Conrad Aiken Quotes
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Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water.And soon the pond must freeze.
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We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamerMoves among us like light, like evening air . . .
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We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads,Hear sounds far off,-and dream, with quivering breath,Our curious separate ways through life and death.
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From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,And some strange shadows threw.
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A small but brilliant advance made today by someone’s awareness may for the moment reach a very small audience, but insofar as it’s valid and beautiful, it will make its way and become part of the whole world of consciousness. So in that sense it’s all working toward this huge audience, and all working toward a better man.
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All lovely things will have an ending,All lovely things will fade and die,And youth, that's now so bravely spending,Will beg a penny by and by.
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Something had changed-but it was not the street-The street was just the same-it was himself.
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The days, the nights, flow one by one above us,The hours go silently over our lifted faces,We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea.Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together.We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee.
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The wind shrieks, the wind grieves;It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again;And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreamsAnd desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.
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The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street,The young girl hums beneath her breath.One goes out to beauty, and does not know it.And one goes out to death.
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Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened.Again I loved, and love itself was darkened.Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days.The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent.The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.
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'I am the one you saw to-day, who fellSenseless before you, hearing a certain bell:A bell that broke great memories in my brain.'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.'
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In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,I suddenly face you
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'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?'They pause and smile, not caring what they say,If only they may talk.The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
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I love you, what star do you live on?
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Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!-But time goes on, and will, unheeding,Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.
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There, in the high bright window he dreams, and seesWhat we are blind to,-we who mass and crowdFrom wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.
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Each gleaming point of light is like a seedDilating swiftly to coiling fires.Each cloud becomes a rapidly dimming face,Each hurrying face records its strange desires.
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Let us retrace our steps: I have deceived you:Nothing is here I could not frankly tell you:No hint of guilt, or faithlessness, or threat.Dreams-they are madness. Staring eyes-illusion.Let us return, hear music, and forget . . .
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In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover,And thinks the air is fire.
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Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass,Through many doors to the one door of all.Soon as it's opened we shall hear a music:Or see a skeleton fall . . .
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My heart is torn with the sound of raucous voices,They shout from the slums, from the streets, from the crowded places,And tunes from the hurdy-gurdy that coldly rejoicesShoot arrows into my heart.
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And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;And there was one who dreamed of a sudden deathAs she blew out her light.
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And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leavesInterlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlightTo divide us forever.