Anthony Thwaite Quotes

“THE BARROW In this high field strewn with stones I walk by a green mound, Its edges sheared by the plough. Crumbs of animal bone Lie smashed and scattered round Under the clover leaves And slivers of flint seem to grow Like white leaves among green. In the wind, the chestnut heaves Where a man's grave has been. Whatever the barrow held Once, has been taken away: A hollow of nettles and dock Lies at the centre, filled With rain from a sky so grey It reflects nothing at all. I poke in the crumbled rock For something they left behind But after that funeral There is nothing at all to find. On the map in front of me The gothic letters pick out Dozens of tombs like this, Breached, plundered, left empty, No fragments littered about Of a dead and buried race In the margins of histories. No fragments: these splintered bones Construct no human face, These stones are simply stones. In museums their urns lie Behind glass, and their shaped flints Are labelled like butterflies. All that they did was die, And all that has happened since Means nothing to this place.Above long clouds, the skiesTurn to a brilliant redAnd show in the water's faceOne living, and not these dead." — Anthony Thwaite, from The Owl In The Tree”

“THE BARROW In this high field strewn with stones I walk by a green mound, Its edges sheared by the plough. Crumbs of animal bone Lie smashed and scattered round Under the clover leaves And slivers of flint seem to grow Like white leaves among green. In the wind, the chestnut heaves Where a man's grave has been. Whatever the barrow held Once, has been taken away: A hollow of nettles and dock Lies at the centre, filled With rain from a sky so grey It reflects nothing at all. I poke in the crumbled rock For something they left behind But after that funeral There is nothing at all to find. On the map in front of me The gothic letters pick out Dozens of tombs like this, Breached, plundered, left empty, No fragments littered about Of a dead and buried race In the margins of histories. No fragments: these splintered bones Construct no human face, These stones are simply stones. In museums their urns lie Behind glass, and their shaped flints Are labelled like butterflies. All that they did was die, And all that has happened since Means nothing to this place.Above long clouds, the skiesTurn to a brilliant redAnd show in the water's faceOne living, and not these dead." — Anthony Thwaite, from The Owl In The Tree”

“He was a match”

“Here's a thought. You answer what I ask and I keep not killing you." - Antiope Flint - DREAMNASIUM”

“Can snore upon the flint when resty sloth Finds the down pillow hard.”

“Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.”

“Flint must be an extremely wealthy town I see that each of you bought two or three seats.”

“If the Good Lord meant men to use percussion caps, he wouldn't have strung flint all over the ground.”

“What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,That my songs do not show me at all?For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,I am an answer, they are only a call”

“It is defeat that turns bone to flint it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle it is defeat that makes men invincible.”

“And it's Gryfindor in possession again, as Johnson takes the Quaffle— Flint alongside her —poke him in the eye, Angelina —it was a joke, professor, it was a joke...”