But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
W. B. Yeats
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among it's desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
W. H. Auden
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper - even a rag like this - ,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his.
Lord Byron (Don Juan)
Four Quartets (V)
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
T.S.Elliot
All the words that I gather,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm darkened or starry bright.
—W. B. Yeats
Throughout the world if it were sought,
Fair words enough a man shall find,
They be good cheap, they cost right nought,
Their substance is but only wind,
But well to say, and so to mean,
That sweet accord is seldom seen.
Sir Thomas Wyatt
When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke around me I am in darkness — I am nothing.
I only come into existence when the plumber, or the horse dealers, or whoever it may be, says something which sets me alight.
Then how lovely the smoke of my phrase is, rising and falling, flaunting and falling, upon red lobsters and yellow fruit, wreathing them into one beauty.
Virginia Woolf
A man who keeps a diary pays,
Due toll to many tedious days;
But life becomes eventful- then,
His busy hand forgets the pen.
Most books, indeed, are records less
Of fulness than of emptiness.
William Allingham, A Diary
Between what I see and what I say,
between what I say and what I keep silent,
between what I keep silent and what I dream,
between what I dream and what I forget: poetry.
It slips between yes and no,
says what I keep silent,
keeps silent what I say,
dreams what I forget.
It is not speech:
it is an act.
It is an act that is speech.
Poetry speaks and listens:
it is real.
And as soon as I say
‘it is real’,
it vanishes.
Is it then more real?
A tangible idea,
intangible word:
poetry comes and goes
between what is
and what is not.
It weaves
and unweaves reflections.
Poetry sows eyes in the page,
sows words in the eyes.
The eyes speak,
words look,
gazes think.
To hear thoughts,
see what we say,
touch the body of an idea.
Eyes close,
the words open.
Octavio Paz
(no information on the translator, though
)
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
(This was a 'present' from Kim Metzger.
)