Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
‘Fern Hill’ (1946)
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ (1934)
And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ (1934)
The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death.
‘The hand that signed the paper felled a city’ (1936)
The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever, And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over Man by a scribbled name.
‘The hand that signed the paper felled a city’ (1936)
Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart Push in their tides.
‘Light breaks where no sun shines’ (1934)
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore.
The morning beckon.
‘Poem in October’ (1946)
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail With its horns through mist and the castle Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall vales Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud. There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
‘Poem in October’ (1946)
Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter, Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’ (1946)
There is only one position for an artist anywhere: and that is, upright.
‘Quite Early One Morning’ (1954) pt. 2 ‘Wales and the Artist’
To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bibleblack.
‘Under Milk Wood’ (1954) p. 1
Before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.
‘Under Milk Wood’ (1954) p. 16
Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she wasn’t looking and never kissed her again although she was looking all the time.
‘Under Milk Wood’ (1954) p. 19
Oh, isn’t life a terrible thing, thank God?
‘Under Milk Wood’ (1954) p. 30
Chasing the naughty couples down the grassgreen gooseberried double bed of the wood.
‘Under Milk Wood’ (1954)
The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.
On Wales, in ‘Adam’ December 1953
[An alcoholic:] A man you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.
In Constantine Fitzgibbon ‘Life of Dylan Thomas’ (1965) ch. 6
8.31 Edward Thomas 1878-1917
Yes; I remember Adlestrop— The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.
‘Adlestrop’ (1917)
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
‘Early one morning in May I set out’ (1917)
If I should ever by chance grow rich
I’ll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,
And let them all to my elder daughter.
‘Household Poems: Bronwen’ (1917)
I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight Or winding, soon or late; They can not choose.
‘Lights Out’ (1917)
As for myself
Where first I met the bitter scent, etc.
‘Old Man’
Out in the dark over the snow The fallow fawns invisible go With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow Fast as the stars are slow.
‘Out in the dark’ (1917)
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
‘Tall Nettles’ (1917)
8.32 Elizabeth Thomas 1675-1731
From marrying in haste, and repenting at leisure; Not liking the person, yet liking his treasure.
‘A New Litany, occasioned by an invitation to a wedding’ (1722).
8.33 Irene Thomas
Protestant women may take the pill. Roman Catholic women must keep taking The Tablet.
In ‘Guardian’ 28 December 1990, p. 27
8.34 R. S. Thomas
He is that great void we must enter, calling
to one another on our way in the direction from which he blows. What matter
if we should never arrive to breed or to winter
in the climate of our conception?
‘Migrants’ (1990)
8.35 Francis Thompson 1859-1907
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro, To and fro:—
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!
‘At Lord’s’ (1913)
The fairest things have fleetest end, Their scent survives their close: But the rose’s scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose!
‘Daisy’ (1913)
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in other’s pain, And perish in our own.
‘Daisy’ (1913)
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1913) pt. 1
But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet—
All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.
‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1913) pt. 1
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon.
‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1913) pt. 2
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1913) pt. 2
Such is: what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1913) pt. 4
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds From the hid battlements of Eternity; Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpséd turrets slowly wash again.
‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1913) pt. 4
Now of that long pursuit Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: ‘And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!’
‘The Hound of Heaven’ (1913) pt. 5
There is no expeditious road To pack and label men for God,
And save them by the barrel-load.
Some may perchance, with strange surprise, Have blundered into Paradise.
‘A Judgement in Heaven’ (1913) epilogue
O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
‘The Kingdom of God’ (1913)
The angels keep their ancient places;— Turn but a stone, and start a wing! ’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangéd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!
‘The Kingdom of God’ (1913)
Look for me in the nurseries of heaven.
‘To My Godchild Francis M.W.M.’ (1913)
What heart could have thought you?— Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost?
‘To a Snowflake’ (1913)
Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost.
‘To a Snowflake’ (1913)
8.36 Hunter S. Thompson 1939—
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas.
Title of two articles in ‘Rolling Stone’ 11 and 25 Nov. 1971 (under the pseudonym ‘Raoul Duke’)
8.37 William Hepworth Thompson 1810-86
What time he can spare from the adornment of his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties.
On Sir Richard Jebb, later Professor of Greek at Cambridge University, in M. R. Bobbit ‘With Dearest Love to All’ (1960) ch. 7
8.38 James Thomson 1700-48
When Britain first, at heaven’s command, Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: ‘Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.’
