Stevie Smith Quotes

It is the privilege of the rich
To waste the time of the poor
To water with tears in secret
A tree that grows in secret
That bears fruit in secret
That ripened falls to the ground in secret
And manures the parent tree
Oh the wicked tree of hatred and the secret
The sap rising and the tears falling.

My Muse sits forlorn
She wishes she had not been born
She sits in the cold
No word she says is ever told.

The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.

Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.

There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply-and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

If I lie down on my bed I must be here,
But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.

Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.

But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever....

Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood.

Hope and desire,
All unfulfilled,
Have more than rope
And hangman killed.

My heart was full of softening showers,
I used to swing like this for hours,
I did not care for war or death,
I was glad to draw my breath.

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,
Sharp Roman road to Paradise,
Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll
With all my flesh, and keep my soul.

I'll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I'll have your heart, your life.

Into the dark night
Resignedly I go,
I am not so afraid of the dark night
As the friends I do not know,
I do not fear the night above
As I fear the friends below.