they seemed to be; No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history, Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, Till the Spinner of the Years Said "Now!" And each one hears, And consummation comes, and JARS TWO HEMISPHERES.

Convergence of the Twain - Hardy

Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: "What does this VAINGLORIOUSNESS down here?" ... Well: while was fashioning This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

Convergence of the Twain - Hardy

In a solitude of the sea Deep from HUMAN VANITY, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

Convergence of the Twain - Hardy

OVER THE MIRRORS meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Convergence of the Twain - Hardy

Prepared a sinister mate For her — so gaily great — A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance GREW THE ICEBERG too.

Convergence of the Twain - Hardy

"We MISS OUR DEAR FATHER SO MUCH" she had broken down and had to use her handkerchief, and on some of them even to soak up a very light-blue tear with an edge of blotting-paper. Strange! She couldn't have put it on—but twenty-three times. Even now, though, when she said over to herself sadly "We miss our dear father so much," she could have cried if she'd wanted to.

Daughters of the Late Colonel - Mansfield

Nurse Andrews was simply fearful about butter. Really they couldn't help feeling that about BUTTER, at least, she took advantage of their kindness. And she had that maddening habit of asking for just an inch more of bread to finish what she had on her plate, and then, at the last mouthful, absent-mindedly—of course it wasn't absent-mindedly—taking another helping.

Daughters of the Late Colonel - Mansfield

An AGED MAN IS A PALTRY THING, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

Sailing to Byzantium - Yeats

O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me INTO THE ARTIFICE OF ETERNITY.

Sailing to Byzantium - Yeats

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as GRECIAN GOLDSMITHS make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Sailing to Byzantium - Yeats

That is NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.

Sailing to Byzantium - Yeats

At once a voice arose among The BLEAK TWIGS overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.

The Darkling Thrush - Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate When FROST WAS SPECTRE-GREY, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.

The Darkling Thrush - Hardy

So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on TERRESTRIAL THINGS Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

The Darkling Thrush - Hardy

The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the CLOUDY CANOPY, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.

The Darkling Thrush - Hardy

And indeed there will be time For the YELLOW SMOKE that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, DOWNED WITH LIGHT BROWN HAIR!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? . . . . . . . . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?... I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . .

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I WAS AFRAID.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

And would it have been WORTH IT AFTER ALL, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all." . . . . . . . .

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"— If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: "That is not what I meant at all; THAT IS NOT IT AT ALL."

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have MEASURED OUT MY LIFE WITH COFFEE SPOONS; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

I GROW OLD ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown TILL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US, AND WE DROWN.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a BALD SPOT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY HAIR— (They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!") My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!") Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

In the room the women come and go TALKING OF MICHAELANGELO. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And SAWDUST RESTAURANTS WITH OYSTER-SHELLS: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question.... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

No! I AM NOT PRINCE HAMLET, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Eliot

And the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the description of reality more and more out of their stories, taking a knowledge of it for granted, as the Greeks did and Shakespeare perhaps—but these generalizations are very worthless. The military sound of the word is enough. It recalls leading articles, cabinet ministers—a whole class of things indeed which as a child one thought the thing itself, the standard thing, the real thing, from which one could not depart save at the risk of nameless damnation.

The Mark on the Wall - Woolf

And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at all. It may even be caused by some round black substance, such as a small rose leaf, left over from the summer, and I, not being a very vigilant housekeeper—look at the dust on the mantelpiece, for example, the dust which, so they say, buried Troy three times over, only fragments of pots utterly refusing annihilation, as one can believe.

The Mark on the Wall - Woolf

But as for that mark, I'm not sure about it; I don't believe it was made by a nail after all; it's too big, too round, for that. I might get up, but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn't be able to say for certain; because once a thing's done, no one ever knows how it happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life; The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization—let me just count over a few of the things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses—what cat would gnaw, what rat would nibble—three pale blue canisters of book-binding tools? Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ—all gone, and jewels, too. Opals and emeralds, they lie about the roots of turnips. What a scraping paring affair it is to be sure! The wonder is that I've any clothes on my back, that I sit surrounded by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour—landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard....

