Stevie Smith, Selected Poems Quotes

Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable.

I'll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I'll have your heart, your life.

If I lie down on my bed I must be here, But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.

Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.

My heart was full of softening showers, I used to swing like this for hours, I did not care for war or death, I was glad to draw my breath.

The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.

Hope and desire, All unfulfilled, Have more than ropeAnd hangman killed.

Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.

Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know, I do not fear the night aboveAs I fear the friends below.

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise, Sharp Roman road to Paradise, Come eat me up, I'll pay thy tollWith all my flesh, and keep my soul.