R.S. Thomas Quotes

• “You have to imagine
  a waiting that is not impatient
  because it is timeless.”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “I have seen the sun break through
  to illuminate a small field
  for a while, and gone my way
  and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
  of great price, the one field that had
  treasure in it. I realize now
  that I must give all that I have
  to possess it. Life is not hurrying
  on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
  an imagined past. It is the turning
  aside like Moses to the miracle
  of the lit bush, to a brightness
  that seemed as transitory as your youth
  once, but is the eternity that awaits you.”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “To all light things
  I compared her: to
  a snowflake, a feather”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “Children's Song
  
  We live in our own world,
  A world that is too small
  For you to stoop and enter
  Even on hands and knees,
  The adult subterfuge.
  And though you probe and pry
  With analytic eye,
  And eavesdrop all our talk
  With an amused look,
  You cannot find the centre
  Where we dance, where we play,
  Where life is still asleep
  Under the closed flower,
  Under the smooth shell
  Of eggs in the cupped nest
  That mock the faded blue
  Of your remoter heaven.”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “... the silence
  Holds with its gloved hand
  The wild hawk of the mind.”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “There are cries in the dark at night
  As owls answer the moon”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “No Through Road
  
  All in vain, I will cease now
  My long absorption with the plough,
  With the tame and the wild creatures
  And man united with the earth.
  I have failed after many seasons
  To bring truth to birth,
  And nature's simple equations
  In the mind's precincts do not apply.
  
  But where to turn? Earth endures
  After the passing, necessary shame
  Of winter, and the old lie
  Of green places beckons me still
  From the new world, ugly and evil,
  That men pry for in truth's name.”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “Seated at table -
  no need for the fracture
  of the room's silence; noiselessly
  they conversed.”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “The furies are at home
  in the mirror; it is their address.
  Even the clearest water,
  if deep enough can drown.
  Never think to surprise them.
  Your face approaching ever
  so friendly is the white flag
  they ignore. There is no truce
  
  with the furies. A mirror’s temperature
  is always at zero. It is ice
  in the veins. Its camera
  is an X—ray. It is a chalice
  
  held out to you in
  silent communion, where gaspingly
  you partake of a shifting
  identity never your own.”

  R.S. Thomas

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• “I can’t speak my own
  language - Iesu,
  All those good words;
  And I outside them.”

  R.S. Thomas

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