Amy Lowell Quotes

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

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

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

May is much sunshine through small leaves.

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.

To-night when the full-bellied moon swallows the stars. Grant that I know.

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

This is war: Boys flung into a breach Like shoveled earth; And old men, Broken, Driving rapidly before crowds of people In a glitter of silly decorations. Behind the boys And the old men, Life weeps, And shreds her garments To the blowing winds.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.

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.

I ask but one thing of you, only one, That always you will be my dream of you; That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on, Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night. Alas, how few There are who strike in us a chord we knew Existed, but so seldom heard its tone We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. The world is full of rude awakenings And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, Yet still our human longing vainly clings To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Everything mortal has moments immortal

Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her.

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.

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

Even pain pricks to livelier living.

Youth condemns; maturity condones

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

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.

I should like to bring a case to trial: Prosperity versus Beauty, Cash registers teetering in a balance against the comfort of the soul.

I never deny poems when they come; whatever I am doing, whatever I am writing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem.