8 Conrad Aiken Quotes on Loss

Conrad Aiken quotes on loss

6. Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead.

24. And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness, Vaguely and incoherently, some dream Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . . A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam; Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.

32. 'I bound her to me in all soft ways, I bound her to me in a net of days, Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word. How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you? There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.

44. Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream; It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas; It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls. Where was the woman he loved? Where was his youth? Where was the dream that burned his brain like fire? Even a dream grows grey at last and falls.

49. What was this dream we had, a dream of music, Music that rose from the opening earth like magic And shook its beauty upon us and died away? The long cold streets extend once more before us. The red sun drops, the walls grow grey.

54. The poet walked alone in a cold late rain, And thought his grief was like the crying of sea-birds; For his lover was dead, he never would love again.

58. Of what she said to me that night-no matter. The strange thing came next day. My brain was full of music-something she played me-; I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories, Seeking for something, trying to tell me something, Urging to restlessness: verging on grief. I tried to play the tune, from memory,- But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed And found no resolution-only hung there, And left me morbid . . . Where, then, had I heard it? . . .

61. Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened. Again I loved, and love itself was darkened. Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days. The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent. The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.