Amy Lowell Quotes

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you; of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.

Lilacs, False Blue, White, Purple, Colour of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England ... Lilacs in dooryards Holding quiet conversation with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house; ... Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom, You are everywhere.

Polyphonic prose is a kind of free verse, except that it is still freer. Polyphonic makes full use of cadence, rime, alliteration, assonance.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.

Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation.

Oh! To be a butterfly Still, upon a flower, Winking with its painted wings, Happy in the hour.

Happiness, to some, is elation; to others it is mere stagnation.

Sexual love is the most stupendous fact of the universe, and the most magical mystery our poor blind senses know.

When you came, you were like red wine and honey, and the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

Hate is ravening vulture beaks descending on a place of skulls.

A black cat among roses, phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon, the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still. It is dazed with moonlight, contented with perfume.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart.

The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.

Happiness: We rarely feel it. I would buy it, beg it, steal it, Pay in coins of dripping blood For this one transcendent good.

Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.

This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds.

So with the stretch of the white road before me, Shining snow crystals rainbowed by the sun, Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows, Strong with the strength of my horse as we run. Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight! Joy! With the vigorous earth I am one.

Love is a game-yes? I think it is a drowning.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Youth condemns; maturity condones

When I go away from you The world beats dead Like a slackened drum.

How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone!

I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.

Even pain pricks to livelier living.

You are ice and fire the touch of you burns my hands like snow.

Time! Joyless emblem of the greed of millions, robber of the best which earth can give.

How much more beautiful is the moon, Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree; The moon Wavering across a bed of tulips; The moon, Still, Upon your face. You shine, Beloved, You and the moon. But which is the reflection?

I shall go Up and down In my gown. Gorgeously arrayed, Boned and stayed.

Art is like politics. Any theory carried too far ends in sterility, and freshness is only gained by following some other line.

Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run.

If what we worship fail us, still the fire burns on, and it is much to have believed.

Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.

My words are little jars For you to take and put upon a shelf. Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, And they have many pleasant colours and lustres To recommend them. Also the scent from them fills the room With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When trying to explain anything, I usually find that the Bible, that great collection of magnificent and varied poetry, has said it before in the best possible way.

Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.

May is much sunshine through small leaves.

I must be mad, or very tired, When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune, And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.

Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease.

Moon! Moon! I am prone before you. Pity me,and drench me in loneliness.

On the neck of the young man sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise. Youth condemns; maturity condones.

Can you see through the night, woman, that you stare so upon it? Man, what sparks do your eyes follow in the smouldering darkness?

I know that a creed is the shell of a lie.

Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin

How hard, how desperately hard, is the way of the experimenter in art!

A man must be sacrificed now and again to provide for the next generation of men.

Guarded within the old red wall's embrace, Marshalled like soldiers in gay company, The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry Wheels out into the sunlight.

Only those of our poets who kept solidly to the Shakespearean tradition achieved any measure of success. But Keats was the last great exponent of that tradition, and we all know how thin, how lacking in charm, the copies of Keats have become.

In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jeweled fan, I too am a rare Pattern.

Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.