Of all created things the source is one, Simple, single as love; remember The cell and seed of life, the sphere That is, of child, white bird, and small blue dragon-fly Green fern, and the gold four-petalled tormentilla The ultimate memory. Each latent cell puts out a future, Unfolds its differing complexity As a tree puts forth leaves, and spins a fate Fern-traced, bird feathered, or fish-scaled.

Kathleen Raine

Categorized in : Children Life Memories

I've read all the books but one

Kathleen Raine

garden eye book

Meanings, moods, the whole scale of our inner experience, finds in nature the 'correspondences' through which we may know our boundless selves.

Kathleen Raine

mood self may

Poetry is not an end in itself but in the service of life; of what use are poems, or any other works of art, unless to enable human lives to be lived with insight of a deeper kind, with more sensitive feelings, more intense sense of the beautiful, with deeper understanding?

Kathleen Raine

understanding beautiful art

Intent on one great love, perfect, Requited and for ever, I missed love's everywhere Small presence, thousand-guised.

Kathleen Raine

great-love thousand perfect

Nature is the common, universal language, understood by all.

Kathleen Raine

understood language common

... the poem reminds us of what we ourselves know, but did not know we knew; reminds us, above all, of what we are.

Kathleen Raine

knows

Of all the arts the living of a life is perhaps the greatest; to live every moment of life with the same imaginative commitment as the poet brings to a special field.

Kathleen Raine

special commitment art

Chemistry dissolves the goddess in the alembic,

Kathleen Raine

queens white science

The work of the artist is to heal the soul.

Kathleen Raine

heal artist soul

It was not the purpose of poetry to record anything and everything, to merely describe either the outer world or some subjective mood, but to speak from the imagination of the poet to the imagination of the reader.

Kathleen Raine

records purpose imagination

Academia is a graveyard of poets.

Kathleen Raine

academia graveyard poet

O never harm the dreaming world, the world of green, the world of leaves, but let its million palms unfold the adoration of the trees It is a love in darkness wrought obedient to the unseen sun, longer than memory, a thought deeper than the graves of time. The turning spindles of the cells weave a slow forest over space, the dance of love, creation, out of time moves not a leaf, and out of summer, not a shade.

Kathleen Raine

summer dream memories

Being a poet is not a job or a profession but a way of life.

Kathleen Raine

poet jobs way

I make no apology for writing in nature's age-old and unaging language, of whose images we build our paradises, Broceliande and Brindavan, the Forest of Arden, Xanadu, Shelley's Skies, or even Wordsworth's Grasemere, which can be found on no map.

Kathleen Raine

apology sky writing

Sensing us, the trees tremble in their sleep, The living leaves recoil before our fires, Baring to us war-charred and broken branches, And seeing theirs, we for our own destruction weep.

Kathleen Raine

fire sleep war

And see the peaceful trees extend their myriad leaves in leisured dance- they bear the weight of sky and cloud upon the fountain of their veins.

Kathleen Raine

sky clouds tree

As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply because as between the reality of fact and the reality f myth, I chose myth...Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth.

Kathleen Raine

children reality facts

The air is full of a farewell- deserted by the silver lake lies the wild world, overturned. Cities rise where the mountains fell, the furnace where the phoenix burned

Kathleen Raine

farewell lakes lying

Strangers have crossed the sound, but not the sound of the dark oarsmen Or the golden-haired sons of kings, Strangers whose thought is not formed to the cadence of waves, Rhythm of the sickle, oar and milking pail

Kathleen Raine

kings dark son

I couldn't claim that I have never felt the urge to explore evil, but when you descend into hell you have to be very careful.

Kathleen Raine

hell decision evil