Cecil Day Lewis quotes

How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go. (Cecil Day Lewis)

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

Cecil Day Lewis

They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom's cause.

Cecil Day Lewis

Tempt me no more, for I Have known the lightning's hour, The poet's inward pride, The certainty of power.

Cecil Day Lewis

It's hard to believe a spirit could die Of such generous glow.

Cecil Day Lewis

It is the logic of our times, No subject for immortal verse- That we who lived by honest dreams Defend the bad against the worse.

Cecil Day Lewis

Shall I be gone long? For ever and a day To whom there belong? Ask the stone to say Ask my song.

Cecil Day Lewis

Who will say farewell? The beating bell. Will anyone miss me? That I dare not tell - Quick, Rose, and kiss me.

Cecil Day Lewis

Nigel's six feet sprawled all over the place; his gestures were nervous and little uncouth; a lock of sandy coloured hair dropping over his forehead, and the deceptive naïveté of his face in repose gave him a resemblance to an overgrown prep. schoolboy. His eyes were the same blue as his uncle's, but shortsighted and noncommittal. Yet there was an underlying similarity between the two. A latent, sardonic humor in their conversation, a friendliness and simple generosity in their smiles, and that impression of energy in reserve which is always given by those who possess an abundance of life directed towards consciously-realised aims.

Cecil Day Lewis

So feast your eyes now On mimic star and moon-cold bauble: Worlds may wither unseen, But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable, A phoenix in evergreen.

Cecil Day Lewis

Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled
With stars and moons. (Cecil Day Lewis)

Do not expect again the phoenix hour, The triple-towered sky, the dove's complaining, Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.

Cecil Day Lewis

Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul? Is it fine your way.

Cecil Day Lewis

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

Cecil Day Lewis

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

Cecil Day Lewis

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

Cecil Day Lewis

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

Cecil Day Lewis

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

Cecil Day Lewis

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.

Cecil Day Lewis