Quote

Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red Reverberance of hail upon the dead Thunder like an exploding crucible!

Allen Tate

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Allen Tate
Age: 79 †
Born: 1899
Born: November 19
Died: 1979
Died: February 9
Author
Literary Critic
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Burst
Thunder
Knell
Accurate
Arch
Red
Crucible
Dead
Successive
Dark
Arches
Upon
Exploding
Like
Hail

More quotes by Allen Tate

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What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.
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All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.
Allen Tate
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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
Allen Tate
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The dreary flies, lazy and casual, Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall. O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving, between the pinks and grapes, his pall.
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Swimmer of noonday, lean for the perfect dive To the dead Mother's face, whose subtile down You had not seen take amber light alive.
Allen Tate
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I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.
Allen Tate
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Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
Allen Tate
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Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky And I must think a little of the past: When I was ten I told a stinking lie That got a black boy whipped.
Allen Tate
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Let us lie down once more by the breathing side Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep As if the Known Sea still were a month wide-- Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!
Allen Tate
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There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
Allen Tate
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And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.
Allen Tate
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Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
Allen Tate
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The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
Allen Tate
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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
Allen Tate
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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
Allen Tate
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For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain.
Allen Tate
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In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.
Allen Tate
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Now remember courage, go to the door,Open it and see whether coiled on the bedOr cringing by the wall, a savage beastMaybe with golden hair, with deep eyesLike a bearded spider on a sunlit floorWill snarl-and man can never be alone.
Allen Tate
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Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
Allen Tate
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The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail Far off a precise whistle is escheat To the dark and then the towering weak and pale.
Allen Tate