Famous Quotes by Allen Tate

  • At twelve I was determined to shoot only
    For honor; at twenty not to shoot at all;
    I know... More
  • there’s a kind of lust feeds on itself
    Unspoken to, unspeaking; subterranean
    As a black... More
  • Let us lie down once more by the breathing side
    Of Ocean, where our live forefathers... More
  • We’ve cracked the hemispheres with careless hand!
    Now, from the Gates of Hercules we... More
  • Now, from the Gates of Hercules we flood
    Westward, westward till the barbarous... More
  • I thought I heard the dark pounding its head
    On a rock, crying: Who are the dead? More
  • Uncle Ben’s brass bullet-mould
    And powder horn, and Major Bogan’s face
    Above the... More
  • There’s precious little to say between day and dark,
    Perhaps a few words on the implacable... More
  • For in the air all lovers meet
    After they’ve hated out their love.... More
  • For when they meet, the tensile air
    Like fine steel strains under the weight
    Of messages... More
  • I wear my wedding ring
    He will cut off your finger
    And the blood will linger
    Little... More
  • Turn back. Turn, young lady dear
    A murderer’s house you enter here
    I was wooed and won... More
  • I think that in the swift white mind’s brain
    Neurons flash images of a world
    Undead... More
  • The Spring I seek is in a new face only. More
  • By the roadside a hideous carrion, quivering
    On a clean bed of pebbly clay,
    Her legs... More
  • And even you will come to this foul shame,
    This ultimate infection,
    Star of my eyes, my... More
  • The flies swarmed on the putrid vulva, then
    A black tumbling rout would seethe
    Of... More
  • Speak, then, my Beauty, to this dire putrescence,
    To the worm that shall kiss your proud... More
  • They darted down and rose up like a wave
    Or buzzed impetuously as before;
    One would have... More
  • Not glad, lifeless tycoon, nor sorry feel
    For neither Bull nor Bear attends your way.... More
  • Accept these costly wreaths for my own sake
    (Death asks no entrance fee to let you... More
  • The poet is he who fights on the passionate
    Side and whoever loses he wins; when he
    Is... More
  • The use of arms is ownership
    Of the appropriate gun. It is ownership that brings
    Victory... More
  • Struck in the wet mire
    Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city
    I thought of... More
  • I hoisted up
    The old man my father upon my back,
    In the smoke made by sea for a new... More
  • The singular passion
    Abides its object and consumes desire
    In the circling shadow of its... More
  • I myself saw furious with blood
    Neoptolemus, at his side the black Atridae,
    Hecuba and... More
  • I cannot beat off
    Invincible modes of the sea, hearing:
    Be a man my son by God.
    ... More
  • (I remember my mother, my mother,
    A stiff wind halted outside,
    In the hard ear my... More
  • For, brother, know that this is art, and you
    With a cold incautious sorrow stricken... More
  • Emerson said that the “scholar is man thinking.” Had Southerners of that era taken seriously... More
  • He shakes the dust from off his feet
    And shambles down the dirty street
    The last man in... More
  • Do not forget! For those green times now laugh
    In glee with sport and thought and lily... More
  • Her rhythms are reptilian and religious,
    Choreographic and Polynesian. More
  • With sighs more lunar than bronchial,
    Howbeit eluding fallopian diagnosis,
    She simpers... More
  • So face with calm that heritage
    And earn contempt before the age. More
  • Three centuries of piety
    Grown bare as a cottonwood tree ... More
  • We are afraid that we have not lived.
    We are not afraid of dying. More
  • The cup of Morgan Fay is shattered.
    Life is a bitter sage,
    And we are weary... More
  • In an age of abstract experience, fornication
    Is self-expression, adjunct to Christian... More
  • we know our end
    A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues. More
  • What is this conversation, now secular,
    A speech not mine yet speaking for me in
    The... More
  • Daughters are the seed of occupations,
    Of asperities, such as wills, deeds,... More
  • Manhood like a lawyer with his formulas
    Sesamés his youth for innocent acquittal. More
  • Walk in this faithless grass with studious tread,
    Lest mice, weasels, germane beasts, too... More
  • Advice you take from me comes to you crutched
    Like a beggar youth zealous for old age. More
  • All nature is a temple where the alive
    Pillars breathe often a tremor of mixed words;
    Man... More
  • Odors blown sweet as infants’ naked flesh,
    Soft as oboes, green as a studded plain,
    ... More
  • Good manners, Madam, are had these days not
    For your asking, nor mine, nor... More
  • My manner is the footnote to your immoral
    Beauty, that leads me with a magic hair
    Up the... More
  • And so the needle pricked her fingers;
    She fidgeted but didn’t go;
    A faint... More
  • Who will remember happiness?