The Mark on the Wall - Woolf

Generalizations bring back somehow Sunday in London, Sunday afternoon walks, Sunday luncheons, and also ways of speaking of the dead, clothes, and habits—like the habit of sitting all together in one room until a certain hour, although nobody liked it. There was a rule for everything. The rule for tablecloths at that particular period was that they should be made of tapestry with little yellow compartments marked upon them, such as you may see in photographs of the carpets in the corridors of the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths. How shocking, and yet how wonderful it was to discover that these real things, Sunday luncheons, Sunday walks, country houses, and tablecloths were not entirely real, were indeed half phantoms, and the damnation which visited the disbeliever in them was only a sense of illegitimate freedom. What now takes the place of those things I wonder, those real standard things?

The Mark on the Wall - Woolf

How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.... If that mark was made by a nail, it can't have been for a picture, it must have been for a miniature—the miniature of a lady with white powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have chosen pictures in that way—an old picture for an old room. That is the sort of people they were—very interesting people, and I think of them so often, in such queer places, because one will never see them again, never know what happened next. They wanted to leave this house because they wanted to change their style of furniture, so he said, and he was in process of saying that in his opinion art should have ideas behind it when we were torn asunder, as one is torn from the old lady about to pour out tea and the young man about to hit the tennis ball in the back garden of the suburban villa as one rushes past in the train.

The Mark on the Wall - Woolf

In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it must have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea, for I remember that I was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the mark on the wall for the first time. I looked up through the smoke of my cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning coals, and that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark interrupted the FANCY, for it is an old FANCY, an automatic FANCY, made as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.

The Mark on the Wall - Woolf

Where was I? What has it all been about? A tree? A river? The Downs? Whitaker's Almanack? The fields of asphodel? I can't remember a thing. Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing.... There is a vast upheaval of matter. Someone is standing over me and saying— "I'm going out to buy a newspaper." "Yes?" "Though it's no good buying newspapers.... Nothing ever happens. CURSE THIS WAR; *** **** this war!... All the same, I don't see why we should have a snail on our wall." Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.

The Mark on the Wall - Woolf

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with A LION BODY AND THE HEAD OF A MAN, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The Second Coming - Yeats

The darkness drops again but now I know ThatTWENTY CENTURIES OF STONY SLEEP Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second Coming - Yeats

Turning and turning in the WIDENING GYRE The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

The Second Coming - Yeats

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. ALL WENT LAME, ALL BLIND; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

WW1 Dulce et Decorum Est - Owen

GAS! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

WW1 Dulce et Decorum Est - Owen

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a DEVIL'S SICK OF SKIN; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie:

WW1 Dulce et Decorum Est - Owen

You can't believe that British troops 'retire' When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run, Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood. O GERMAN MOTHER DREAMING BY THE FIRE, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

WW1 Glory of Women - Sassoon

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave, Or wounded in a mentionable place. You worship decorations; you believe That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace. YOU MAKE US SHELLS. You listen with delight, By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. You crown our distant ardours while we fight, And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.

WW1 Glory of Women - Sassoon

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, UNDER AN ENGLISH HEAVEN.

WW1 The Soldier - Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some CORNER OF A FOREIGN FIELD THAT IS FOR EVER ENGLAND. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

WW1 The Soldier - Brooke

'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply. 'For GEORGE lost both his legs; and BILL'S stone blind; 'Poor JIM'S shot through the lungs and like to die; 'And BERT'S gone syphilitic: you'll not find 'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'

WW1 They - Sassoon

The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back 'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought 'In a just cause: they lead the last attack 'On Anti-Christ; THEIR COMRADE'S BLOOD has bought 'New right to breed an honourable race, 'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

WW1 They - Sassoon

COVER HIM, COVER HIM SOON! And with thick-set Masses of memoried flowers- Hide that red wet Thing I must somehow forget.

WW1 To His Love - Gurney

He's gone, and all our plans Are useless indeed. We'll walk no more on COTSWOLDS Where the sheep feed Quietly and take no heed.

WW1 To His Love - Gurney

His body that was so quick Is not as you Knew it, on SEVERN RIVER Under the blue Driving our small boat through.

WW1 To His Love - Gurney

You would not know him now... But still he died Nobly, so cover him over With violets of pride Purple from SEVERN SIDE.

WW1 To His Love - Gurney