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Louis MacNeice Quotes (displaying: 1 - 15 of 15 quotes)

Louis MacNeice
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Cradle Song for Eleano?: Sleep, my darling, sleep; The pity of it all Is all we compass if We watch disaster fall. Put off your twenty-odd Encumbered years and creep Into the only heaven, The robber? cave of sleep. The wild grass will whisper, Lights of passing cars Will streak across your dreams And fumble at the stars; Life will tap the window Only too soon again, Life will have her answer? Do not ask her when. When the winsome bubble Shivers, when the bough Breaks, will be the moment But not here or now. Sleep and, asleep, forget The watchers on the wall Awake all night who know The pity of it all.
Louis MacNeice
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Thus were we weaned to knowledge of the WillThat wills the natural world, but wills us dead.
Louis MacNeice
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Give those who are gentle strength,Give those who are strong a generous imagination,And make their half-truth true and let the crooked Footpath find its parent road at length....For never to beginAnything new because we know there is nothingNew, is an academic sophistry--The original sin.I have already had friendsAmong things and hours and peopleBut taking them one by one--odd hours and passing people;Now I must make amendsAnd try to correlate event with instinctAnd me with you or you with you with all,No longer think of time as a waterfallAbstracted from a river.
Louis MacNeice
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Theme:
The Sunlight on the GardenThe sunlight on the gardenHardens and grows cold,We cannot cage the minuteWithin its nets of gold,When all is toldWe cannot beg for pardon.Our freedom as free lancesAdvances towards its end;The earth compels, upon itSonnets and birds descend;And soon, my friend,We shall have no time for dances.The sky was good for flyingDefying the church bellsAnd every evil ironSiren and what it tells:The earth compels,We are dying, Egypt, dyingAnd not expecting pardon,Hardened in heart anew,But glad to have sat underThunder and rain with you,And grateful tooFor sunlight on the garden.
Louis MacNeice
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A city built upon mud; A culture built upon profit; Free speech nipped in the bud, The minority always guilty. Why should I want to go back To you, Ireland, my Ireland? ... Her mountains are still blue, her rivers flow Bubbling over the boulders. She is both a bore and a bitch; Better close the horizon, Send her no more fantasy, no more longings which Are under a fatal tariff. For common sense is the vogue And she gives her children neither sense nor money Who slouch around the world with a gesture and a brogue And a faggot of useless memories.
Louis MacNeice
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And at this hour of the day it is no good saying'Take away this cup';Having helped to fill it ourselves it is only logic. That now we should drink it up.
Louis MacNeice
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I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity.
Louis MacNeice
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World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion. A tangerine and spit the pips and feel. The drunkenness of things being various.
Louis MacNeice
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September has come, it is hers. Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, Whose nature prefers. Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace. So I give her this month and the next. Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already. So many of its days intolerable or perplexed. But so many more so happy. Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls. Dancing over and over with her shadow. Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls. And all of London littered with remembered kisses.
Louis MacNeice
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Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, otherwise kill me.
Louis MacNeice
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None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives. Are self deceivers, but the worst of all. Deceits is to murmur 'Lord, I am not worthy'And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall.
Louis MacNeice
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I cannot drug my life with the present moment; The present moment may rape--but all in vain--The future, for the future remains a virgin. Who must be tried again.
Louis MacNeice
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The argument was wilful, The alternatives untrue, We need no metaphysics. To sanction what we do. Or to muffle us in comfort. From what we did not do.
Louis MacNeice
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All that I would like to be is human, having a sharein a civilized, articulate and well-adjustedcommunity where the mind is given its duebut the body is not distrusted
Louis MacNeice
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Let the old Muse loosen her stays. Or give me a new Muse with stockings and suspenders. And a smile like a cat, With false eyelashes and finger-nails of carmine. And dressed by Schiaparelli, with a pill-box hat.... Give me a houri but houris are too easy, Give me a nun; We'll rape the angels off the golden reredos. Before we're done.
Louis MacNeice
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