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I say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.

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
Midnight
Loves
Best
Heart

More quotes by Allen Tate

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The torrent of the reaching shade Broke shadow into all its parts, What then had been of shadow made Found exigence in fits and starts.
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What was I saying? An Egyptian king Once touched long fingers, which are not anything.
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All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.
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.
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In the cold morning the rested street stands up To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.
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Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history.
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Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
Allen Tate
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So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet.
Allen Tate
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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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The poet is he who fights on the passionate Side and whoever loses he wins when he Is defeated it is hard to say who wins.
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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The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
Allen Tate
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The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
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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In an age of abstract experience, fornication Is self-expression, adjunct to Christian euphoria, And whores become delinquents delinquents, patients Patients, wards of society. Whores, by that rule, Are precious.
Allen Tate
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Men expect too much, do too little.
Allen Tate
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Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.
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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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we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.
Allen Tate
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Men expect too much, do too little, Put the contraption before the accomplishment, Lack skill of the interior mind To fashion dignity with shapes of air. Luxury, yes but not elegance!
Allen Tate