Amy Levy Quotes (32 Quotes)


    O Love is like a rose,
    Fair-hued, of fragrant breath;
    A tender flow'r that lives an hour,
    And is most sweet in death.

    A lover may be a shadowy creature, but husbands are made of flesh and blood.

    And all our observations ran
    On Art and Letters, Life and Man.

    And now my love is dead that loved not me.

    You've robbed my life of many things--
    Of love and hope, of fame and pow'r.


    What is the thing I fear, and why?

    I have no faith
    In God, or Devil, Life or Death.

    Is it so much of the gods that I pray?

    Alas, alas, such idle thoughts are vain!

    We men and women are complex things!

    Bitter indeed is Life, and bitter of Life the breath,
    But give me Life and its ways and its men, if this be Death.

    These things I scarcely knew; to-day,
    When love is lost and hope is fled,
    The song you sang so long ago
    Rings in my head.

    For one strange moment I forgot
    My only love was dead.

    I was wan and weary with life ; my sick soul yearned for death;
    I was weary of women and war and the sea and the wind's wild breath;
    I cull'd sweet poppies and crush'd them, the blood ran rich and red:--
    And I cast it in crystal chalice and drank of it till I was dead.

    Thereby ran on of Art and Life our speech;
    And of the gifts the gods had given to each--
    Hope unto you, and unto me Despair.

    Shall I wander in vain for my country?

    Death do I trust no more than life.



    If within my heart there's mould,
    If the flame of Poesy
    And the flame of Love grow cold,
    Slay my body utterly.

    Love blest and love accurst
    Was here in days long past;
    This time is not the first,
    But this time is the last.

    All day we have plied the oar; all day
    Eager and keen have said our say
    On life and death, on love and art,
    On good or ill at Nature's heart.

    How gladly I had borne your pain.

    I wonder, do you know
    How gladly, gladly I had died
    (And life was very sweet that tide)
    To save you from the least, light ill?

    Dead love or dead ambition, say,
    Which mourn we most?

    My life was jarring discord from the first:
    Tho' here and there brief hints of melody,
    Of melody unutterable, clove the air.

    We are no more content to plod along the beaten paths - and so marriage must go the way of God.

    Since that I may not have
    Love on this side the grave,
    Let me imagine Love.

    Hold there, you rangèd row of books!

    I will be glad because it is the Spring;
    I will forget the winter in my heart--
    Dead hopes and withered promise; and will wring
    A little joy from life ere life depart.

    What ails my love; what ails her?

    Not much we weigh
    Platonic friends.


    More Amy Levy Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Love - Life - Death & Dying - God - Art - Man - Hope - Woman - Time - Fear - Promise - Charity - Mind - Ambition - Light - Winter - Friendship - Speech - Devils - View All Amy Levy Quotations

    Related Authors


    William Butler Yeats - Walt Whitman - T. S. Eliot - Rabindranath Tagore - John Keats - Alexander Pope - Sylvia Plath - Rumi - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Dylan Thomas


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