Cecil Day-Lewis Quotes

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in letting go.

Now the peak of summer's past, the sky is overcast And the love we swore would last for an age seems deceit.

We who fly do so for the love of flying. We are alive in the air with this miracle that lies in our hands and beneath our feet.

Love is proved in the letting go.

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.

A poet is not a public figure. A poet should be read and not seen.

They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom's cause.

High sprits they had: gravity they flouted.

Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over time over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this.

The poetic myths are dead; and the poetic image, which is the myth of the individual, reigns in their stead.

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.

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.

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.

poetry is not—except in a very limited sense—a form of self-expression. Who on earth supposes that the pearl expresses the oyster?