Quote

Bright clasp of her whole hand around my finger My daughter as we walk together now. All my life I'll feel a ring invisibly Circle this bone with shining When she is grown.

Stephen Spender

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Stephen Spender
Age: 86 †
Born: 1909
Born: February 28
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Stephen Harold Spender
Together
Fingers
Circle
Whole
Daughter
Ring
Feel
Walk
Rings
Feels
Walks
Bright
Life
Hand
Circles
Invisibly
Father
Grown
Clasp
Hands
Bones
Bone
Around
Shining
Finger

More quotes by Stephen Spender

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My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse And shut upon obscurity my acts Cast to their opposites by impatient violence Break up the sequent path they fly On a circumference to avoid the centre.
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I think of those who were truly great. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
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For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust
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Poetry cannot take sides except with life.
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What the eye delights in, no longer dictates My greed to enjoy: boys, grass, the fenced-off deer. It leaves those figures that distantly play On the horizon's rim: they sign their peace, in games.
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No one Shall hunger: Man shall spend equally. Our goal which we compel: Man shall be man.
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My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.
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Never allow gradually the traffic to smother with noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
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One of my great surprises when I was in America was about twenty-five years ago in Harvard, hearing Randall Jarrell deliver a bitter attack on the way poets were neglected. Yet there were about two thousand people present, and he was being paid five hundred dollars for delivering this attack.
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There is a certain justice in criticism.
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The only true hope for civilization-the conviction of the individual that his inner life can affect outward events and that, whether or not he does so he is responsible for them.
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My single pair of eyes Contain the universe they see Their mirrored multiplicity Is packed into a hollow body Where I reflect the many, in my one.
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I think continually of those who were truly great . Who, from the womb, remembered the soul 's history Through corridors of light where the hours are suns , Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire , Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song .
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Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
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When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
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I think continually of those who were truly great.
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Religion stands, the Church blocking the sun.
Stephen Spender
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So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself
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You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed. All England lies beneath you like a woman With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eyes.
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The greatest of all human delusions is that there is a tangible goal, and not just direction towards an ideal aim. The idea that a goal can be attained perpetually frustrates human beings, who are disappointed at never getting there, never being able to stop.
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