Top 12 Cecil Day-Lewis Quotes

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly Saying what God alone could perfectly show — How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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