Conrad Aiken Quotes
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O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh!When we are dead, my best belovèd and I,Close well above us, that we may rest forever,Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.
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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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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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From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:From some, a dazzling desire.
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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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Over the darkened city, the city of towers,The city of a thousand gates,Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
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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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'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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We rub the darkness from our eyes,And face our thousand devious secret mornings . . .And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending,Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamerCompassionate over our towers bending.
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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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Something had changed-but it was not the street-The street was just the same-it was himself.
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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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'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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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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'I bound her to me in all soft ways,I bound her to me in a net of days,Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.
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Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.
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What was this dream we had, a dream of music,Music that rose from the opening earth like magicAnd shook its beauty upon us and died away?The long cold streets extend once more before us.The red sun drops, the walls grow grey.
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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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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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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 will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.
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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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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 . . .