Conrad Aiken: Trending quotes (page 4)

“A chorus of elfin voices blowing about me
Weaves to a babel of sound. Each cries a secret.
I run among them, reach out vain hands, and drown.”

Conrad Aiken

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Secret

“Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.”

Conrad Aiken

Variant: Separate we come, and separate we go, and this be it known, is all that we know.
Source: Self written obituary in verse, The New York Herald Tribune (1969), cited in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) edited by Larry Chang, p. 664

“I love you, what star do you live on?”

Conrad Aiken

Chance Meetings (1917)

Love , Star

“And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.”

Conrad Aiken

Chance Meetings (1917)

Tree

“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.”

Conrad Aiken

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Beauty , Dreams , Music , Sun

“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.”

Conrad Aiken

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Love , Youth , Beauty , Dreams

“The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry
To go our devious secret ways, forgetting
Those many lives... We loved, we laughed, we killed,
We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves.
The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.”

Conrad Aiken

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Love , Secret , Dreams , Music

“Something had changed—but it was not the street—
The street was just the same—it was himself.”

Conrad Aiken

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Change

“From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.”

Conrad Aiken

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Light

“One white rose... or is it pink, to-day?”

Conrad Aiken

They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)