Hilda Doolittle Quotes & Sayings

Thoth, Hermes, the stylus,
the palette, the pen, the quill endure,
though our books are a floor
of smouldering ash under our feet. — Hilda Doolittle

Passionate grave thought,
belief enhanced,
ritual returned and magic. — Hilda Doolittle

Dead men would start and move
toward me to learn of love. — Hilda Doolittle

There is no man can take,
there is no pool can slake,
ultimately I am alone;
ultimately I am done. — Hilda Doolittle

Lovers may come and go,
there was the memory of blood,
the low call. — Hilda Doolittle

Love, why have you sought the horde
of spearsmen, why the tent
Achilles pitched beside the river-ford? — Hilda Doolittle

Lift up our eyes to you?
no, God, we stare and stare,
upon a nearer thing
that greets us here,
Death, violent and near. — Hilda Doolittle

The elixir of life, the philosopher's stone
is yours if you surrender
sterile logic, trivial reason. — Hilda Doolittle

Who dreams of a son,
save one,
childless, having no bright
face to flatter its own,
who dreams of a son? — Hilda Doolittle

Could beauty be beaten out,
O youth the cities have sent
to strike at each other's strength,
it is you who have kept her alight. — Hilda Doolittle

That way of inspiration
is always open,
and open to everyone;
it acts as go-between, interpreter,
it explains symbols of the past
in to-day's imagery. — Hilda Doolittle

We don't have to know,only to be:let go the jumble of worn words,reason and vanity. — Hilda Doolittle

The Christos-image
is most difficult to disentangle
from its art-craft junk-shop
paint-and-plaster medieval jumble
of pain-worship and death-symbol. — Hilda Doolittle

The laying of fish on the embers, the taste of the fish, the feel of the texture of bread, the round and the half-loaf, the grain of a petal, the rain-bow and the rain. — Hilda Doolittle

(Those women whom the distaff
no longer claims
nor spun cloth)
driven made,
mad,
mad
by Bacchus. — Hilda Doolittle

War is a fevered god who takes alike maiden and king and clod ... — Hilda Doolittle

I could not accept from wisdom
what love taught,
woman is perfect. — Hilda Doolittle

But beauty is set apart,
beauty is cast by the sea,
a barren rock,
beauty is set about
with wrecks of ships ... — Hilda Doolittle

For you are abstract,
making no mistake,
slurring no word
in the rhythm you make,
the poem,
writ in the air. — Hilda Doolittle

Why wait for Death to mow?
why wait for Death to sow
us in the ground? — Hilda Doolittle

One flower may slay the winter
and meet death. — Hilda Doolittle

When the shingles hissed
in the rain incendiary,
other values were revealed to us — Hilda Doolittle

O beautiful white land,
olives and wild anemone and violet
mingled among the shale,
and purple wings
of little winter-butterflies
say, here Psyche, the soul, lies. — Hilda Doolittle

Long hours
trail in their purple
and long years are lost
in just this moment
while our souls are near,
our mouths separate. — Hilda Doolittle

Let Love step down,
open the clasped hands,
forfeit the thorny crown,
retrieve the garment
that was whole,
body and spirit one, spirit and soul. — Hilda Doolittle

Our minds can go no further. The human imagination is capable of no further expression of beauty than the carved owl of Athene, the archaic, marble serpent, the arrogant selfish head of the Acropolis Apollo. — Hilda Doolittle

Love that I bear
within my breast
how is my armour melted
how my heart — Hilda Doolittle

Ardent
yet chill and formal,
how I ache
to tempt a chisel
as a sculptor. — Hilda Doolittle

For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life. — Hilda Doolittle

Take what the old-church
found in Mithra's tomb,
candle and script and bell,
take what the new-church spat upon
and broke and shattered. — Hilda Doolittle

A slight wind shakes the seed-pods
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds. — Hilda Doolittle

Every concrete object
has abstract value, is timeless
in the dream parallel. — Hilda Doolittle

In my garden
the winds have beaten
the ripe lilies;
in my garden, the salt
has wilted the first flakes
of young narcissus. — Hilda Doolittle

I testify
to rainbow feathers, to the span of heaven
and walls of colour,
the colonnades of jasper. — Hilda Doolittle

Think of the moment you count
most foul in your life;
conjure it,
supplicate,
pray to it;
your face is bleak, you retract,
you dare not remember it. — Hilda Doolittle

The quivering
of Psyche's butterflies. — Hilda Doolittle

The Greeks have snatched up their spears.
They have pointed the helms of their ships
Toward the bulwarks of Troy. — Hilda Doolittle

Not God
with wine,
nor death,
nor hate for a cry,
but God with a song — Hilda Doolittle

