Stephen Spender Quotes - Page 3

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• Since we are what we are, what shall we be But what we are? We are, we have Six feet and seventy years, to see The light , and then resign it for the grave .

  Stephen Spender

  Light, Years, Feet

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.287, Faber & Faber

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• Religion stands, the Church blocking the sun.

  Stephen Spender

  Block, Religion, Church

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.47, Faber & Faber

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• Involved in my own entrails and a crust Turning a pitted surface towards a space, I am a world that watches through a sky And is persuaded by mirrors To regard its being as an external shell, One of a universe of stars and faces.

  Stephen Spender

  Stars, Sky, Space

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.189, Faber & Faber

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• What the eye delights in, no longer dictates My greed to enjoy: boys, grass, the fenced-off deer. It leaves those figures that distantly play On the horizon's rim: they sign their peace, in games.

  Stephen Spender

  Eye, Boys, Games

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.135, Faber & Faber

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• To break out of the chaos of my darkness Into a lucid day is all my will. My words like eyes in night, stare to reach A centre for their light: and my acts thrown To distant places by impatient violence Yet lock together to mould a path of stone Out of my darkness into a lucid day.

  Stephen Spender

  Eye, Night, Light

  Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press

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• My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse And shut upon obscurity; my acts Cast to their opposites by impatient violence Break up the sequent path; they fly On a circumference to avoid the centre.

  Stephen Spender

  Eye, Light, Opposites

  Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press

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• Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds, Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity. But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds, This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.

  Stephen Spender

  Clouds, Soul, Despair

  "Poems (In Railway Halls, on Pavements Near the Traffic)". Book by Stephen Spender, 1933.

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• My uncle was famous for his balanced point of view. At the time of which I am writing (when he was nearly seventy) it had become so balanced, that the act of balancing seemed rather automatic.One had only to offer him an opinion for him to balance it with a counter- opinion of exactly the same weight, as a grocer puts a pound weight against a pound of sugar.

  Stephen Spender

  Uncles, Writing, Views

  1951 World within World, p.77.

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• All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.

  Stephen Spender

  Running, Wall, Rain

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.165, Faber & Faber

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• You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed. All England lies beneath you like a woman With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eyes.

  Stephen Spender

  Lying, Moving, Eye

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.153, Faber & Faber

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• When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.

  Stephen Spender

  Fathers Day, Dream, Horse

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• The iron arc of the avoiding journey Curves back upon my weakness at the end; Whether the faint light spark against my face Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight, Centre and circumference are both my weakness.

  Stephen Spender

  Dark, Journey, Light

  Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press

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