Robert Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM (October 23, 1844 – April 21, 1930) was an English poet. He was poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.

Quotes

Essays

• Good melody is never out of fashion
  • A Practical Discourse on some Priciples of Hymn-singing Collected Essays no 22.
• Poetry's magic lies in the imagery which satifies even without interpretation..it is accepted as easily as it was created.
  • The Necessity of Poetry Tredegar 1917 (from Collected Essays).

Poetry

• Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
  A million buds but stay their blossoming
  And trustful birds have built their nests amid
  The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
  Till one soft shower from the south shall bid
  And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of Spring.
  • The Growth of Love, Sonnet 6 (1876).

• For beauty being the best of all we know
  Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims
  Of nature.
  • The Growth of Love, Sonnet 8.

• When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
  In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
  Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
  Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town.
  • London Snow, l. 1-4 (1890).

• They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
  Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
  Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees.
  • London Snow, l. 20-22.

• Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee,
  With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
  • On a Dead Child, st. 1 (1890).

• I love all beauteous things,
  I seek and adore them.
  • I Love all Beauteous Things, st. 1 (1890).

• To-morrow it seem
  Like the empty words of a dream
  Remembered on waking.
  • I Love all Beauteous Things, st. 2.

• My delight and thy delight
  Walking, like two angels white,
  In the gardens of the night.
  • New Poems, No. 9, My Delight and Thy Delight, st. 1 (1899).

• Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
  Thou idol of the human race,
  Thou tyrant of the human heart,
  The flower of lovely youth that art.
  • Eros, st. 1 (1899).

• Surely thy body is thy mind,
  For in thy face is nought to find,
  Only thy soft unchristened smile,
  That shadows neither love nor guile.
  • Eros, st. 2.

• Angels’ song, comforting
  as the comfort of Christ
  When he spake tenderly
  to his sorrowful flock.
  • Noel Christmas Eve 1913.

• The constellated sounds
  ran sprinkling on earth’s floor
  As the dark vault above
  with stars was spangled o’er.
  • Noel Christmas Eve 1913.

• On such a night, when Air has loosed
  Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
  Old terrors then of god or ghost
  Creep from their caves to life again.
  • Low Barometer, st. 2 (1926).

• And Reason kens he herits in
  A haunted house. Tenants unknown
  Assert their squalid lease of sin
  With earlier title than his own.
  • Low Barometer, st. 3.

• When first we met we did not guess
  That Love would prove so hard a master.
  • Triolet.

• Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
  The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,
  It leaps in the sky.
  • Awake, My Heart, to Be Loved, l. 1-3.

• Awake! the land is scattered with light, and see,
  Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree.
  • Awake, My Heart, to Be Loved, l. 13-14.

• The storm is over, the land hushes to rest:
  The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,
  Is fallen back in the west.
  • The Storm is Over, The Land Hushes to Rest, l. 1-3.

• The broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky
  Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield,
  And in her tranquil light
  Sleep falls on forest and field.
  See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:
  The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.
  • The Storm is Over, The Land Hushes to Rest, l. 38-43.

• When Death to either shall come—
  I pray it be first to me.
  • When Death to Either Shall Come.

• As night is withdrawn
  From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
  Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
  Welcome the dawn.
  • Nightingales, st. 3.

• I will not let thee go.
  I hold thee by too many bands:
  Thou sayest farewell, and lo!
  I have thee by the hands,
  And will not let thee go.
  • I Will Not Let Thee Go, st. 7.

• Behind the western bars
  The shrouded day retreats,
  And unperceived the stars
  Steal to their sovran seats.
  
  And whiter grows the foam,
  The small moon lightens more;
  And as I turn me home,
  My shadow walks before.
  • The Clouds Have Left the Sky.

• Scatter the clouds that hide
  The face of heaven, and show
  Where sweet peace doth abide,
  Where Truth and Beauty grow.
  • Morning Hymn.

• I live on hope and that I think do all
  Who come into this world.
  • Sonnet LXXIII.

• The evening darkens over
  After a day so bright,
  The windcapt waves discover
  That wild will be the night.
  • The Evening Darkens Over, st. 1.

• And now impatiently despairest, see
  How nought is changed: Joy's wisdom is attired
  Splended for others' eyes if not for thee:
  Not love or beauty or youth from earth is fled:
  If they delite thee not, 'tis thou art dead.
  • Melancholia, st. 2.

Shorter Poems (1879-1893)

• Were I a cloud I'd gather
  My skirts up in the air,
  And fly I well know whither,
  And rest I well know where.
  • Book I, No. 4, The Cliff-Top.

• Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
  Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
  That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
  Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?
  • Bk. II, No. 2, A Passer-By, st. 1 (1879).

• I have loved flowers that fade,
  Within whose magic tents
  Rich hues have marriage made
  With sweet unmemoried scents:
  A honeymoon delight,
  A joy of love at sight,
  That ages in an hour
  My song be like a flower!
  • Bk. II, No. 13, I Have Loved Flowers That Fade, st. 1 (1879).

• So sweet love seemed that April morn,
  When first we kissed beside the thorn,
  So strangely sweet, it was not strange
  We thought that love could never change.
  • Bk. V, No. 5, So Sweet Love Seemed, st. 1 (1893).

• But I can tell — let truth be told —
  That love will change in growing old;
  Though day by day is nought to see,
  So delicate his motions be.
  • So Sweet Love Seemed, st. 2 (1893).

The Testament of Beauty (1929-1930)

[Note: the spelling and punctuation of this poem, as seen in the excerpts linked here, are Bridges' own. In his later years Bridges was interested in spelling and typography reform which would be based more closely on the actual pronunciation of words.]

• Man's Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
  that tho' she guide his highest flight heav'nward, and teach him
  dignity morals manners and human comfort,
  she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen
  the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell.
  • Book I, lines 57-61.

• Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for thee
  any better melody in the April woods at dawn
  than what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awake
  o'night in his comfortless attic, might perchance
  be aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?
  • Book I, lines 83-87.

• Beauty is the highest of all these occult influences,
  the quality of appearances that thru' the sense
  wakeneth spiritual emotion in the mind of man.
  • Book II, lines 842-844.

• Beauty, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God
  and Angel of his Presence thru' all creation.
  • Book IV, lines 1-2.

• Repudiation of pleasur is a reason'd folly
  of imperfection. Ther is no motiv can rebate
  or decompose the intrinsic joy of activ life,
  whereon all function whatsoever in man is based.
  • Book IV, lines 459-462.

• I know
  that if odour were visible as colour is, I'd see
  the summer garden aureoled in rainbow clouds.
  • Book IV, lines 492-492.

• The name of happiness is but a wider term
  for the unalloy'd conditions of the Pleasur of Life,
  attendant on all function, and not to be deny'd
  to th' soul, unless forsooth in our thought of nature
  spiritual is by definition unnatural.
  • Book IV, lines 533-537.

• Seeking unceasingly for the First Cause of All,
  in question for what special purpose he was made,
  Man, in the unsearchable darkness, knoweth one thing:
  that as he is, so was he made; and if the Essence
  and characteristic faculty of humanity
  is our conscient Reason and our desire of knowledge,
  that was Nature's Purpose in the making of man.

Misattributed

• Simple and brave, his faith awoke
  Ploughmen to struggle with their fate;
  Armies won battles when he spoke,
  And out of Chaos sprang the state.
  • Washington by Robert Bridges (1858 - 1941), American journalist and poet, who wrote under the pen name "Droch".

External links

• Works by Robert Bridges at Project Gutenberg