Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBEwas an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. He was appointed the seventeenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 February 1909
poetry great-poet can-do
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
drinking eye horizon
Eye , gazelle, delicate wanderer, Drinker of horizon's fluid line; Ear that suspends on a chord The spirit drinking timelessness; Touch, love, all senses...
hope dust brightness
For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust
memories history ships
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
ambition vanity ambitious
Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they altimately are as revealed in their poetry.
different genius way
One type of concentration is immediate and complete, as it was with Mozart. The other is plodding and only completed in stages, as with Beethoven. Thus genius works in different ways to achieve its ends.
writing thinking appreciate
An English poet writes, I think, just for people who are interested in poetry. An American poet writes, and feels that everyone ought to appreciate this. Then he has a deep sense of grievance . . .
lying moving eye
You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed. All England lies beneath you like a woman With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eyes.
again happen lost moments
Moments that can never happen again and never lost their wonder.
children memories eye
All the lessons learned, unlearned; The young, who learned to read, now blind Their eyes with an archaic film; The peasant relapses to a stumbling tune Following the donkey`s bray; These only remember to forget. But somewhere some word presses On the high door of a skull and in some corner Of an irrefrangible eye Some old man memory jumps to a child Spark from the days of energy. And the child hoards it like a bitter toy.