14 Wallace Stevens Quotes on Time

Wallace Stevens quotes on time

8. The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.

33. After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. No was the night. Yes is this present sun.

46. Death is the mother of beauty

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

71. Slowly the ivy on the stones Becomes the stones. Women become The cities, children become the fields And men in waves become the sea.

72. The sea returns upon the men, The fields entrap the children, brick Is a weed and all the flies are caught, Wingless and withered, but living alive. The discord merely magnified. Deeper within the belly's dark Of time, time grows upon the rock.

91. Here is the bread of time to come, Here is its actual stone. The bread Will be our bread, the stone will be Our bed and we shall sleep by night. We shall forget by day, except The moments when we choose to play The imagined pine, the imagined jay.

122. The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.

123. The bees came booming as if they had never gone, As if hyacinths had never gone. We say This changes and that changes. Thus the constant Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause In a universe of inconstancy. This means Night-blue is an inconstant thing. The seraph Is satyr in Saturn, according to his thoughts.

126. Should there be a question of returning or Of death in memory's dream? Is spring a sleep? This warmth is for lovers at last accomplishing Their love, this beginning, not resuming, this Booming and booming of the new-come bee.

133. On a blue island in a sky-wide water The wild orange trees continued to bloom and to bear, Long after the planter's death.

137. Eye without lid, mind without any dream - These are of minstrels lacking minstrelsy, Of an earth in which the first leaf is the tale Of leaves, in which the sparrow is a bird Of stone, that never changes. Bethou him, you And you, bethou him and bethou. It is A sound like any other. It will end.

148. Of these beginnings, gay and green, propose The suitable amours. Time will write them down.

169. A thing final in itself and, therefore, good: One of the vast repetitions final in Themselves and, therefore, good, the going round And round and round, the merely going round, Until merely going round is a final good, The way wine comes at a table in a wood.

208. All history is modern history.