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“After all, my erstwhile dear, My no longer cherished, Need we say it was not love, Just because it perished?”
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Edna St. Vincent Millay8 quotes · 4 total likes
“After all, my erstwhile dear, My no longer cherished, Need we say it was not love, Just because it perished?”3 likes
“Love is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.”1 likes
“Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!”0 likes
15 authors with 31 quotes
“After all, my erstwhile dear, My no longer cherished, Need we say it was not love, Just because it perished?”
“He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”
“Love After Love The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.”
“These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing, I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant, Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting With various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.”
“To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.”
“Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.”
“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!) To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you- Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar!”
“I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The wind is westerly, Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly Into the apparitions of the sky, They purpose nothing but their ease and die Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea;”
“Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.”
“On No Work of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven, The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft. To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark. To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”
“And here face down beneath the sun And here upon earth's noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night”
“If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls - The Consumptive. Belsen 1945”
“It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image.”
“সবেধন পুত্র মোর, আমার চেয়েও বেশি ঈশ্বরের তুই থেকে যা এখানে এই নাশপাতি গাছের বাগানে। সুপ্রচুর ফলভারে এইখানে গাছেরা আনত তৃপ্ত আর পরিমিত রঙের বাহারে উদ্ভাসিত; বার্ধক্যপীড়িত হয়ে তারা যেই কাঁদে, নোনাজল নয় কোনো, সুমধুর অলস সিরাপে অশ্রু ঝরে। “আমার নিজের আমি আর আমি থাকি না নিজের” তাকে দেখে মনে হতো বেগানা নাগর, চুপচাপ সে-বিদেশি,পদ্মডাঁটা হাতে নিয়ে এসেছিল আমার দুয়ারে; ঈশ্বরের জোড়াচক্ষু, ইউসুফেরও চোখের অধিক গনগনে তার চোখে চোখ রেখে কী হলো আমার আমি কী করে বোঝাই? ছিলাম নিজের আমি আর আমি থাকিনি নিজের। আর এই জনাবারো শ্রমশীল লোক, এরা কারা? তোর কথা মাথামুণ্ডু কিছুই বুঝি না: শিখিয়েছি আমি তোকে বুলি; রেখেছি পাখির নামগুলি যে কোনো শিশুর মতো তুই দেখাতি ওদের যারা দীর্ঘ পরিযায়ী। ভিড় থেকে দূরে গিয়ে তুই ফের হয়ে যারে চুপ “আমার নিজের আমি আর আমি থাকি না নিজের” আমি যেই কথা বলি মুখভার কেন তোর বাপ? এই তোর মালামাল, চাকু ও করাত আর এই হাতুড়িটা বেঞ্চির ওপর। দিনে দিনে হয় মাপা এইখানে তোর এ-জীবন, মাপজোক নিয়ে তুই আসবাব বানাস যেমন; আর আমি পত্নী হেন তোকে দেবো পাঠ; আমার নিজের হবো আর হবো কেবলই আমার ইচ্ছেমতো যথাতথা বয়ে চলে বেয়াড়া বাতাস দিলখোশ না হলে কি কেউ চলে তার অনুরূপ? আজও মনে পড়ে, তুই গিয়েছিলি আলাপ জমাতে পশমের আলখাল্লাধারী যতো পণ্ডিতের সাথে। কানে এলো শহরের তীব্র হট্টগোল; এ-অশুভ যন্ত্রখানি কে বয়ে বেড়ায়? “সে তার নিজের আর নয় সে নিজের” মাড়িয়ে সবুজ আর দ্রুত-তৃণ গালিচা মাড়িয়ে দেখি এক আজগুবি ছায়া এসে পড়ে ও মানিক, এই পেটে তোকে আমি ধরেছি রে একা! ছিলো না নিকটে কোনো কবিরাজ নাড়ি কাটবার; ডাকবো না তোকে আমি প্রভু বলে ওরে সবেধন পুত্র মোর, দে আমায় সাড়া! “আমার নিজের আমি আর আমি নই তো নিজের।”
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