C. 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.

To travel like a bird, lightly to view: Deserts where stone gods founder in the sand,: Ocean embraced in a white sleep with land;: To escape time, always to start anew...: Hooded by a dark sense of destination...: Travelers, we're fabric of the road we go; We settle, but like feathers on time's flow.

Love is proved in the letting go.

High sprits they had: gravity they flouted.

A poet is not a public figure. A poet should be read and not seen.

It is unwise to equate scientific activity with what we call reason, poetic activity with what we call imagination. Without the imaginative leap from facts to generalisation, no theoretic discovery in science is made. The poet, on the other hand, must not imagine but reason--that is to say, he must exercise a great deal of consciously directed thought in the selection and rejection of his data: there is a technical logic, a poetic reasoning in his choice of the words, rhythms and images by which a poem's coherence is achieved.

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.

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

There's a kind of release And a kind of torment in every goodbye for every man.

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

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.

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.

There's a kind of release And a kind of torment in every goodbye for every man.

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.

To travel like a bird, lightly to view: Deserts where stone gods founder in the sand,: Ocean embraced in a white sleep with land;: To escape time, always to start anew...: Hooded by a dark sense of destination...: Travelers, we're fabric of the road we go; We settle, but like feathers on time's flow.

Selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in letting go.

Now the peak of summer's past, the sky is overcast And the love we swore would last for an age seems deceit.

High sprits they had: gravity they flouted.

The poetic myths are dead; and the poetic image, which is the myth of the individual, reigns in their stead.

A poet is not a public figure. A poet should be read and not seen.

Love is proved in the letting go.

It is unwise to equate scientific activity with what we call reason, poetic activity with what we call imagination. Without the imaginative leap from facts to generalisation, no theoretic discovery in science is made. The poet, on the other hand, must not imagine but reason--that is to say, he must exercise a great deal of consciously directed thought in the selection and rejection of his data: there is a technical logic, a poetic reasoning in his choice of the words, rhythms and images by which a poem's coherence is achieved.