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Collected Poems

Book by William Blake · 43 quotes · Poetry, Heart, Poem

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Collected Poems Quotes

“Even in the Moment of Our Earliest Kiss Even in the moment of our earliest kiss, When sighed the straitened bud into the flower, Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this; And that I knew, though not the day and hour. Too season-wise am I, being country-bred, To tilt at autumn or defy the frost: Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did, I say with them, "What’s out tonight is lost." I only hoped, with the mild hope of all Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree, A fairer summer and a later fall Than in these parts a man is apt to see, And sunny clusters ripened for the wine: I tell you this across the blackened vine.”

LovePoetryNatureHeartbreak
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“The Spring and the Fall In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year, I walked the road beside my dear. The trees were black where the bark was wet. I see them yet, in the spring of the year. He broke me a bough of the blossoming peach That was out of the way and hard to reach. In the fall of the year, in the fall of the year, I walked the road beside my dear. The rooks went up with a raucous trill. I hear them still, in the fall of the year. He laughed at all I dared to praise, And broke my heart, in little ways. Year be springing or year be falling, The bark will drip and the birds be calling. There’s much that’s fine to see and hear In the spring of a year, in the fall of a year. 'Tis not love’s going hurts my days, But that it went in little ways.”

LovePoetryHeartbreak
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“Now by the Path I Climbed, I Journey Back Now by the path I climbed, I journey back. The oaks have grown; I have been long away. Taking with me your memory and your lack I now descend into a milder day; Stripped of your love, unburdened of my hope, Descend the path I mounted from the plain; Yet steeper than I fancied seems the slope And stonier, now that I go down again. Warm falls the dusk; the clanking of a bell Faintly ascends upon this heavier air; I do recall those grassy pastures well: In early spring they drove the cattle there. And close at hand should be a shelter, too, From which the mountain peaks are not in view.”

LovePoetryHeartbreak
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“Love is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.”

LovePoetrySonnet Xxx
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“Time Does Not Bring Relief Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”

PoetryMemoriesSorrowHeartbreakYearning
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“Dirge Without Music I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”

DeathPoetryGriefMourning
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“I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.”

DeathPoetry
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“Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?”

LoveCarePoetryFamilyPoemFamily RelationshipsFathersSonsThose Winter Sundays
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“On No Work of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven, The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft. To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark. To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”

LifePoetryReciprocityWriter S Block
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“And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see, -- A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, -- I know not how such things can be! -- I breathed my soul back into me. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky”

LifePoetryNatureLiving
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“Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste! Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct, Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong: Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break. - Next, Please”

DeathPoetryWaitingExpectations
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“I avoid the looming visitor, Flee him adroitly around corners, Hating him, wishing him well; Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise true: That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied; And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the sonnet cools Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since I was a child. Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt, There may be. But not enough to keep a bird alive. There is a flaw amounting to a fissure In such behaviour.”

PoetrySolitudeReclusiveUnsociability
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“here among them the americans this baffling multi people extremes and variegations their noise restlessness their almost frightening energy how best describe these aliens in my reports to The Counselors disguise myself in order to study them unobserved adapting their varied pigmentations white black red brown yellow the imprecise and strangering distinctions by which they live by which they justify their cruelties to one another charming savages enlightened primitives brash new comers lately sprung up in our galaxy how describe them do they indeed know what or who they are do not seem to yet no other beings in the universe make more extravagant claims for their importance and identity”

PoetryCultureCommunityRacePoemRacismRace RelationsAmericans
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“Lie down beside these waters That bubble from the spring; Hear in the desert silence The desert sparrow sing; Draw from the shapeless moment Such pattern as you can; And cleave henceforth to Beauty; Expect no more from man. Man, with his ready answer, His sad and hearty word, For every cause in limbo, For every debt deferred, For every pledge forgotten, His eloquent and grim Deep empty gaze upon you,— Expect no more from him.”

PoetryNatureMankind
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“something they call the american dream sure we still believe in it i guess an earth man in the tavern said irregardless of the some times night mare facts we always try to double talk our way around and its okay the dreams okay and means whats good could be a damn sight better means every body in the good old u s a should have the chance to get ahead or at least should have three squares a day as for myself i do okay”

PoetryOpportunityPoemsAmerican DreamEqual Opportunity
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“Inexpensive Progress Encase your legs in nylons, Bestride your hills with pylons O age without a soul; Away with gentle willows And all the elmy billows That through your valleys roll. Let's say goodbye to hedges And roads with grassy edges And winding country lanes; Let all things travel faster Where motor car is master Till only Speed remains. Destroy the ancient inn-signs But strew the roads with tin signs 'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!' Command, instruction, warning, Repetitive adorning The rockeried roundabout; For every raw obscenity Must have its small 'amenity,' Its patch of shaven green, And hoardings look a wonder In banks of floribunda With floodlights in between. Leave no old village standing Which could provide a landing For aeroplanes to roar, But spare such cheap defacements As huts with shattered casements Unlived-in since the war. Let no provincial High Street Which might be your or my street Look as it used to do, But let the chain stores place here Their miles of black glass facia And traffic thunder through. And if there is some scenery, Some unpretentious greenery, Surviving anywhere, It does not need protecting For soon we'll be erecting A Power Station there. When all our roads are lighted By concrete monsters sited Like gallows overhead, Bathed in the yellow vomit Each monster belches from it, We'll know that we are dead.”

PoetryProgressUrban Development
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