There must be real gods
see, the painted gods
how fair! — Hilda Doolittle

Fall the deep curtains,
delicate the weave,
fair the thread. — Hilda Doolittle

I knew the poor,
I knew the hideous death they die,
when famine lays its bleak hand on the door;
I knew the rich,
sated with merriment,
who yet are sad. — Hilda Doolittle

Maid
of the luminous grey-eyes,
Mistress
of honey and marble implacable white thighs
and Goddess,
chaste daughter of Zeus. — Hilda Doolittle

Music sets up ladders,
it makes us invisible,
it sets us apart,
it lets us escape;
but from the visible
there is no escape. — Hilda Doolittle

No one knows the colour of a flower
till it is broken. — Hilda Doolittle

O ruthless, perilous, imperious hate,
you can not thwart
the promptings of my soul. — Hilda Doolittle

I had drawn away into the salt,
myself, a shell
emptied of life. — Hilda Doolittle

Escape
from the power of the hunting pack,
and to know that wisdom is best
and beauty
sheer holiness. — Hilda Doolittle

I smiled,
I waited,
I was circumspect;
O never, never, never write that I
missed life or loving. — Hilda Doolittle

Light threatens, is active, is gone,
so it is with a song. — Hilda Doolittle

Sing
and your hell is heaven,
your heaven less hell. — Hilda Doolittle

Cheat me not with time,
with the dull ache of flesh,
for all flesh turns,
even the loveliest
ankle and frail thigh,
to bitterest dust. — Hilda Doolittle

I will be free,
no lover's kiss
to bind me to earth,
no bliss of love
to counteract
actual bliss. — Hilda Doolittle

The stallion and his mare,
unbridled, with arrow-pattern,
are worked on.
the blue cloth
before the door
of religion and inspiration ... — Hilda Doolittle

Love is a garment
riven in the light
that rises from Parnassus,
showing
the night is over. — Hilda Doolittle

The race may or may not be to the swift,
but tell me, is it likely
that the fight will be entrusted to the dead? — Hilda Doolittle

O happy, happy each
man whom predestined fate
leads to the holy rite
of hill and mountain worship. — Hilda Doolittle

No man will be present in those mysteries,
yet all men will kneel,
no man will be potent,
important,
yet all men will feel
what it is to be a woman. — Hilda Doolittle

No poetic phantasy
but a biological reality,
a fact: I am an entity
like bird, insect, plant
or sea-plant cell;
I live; I am alive. — Hilda Doolittle

No one knows,
the heart of a child,
how it grows
until it is too late. — Hilda Doolittle

It is no madness to say
you will fall, you great cities. — Hilda Doolittle

You are wind in a stark tree,
you are the stark tree unbent,
you are a strung bow,
you are an arrow. — Hilda Doolittle

Until it seems the whole city will be covered with gold pollen shaken from the bell-towers, lilies plundered with the weight of massive bees ... — Hilda Doolittle

I myself have seen the floating ships
And nothing will ever be the same
The shouts,
The harrowing voices within the house.
I stand apart with an army:
My mind is graven with ships. — Hilda Doolittle

We are these people,
wistful, ironical, wilful,
who have no part in
new-world reconstruction,
in the confederacy of labour. — Hilda Doolittle

War wreaked on you his hideous ravishment;
We, we alone, Nereids inviolate,
Remain to weep, with the sea-birds to chant:
Corinth is lost, Corinth is desolate. — Hilda Doolittle

When you would think,
"what was the use of it,"
you'll remember
something you can't grasp
and you'll wonder
what it was. — Hilda Doolittle

Ah love is bitter and sweet,
but which is more sweet
the bitterness or the sweetness,
none has spoken it. — Hilda Doolittle

Alas, day, you brought light,
You trailed splendour
You showed us god:
I salute you, most precious one,
But I go to a new place,
Another life. — Hilda Doolittle

You will not see
that desire begets
love,
until it all flames
into one concise
and metallic blaze. — Hilda Doolittle

My eye-balls are glass,
my limbs marble,
my face fixed
in its marble mask. — Hilda Doolittle

I fear no man, no woman;
flower does not fear
bird, insect nor adder. — Hilda Doolittle

The things I have
are nameless,
old and true;
they may not be named;
few may live and know. — Hilda Doolittle

I spit
honey out of my mouth:
nothing is second-best
after the sweet of Eros. — Hilda Doolittle

Love has no charm
when Love is swept to earth:
you'd make a lop-winged god,
frozen and contrite,
of god up-darting,
winged for passionate flight. — Hilda Doolittle

The heart
the heart
the heart
how it thrives on hate. — Hilda Doolittle

The whole white world is ours. — Hilda Doolittle

Dance until the earth dance. — Hilda Doolittle

The fallen hazel-nuts, Stripped late of their green sheaths, The grapes, red-purple, Their berries Dripping with wine, Pomegranates already broken, And shrunken fig, And quinces untouched, I bring thee as offering. — Hilda Doolittle