“Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.”
Stevie Smith“All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.”
Stevie Smith“Wild creatures' eyes, the colonel said,Are innocent and fathomlessAnd when I look at them I seeThat they are not aware of meAnd oh I find and oh I blessA comfort in this emptinessThey only see me when they wantTo pounce upon me at the hunt;But in the tame varietyThere couches an anxietyAs if they yearned, yet knew not whatThey yearned for, nor they yearned for not.And so my dog would look at meAnd it was pitiful to seeSuch love and such dependency.The human heart is not at easeWith animals that look like these.”
Stevie Smith“My Muse sits forlornShe wishes she had not been bornShe sits in the coldNo word she says is ever told.”
Stevie Smith“Marriage I thinkFor womenIs the best of opiates.It kills the thoughtsThat think about the thoughts,It is the best of opiates.So said Maria.But too long in solitude she'd dwelt,And too long her thoughts had feltTheir strength. So when the man drew near,Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.Poor Maria! Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,For now she's alone again and all in pain;She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stayTo trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day.”
Stevie Smith“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....”
Stevie Smith“Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable.”
Stevie Smith, Selected Poems“Not Waving but Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.”
Stevie Smith, Collected Poems“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.”
Stevie Smith, Selected Poems“I'll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I'll have your heart, your life.”
Stevie Smith, Selected Poems