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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.
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
Boys
Horizon
Games
Greed
Eye
Grass
Peace
Leaves
Fenced
Enjoy
Sign
Rims
Play
Delight
Dictates
Figures
Delights
Longer
Deer
More quotes by Stephen Spender
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.
Stephen Spender
Under the olive trees, from the ground Grows this flower, which is a wound. It is easier to ignore Than the heroes' sunset fire Of death plunged in their willed desire Raging with flags on the world's shore.
Stephen Spender
The iron arc of the avoiding journey Curves back upon my weakness at the end Whether the faint light spark against my face Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight, Centre and circumference are both my weakness.
Stephen Spender
Never allow gradually the traffic to smother with noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
Stephen Spender
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.
Stephen Spender
When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender
Poetry cannot take sides except with life.
Stephen Spender
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
Stephen Spender
What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent.
Stephen Spender
I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.
Stephen Spender
There is a certain justice in criticism.
Stephen Spender
No one Shall hunger: Man shall spend equally. Our goal which we compel: Man shall be man.
Stephen Spender
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.
Stephen Spender
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.
Stephen Spender
But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.
Stephen Spender
If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.
Stephen Spender
When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.
Stephen Spender
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.
Stephen Spender
The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.
Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great...Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun, and left the vivid air signed with their honor.
Stephen Spender
