ARTHUR SYMONS

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

As perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me: all things leave me: You remain.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves... He must have the passion of a lover.

My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.

Hardly any one is able to see what is before him, just as it is in itself. He comes expecting one thing, he finds another thing, he sees through the veil of his preconception, he criticizes before he has apprehended, he condemns without allowing his instinct the chance of asserting itself.

The clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises, The earth renews its magical youth at a breath.

I know the woman has no soul, I know The woman has no possibilities Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so. It is her flesh that I adore; I go Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss. I know she cannot love: it is not this My vanquished heart implores in overthrow. Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone, Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent Music, divinest human harmony; Her body now a silent instrument, That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me The strains I have but dreamed of, never known.

I have loved colours, and not flowers;Their motion, not the swallows wings;And wasted more than half my hoursWithout the comradeship of things.

The dead are happy, having no desire. I rise and fall, and rise and fall again, Something is in me, famishing for bread, Baffled and unappeasable as fire.

I have laid sorrow to sleep;Love sleeps.She who oft made me weepNow weeps.

Art begins when a man wishes to immortalize the most vivid moment he has ever lived.

The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man.

The wind is rising on the sea,The windy white foam-dancers leap;And the sea moans uneasily,And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep.

Night, a more perfect day.

God, like all highest things, Hides light in shade, And in the night his visitings To sleep and dreams are clearliest made.

The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.

There is not a dream which may not come true, if we have the energy which makes, or chooses, our own fate.... It is only the dreams of those light sleepers who dream faintly that do not come true.

The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world.

Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.

To have loved, to have been made happy thus, / What better fate has life in store for us?

There are certain natures to whom work is nothing, the act of work everything.

It is in their eyes that their magic resides.

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.

Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me.

The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.