R. S. Thomas quotes
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“Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“The silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“You have to imagine a waiting that is not impatient because it is timeless.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror's temperature is always zero. It is ice in the veins. It's camera is an x-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
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“I have known exile and a wild passion Of longing changing to a cold ache. King, beggar and fool , I have been all by turns, Knowing the body's sweetness, the mind 's treason ; Taliesin still, I show you a new world , risen, Stubborn with beauty , out of the heart 's need .”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "Song at the Year's Turning : Poems, 1942-1954" by R. S. Thomas". Book by R. S. Thomas, 1955.
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“We live in our own world , A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : R.S. Thomas (2012). “Collected Poems: 1945-1990 R.S.Thomas: Collected Poems : R S Thomas”, p.57, Hachette UK
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“You cannot find the centre Where we dance , where we play, Where life is still asleep Under the closed flower , Under the smooth shell Of eggs in the cupped nest That mock the faded blue Of your remoter heaven .”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“Even God had a Welsh name : He spoke to him in the old language; He was to have a peculiar care For the Welsh people. History showed us He was too big to be nailed to the wall Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him Between the boards of a black book .”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : R. S. Thomas, “A Welsh Testament”
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“I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the brains grow.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“It is too late to start For destinations not of the heart . I must stay here with my hurt.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“The deep spaces between stars , Fathomless as the cold shadow His mind cast.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
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“Deliver me from the long drought of the mind . Let leaves from the deciduous Cross fall on us, washing us clean, turning our autumn to gold by the affluence of their fountain.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“The darkness is the deepening shadow of your presence; the silence a process in the metabolism of the being of love .”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“Is there a place here for the spirit ? Is there time on this brief platform for anything other than mind 's failure to explain itself?”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : R.S. Thomas (2012). “Collected Poems: 1945-1990 R.S.Thomas: Collected Poems : R S Thomas”, p.355, Hachette UK
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“Art is recuperation from time. I lie back convalescing upon the prospect of a harvest already at hand.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "Between Here and Now" by R. S. Thomas, ("Pissaro: Kitchen Garden, Trees in Bloom", p. 41), 1981.
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“I have been Merlin wandering in the woods Of a far country, where the winds waken Unnatural voices , my mind broken By a sudden acquaintance with man's rage.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“I have been all men known to history , Wondering at the world and at time passing; I have seen evil , and the light blessing Innocent love under a spring sky .”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "Song at the Year's Turning : Poems, 1942-1954". Book by R. S. Thomas, 1955.
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“Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being... ultimate reality is what we call God.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet". BBC TV, April 2, 1972.
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“Now the power of the imagination is a unifying power, hence the force of metaphor; and the poet is the supreme manipulator of metaphor... the world needs the unifying power of the imagination. The two things that give it best are poetry and religion.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
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“I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen". The David Jones Journal, 2001.
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“Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "Neb". Book by R. S. Thomas, 1985.
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“I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receeding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : R.S. Thomas (2012). “R. S. Thomas: Everyman Poetry: Everyman's Poetry”, p.96, Hachette UK
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“A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
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“They left no books , Memorial to their lonely thought In grey parishes: rather they wrote On men's hearts and in the minds Of young children sublime words Too soon forgotten. God in his time Or out of time will correct this.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“Sunlight 's a thing that needs a window Before it enter a dark room. Windows don't happen." So two old poets, Hunched at their beer in the low haze Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran Noisily by them, glib with prose.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : R. S. Thomas, “Poetry For Supper”
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“Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls, Limp as bindweed, if it break at all Life's iron crust Man, you must sweat And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build Your verse a ladder.”
-- R. S. Thomas -
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“Verse should be as natural As the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : R. S. Thomas, “Poetry For Supper”
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“The nearest we approach God ...is as creative beings. The poet , by echoing the primary imagination , recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them... nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action .”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "The Penguin Book of Religious Verse" by R. S. Thomas, (p. 8), 1963.
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“I turn now not to the Bible but to Wallace Stevens”
-- R. S. Thomas -
“In the silence that is his chosen medium of communication and telling others about it in words. Is there no way not to be the sport of reason ?”
-- R. S. Thomas -
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“I had looked forward to old age as a time of quietness, a time to draw my horizons about me, to watch memories ripening in the sunlight of a walled garden. But there is the void over my head and the distance within that the tireless signals come from. And astronaut on impossible journeys to the far side of the self I return with messages I cannot decipher.”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "Between Here and Now" by R. S. Thomas, ("The New Mariner", p. 99), 1981.
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“Ah, what balance is needed at the edges of such an abyss. I am left alone on the surface of a turning planet. What to do but, like Michelangelo 's Adam, put my hand out into unknown space, hoping for the reciprocating touch?”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : "Between Here and Now" by R. S. Thomas, ("Threshold", p. 110), 1981.
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“somewhere within sight of the tree of poetry that is eternity wearing the green leaves of time .”
-- R. S. ThomasSource : R.S. Thomas (2012). “Collected Poems: 1945-1990 R.S.Thomas: Collected Poems : R S Thomas”, p.423, Hachette UK
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