Cecil Day Lewis
No subject for immortal verse—
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Cecil Day Lewis, CBE (27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972) was an Irish poet, the British Poet Laureate between 1968 to 1972, and, under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake, a mystery writer. He was the father of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the TYV star Tamasin Day-Lewis.
Quotes
[edit]
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.
For ever and a day
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say
Ask my song
Tempt Me No More (1933)
[edit]- Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.
From Feathers to Iron (1935)
[edit]- Do not expect again the phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove's complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.
Thou Shell of Death (1936)
[edit]- Using the pseudonym Nicholas Blake
- Nigel's six feet sprawled all over the place; his gestures were nervous and little uncouth; a lock of sandy coloured hair dropping over his forehead, and the deceptive naïveté of his face in repose gave him a resemblance to an overgrown prep. schoolboy. His eyes were the same blue as his uncle's, but shortsighted and noncommittal. Yet there was an underlying similarity between the two. A latent, sardonic humor in their conversation, a friendliness and simple generosity in their smiles, and that impression of energy in reserve which is always given by those who possess an abundance of life directed towards consciously-realised aims.
Where are the War Poets? (1943)
[edit]- They who in folly or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom's cause.
- It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse—
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Birthday Poem for Thomas Hardy (1949)
[edit]- The judgment of Peers : An Anthology of Poems about Poets (1949), p. 61iss
- Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul?
Is it fine your way
- It's hard to believe a spirit could die
Of such generous glow
The Christmas Tree (1953)
[edit]- The Apollo Anthology (1953) edited by Lucy Selwyn and Laurier Lister, p. 105
- Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled
With stars and moons
- So feast your eyes now
On mimic star and moon-cold bauble:
Worlds may wither unseen,
But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable,
A phoenix in evergreen
Is it far to go? (1963)
[edit]- "Is it far to go?" in Modern English poetry (1963) edited by N. Das Gupta, Vol. 2, p. 92
- Shall I be gone long?
For ever and a day
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say
Ask my song.
- Who will say farewell?
The beating bell.
Will anyone miss me?
That I dare not tell —
Quick, Rose, and kiss me.
Requiem for the Living (1964)
[edit]- I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show —
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.- "Walking Away" (1962), p. 33
Quotes about Cecil Day Lewis
[edit]- "The image," says C. Day Lewis in The Poetic Image, "is a method of asserting or reasserting spiritual control over the material." And he makes a very suggestive definition of what the critics have called "pure poetry" as "poetry whose meaning is deliberately concentrated within its images."
- Muriel Rukeyser The Life of Poetry (1949)
External links
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- Cecil Day-Lewis on IMDb
- Cecil Day-Lewis in the kirjasto website – information
- Day-Lewis' poem 'Newsreel' read over footage from 1930s Pathe newsreels
- C. Day Lewis, A Revised Bibliography, 1929–39 and Index of MSS Locations with Introductory Notes by Nick Watson, (a 65 page booklet, Radged Press, 2003)
- The Volunteer – An ode to the International Brigade by Cecil Day Lewis