Roy Campbell (poet): Likeness

“We shall not meet again: over the wave
Our ways divide, and yours is straight and endless –
But mine is short and crooked to the grave:
Yet what of these dark crowds, amid whose flow
I battle like a rock, aloof and friendless –
Are not their generations, vague and endless,
The waves, the strides, the feet on which I go?”

Roy Campbell (poet)

"Tristan da Cunha," lines 97-103
Adamastor (1930)

Way

“Of all the clever people round me here
I most delight in Me –
Mine is the only voice I care to hear,
And mine the only face I like to see.”

Roy Campbell (poet)

"Home Thoughts in Bloomsbury," lines 1-4
Adamastor (1930)

People

“Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.”

Roy Campbell (poet)

"To a Pet Cobra," lines 23-24
Sons of the Mistral (1926)

“Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive.”

Roy Campbell (poet)

Poetry Review (June-July 1949)

Faith