‘Alfred: a Masque’ (1740) act 2, closing scene
A pleasing land of drowsyhead it was.
‘The Castle of Indolence’ (1748) canto 1, st. 6
A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems Who, void of envy, guile, and lust of gain, On virtue still, and nature’s pleasing themes, Poured forth his unpremeditating strain.
‘The Castle of Indolence’ (1748) canto 1, st. 68
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Spring’ l. 1152
An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Spring’ l. 1161
The sober-suited songstress.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Summer’ l. 746 (referring to the nightingale)
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Summer’ l. 946
Or sighed and looked unutterable things.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Summer’ l. 1188
Autumn nodding o’er the yellow plain Comes jovial on.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Autumn’ l. 2
While listening senates hang upon thy tongue.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Autumn’ l. 15
For loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, But is when unadorned adorned the most.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Autumn’ l. 204
Poor is the triumph o’er the timid hare!
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Autumn’ l. 401
He stands at bay,
And puts his last weak refuge in despair.
The big round tears run down his dappled face; He groans in anguish; while the growling pack, Blood-happy, hang at his fair jutting chest,
And mark his beauteous chequered sides with gore.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Autumn’ l. 452 (referring to a stag).
Find other lands beneath another sun.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Autumn’ l. 1286
See, Winter comes to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Winter’ l. 1
Welcome, kindred glooms! Congenial horrors, hail!
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Winter’ l. 5
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Winter’ l. 246
Studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty dead.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Winter’ l. 431
Oh! Sophonisba! Sophonisba! oh!
‘Sophonisba’ (1730) act 3, sc. 2
How the heart listened while he pleading spoke! While on the enlightened mind, with winning art, His gentle reason so persuasive stole
That the charmed hearer thought it was his own.
‘To the Memory of the Right Honourable the Lord Talbot’ (1737) l. 103
8.39 James Thomson 1834-82
The City is of Night; perchance of Death, But certainly of Night.
‘The City of Dreadful Night’
As we rush, as we rush in the train,
The trees and the houses go wheeling back, But the starry heavens above that plain Come flying on our track.
‘Sunday at Hampstead’ st. 10
Give a man a horse he can ride, Give a man a boat he can sail.
‘Sunday up the River’ st. 15
8.40 Lord Thomson (Roy Herbert Thomson, Baron Thomson of Fleet) 1894-1976
Like having your own licence to print money.
On the profitability of commercial television in Britain, in R. Braddon ‘Roy Thomson’ (1965) ch. 32
8.41 Henry David Thoreau 1817-62
I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—’That government is best which governs not at all.’
‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849).
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849)
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
‘Journal’ 11 November 1850 (published 1903)
I do not perceive the poetic and dramatic capabilities of an anecdote or story which is told me, its significance, till some time afterwards...We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
Letter to Mr B., 16 November 1857.
‘Journal’ 1 October 1856 (published 1903)
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. I have travelled a good deal in Concord.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’ (in Histoire da ma vie vol. 4 (1854) p. 438 George Sand describes Chopin as being in a state of ‘dèseperance tranquille’ in the period 1838-9)
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
There are now-a-days professors of philosophy but not philosophers.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
Tall arrowy white pines.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’
The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Economy’ conclusion
The three-o’-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Sounds’.
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘The Village’
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Where I lived, and what I lived for’
Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplify, simplify.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Where I lived, and what I lived for’
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Winter Visitors’
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
‘Walden’ (1854) ‘Winter Visitors’
It has been proposed that the town should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.
‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers’ (1849) ‘Concord River’
It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another to hear.
‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers’ (1849) ‘Wednesday’
It were treason to our love And a sin to God above One iota to abate
Of a pure impartial hate.
‘Indeed, Indeed I Cannot Tell’ (1852)
Emerson: Why are you here? Thoreau: Why are you not here?
Thoreau was in prison for failure to pay taxes. Oral tradition in the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson, relating to Thoreau’s imprisonment for non-payment of taxes, but discounted for lack of documentary evidence. Harding ‘A Thoreau Handbook’ (1959) p. 8
8.42 Jeremy Thorpe 1929—
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.
Referring to the sacking by Harold Macmillan of a number of his Cabinet, 13 July 1962, in D. E. Butler and Anthony King ‘The General Election of 1964’ (1965) ch. 1
8.43 James Thurber 1894-1961
