“When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,
“yet many a better one has died before.”
Then, scanning all the overcrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all this for evermore.”
Charles Sorley, 1916

Poison Tree - William Blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

cathedralsofsound: “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

cathedralsofsound:

“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

“He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be forever barred.”
J. M. Barrie - ‘Peter Pan’

Quotes

I have to basically read a load of books for my University course next year (English) so i’ve decided to carry on woth the theme of a few of my previous posts. Everytime I finish a book I’ll post my favourite quote from it on here.

“It’s so difficult constantly having to find things to keep the kids amused throughout the easter holidays. Luckily, this afternoon they’re going blackberrying. And if they don’t get caught, they’ll go iPodding too.”
‘Mrs Fry’s Diary’ - Stephen Fry
“When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time — the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes — when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever — there comes another day, and another specifically missing part”

‘A Prayer For Owen Meany’ - John Irving

“Silent without life or motion - a time exempt of plans for the future is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and it’s weary greed - pleasure without desire, existence without duration, beauty without will.
For art is emotion without desire.”
‘The elegance of the hedgehog’ - Muriel Barbery