    I can recall that they are dead.
    I know that heaven cracked... More
  • There is a calm for you where men and women
    Unroll the chill precision of moving feet. More
  • When little boys grown patient at last, weary,
    Surrender their eyes immeasurably to the... More
  • From her I got but gave no wealthiness:
    Fleeced I the giver, yet am penniless. More
  • A withered silence filled my chest of sorrow
    With mildewed fancies till she came to... More
  • The magic sifted whiteness of her mind
    Coloring life ... More
  • For now the moon with friendless light carouses
    On hill and housetop, street and... More
  • The moon will run all consciences to cover.... More
  • Fretted shadow on stumps
    A vanishing husk
    Of light . . . grey lumps
    Of stone verge... More
  • Blind in a gentle tempest of gold hair. More
  • This girl borrowed no dim light of a star
    Nor ever night held her in a dark mesh,
    A... More
  • What a cheerful rhyme! Clean not mean!
    Been not seen! Not tired—expired!
    We must now... More
  • POET
    If not in a place, where are the People weeping?
    LIBERAL
    They creep weeping in... More
  • But for some futile things unsaid
    I should say all is done for us;
    Yet I have wondered... More
  • I’ve often wondered why she laughed
    On thinking why I wondered so;
    It seemed such waste... More
  • Our loss put six feet under ground
    Is measured by the magnolia’s root;
    Our gain’s the... More
  • No more the white refulgent streets,
    Never the dry hollows of the mind
    Shall he in fine... More
  • Your death, dear Lady, was quite cold
    For all the brave tears and ultimate spasm.
    So... More
  • We buried you in the unremissive ground.
    I went home. Somewhere I heard the clang of a... More
  • Maryland, Virginia, Caroline
    Pent images in sleep
    Clay valleys rocky hills old fields of... More
  • Men cannot live forever
    But they must die forever.... More
  • When it is all over and the blood
    Runs out, do not bury this man
    By the far river (where... More
  • Neither the feeling nor the style of Miss Dickinson belongs to the seventeenth century; yet... More
  • The graceless madness of her lips,
    Who was the powder-puff of life,
    Cannot rouge those... More
  • A scented sorrow, corseted! More
  • We then lived roses; I had fooled despair
    And boxed him up and flogged his retinue,
    ... More
  • I suck in smoke! I smile at grimy mirth,
    And laugh to think that you had parried death. More
  • My darling boy whom I shall never know,
    My son, I love you in my deepest fears.... More
  • When I have reached the shady underground
    With but sad hope of coming up again,
    I shall... More
  • So, Anactoria, go you away
    With what calm carelessness of sorrow!
    Your gleaming footstep... More
  • I say that what one loves is best:
    The midnight fastness of the heart. More
  • There at the church they took him through the door,
    His sweet wide mouth much as it was... More
  • He was the finest of our happy men;
    He had all joys, he never thought of death;
    He... More
  • I cannot yet begin to understand
    Why we are proud that an ancestor knew
    The crazy Poe,... More
  • Eat cannon and cornflakes, that the lamb,
    Spaceless as snow, may spare the rational... More
  • The wisdom of history, how she takes
    Each epoch by the neck and, growling, shakes
    It like... More
  • Then suddenly the noon turns afternoon
    And afternoon like an ill-written page
    Will fade,... More
  • Not yet the thirtieth year, the thirtieth
    Station where time reverses his light heels
    To... More
  • Make gracious attempts at sanctifying Jenny,
    Supply cosmetics for the ordering of her... More
  • The dull conclave of crows’-footed faces
    Twitches as the man with one dollar enters;
    It... More
  • And if the stage-dark head rehearse
    The fifth act of the closing night,
    Why, cut it off,... More
  • Tear out the close vermiculate crease
    Where death crawled angrily at bay. More
  • It is moot whether there be divinities
    As I finish this play by Webster:
    The street-cars... More
  • So you, O nameless Duchess who die young,
    Meet death somewhat lovingly
    And I am filled... More
  • The stage is about to be swept of corpses.
    You have no more chance than an... More
  • I feared
    The belly-cold, the grave-clout, that betrayed
    Me dithering in the drift of... More
  • Man, dull creature of enormous head,
    What would he look at in the coiling sky? More
  • This is the day His hour of life draws near,
    Let me get ready from head to foot for... More
  • What is the flesh and blood compounded of
    But a few moments in the life of time?
    This... More

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