R. S. Thomas Quotes - Page 2

I turn now not to the Bible but to Wallace Stevens.

The darkness is the deepening shadow of your presence; the silence a process in the metabolism of the being of love.

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.

I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the brains grow.

I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow.

The deep spaces between stars , Fathomless as the cold shadow His mind cast.

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.

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?

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.

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 .

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.

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.

It is too late to start For destinations not of the heart . I must stay here with my hurt.