Conrad Aiken Quotes
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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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Something had changed-but it was not the street-The street was just the same-it was himself.
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Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music,We press upon them, we hold them, and let them pass;A chord of music strikes us and straight we tremble;We tremble like wind-blown grass.
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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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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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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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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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'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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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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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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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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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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'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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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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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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In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover,And thinks the air is fire.
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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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I love you, what star do you live on?
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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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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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My heart has become as hard as a city street,The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,All day long and all night long they beat,They ring like the hooves of time.
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And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leavesInterlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlightTo divide us forever.
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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.