“ It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-A sunny day with the leaves just turning,The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you playYour first game of fotball, then, like a satelliteWrenched from… Cecil Day-Lewis
“ First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in… Cecil Day-Lewis
“ Poetry is not—except in a very limited sense—a form of self-expression. Who on earth supposes that the pearl expresses the oyster? Cecil Day-Lewis
“ The river this November afternoonRests in an equipoise of sun and cloud:A glooming light, a gleaming darkness shroudIts passage. All seems tranquil, all in tune. Cecil Day-Lewis
“ In June we picked the clover,And sea-shells in July:There was no silence at the door,No word from the sky.A hand came out of AugustAnd flicked his life away:We had not time to bargain, mope,Moralize,… Cecil Day-Lewis
“ See this abdicated beast, once kingOf them all, nibble his claws:Not anger enough left—no, nor despair—To break his teeth on the bars. Cecil Day-Lewis
“ And yet this self, containsTides, continents and stars―a myriad selves,Is small and solitary as one grass-bladePassed over by the windAmongst a myriad grasses on the prairie. Cecil Day-Lewis
“ A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry. Cecil Day-Lewis
