Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith Quotes

“Into the dark night
Resignedly I go,
I am not so afraid of the dark night
As the friends I do not know,
I do not fear the night above
As I fear the friends below.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,
Sharp Roman road to Paradise,
Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll
With all my flesh, and keep my soul.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“I'll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I'll have your heart, your life.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“My heart was full of softening showers,
I used to swing like this for hours,
I did not care for war or death,
I was glad to draw my breath.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Love me, Love me, I cried to the rocks and the trees, And Love me, they cried again, but it was only to tease. Once I cried Love me to the people, but they fled like a dream, And when I cried Love to my friend, she began to scream. Oh why do they leave me, the beautiful people, and only the rocks remain, To cry Love me, as I cry Love me, and Love me again.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Hope and desire,
All unfulfilled,
Have more than rope
And hangman killed.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“If I lie down on my bed I must be here,
But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“It is the privilege of the rich
To waste the time of the poor
To water with tears in secret
A tree that grows in secret
That bears fruit in secret
That ripened falls to the ground in secret
And manures the parent tree
Oh the wicked tree of hatred and the secret
The sap rising and the tears falling.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeply
Must take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.'

Thus spake the awful aging couple
Whose heart the years had turned to rubble.

But the little children, to save any bother,
Let it in at one ear and out at the other.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith