Stephen Spender: Quotes about light

“I'm pressed into the inside of a mask
At the back of love, the back of air, the back of light.”

Stephen Spender

"The Mask"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: The seen and seeing softly mutually strike
Their glass barrier that arrests the sight.
But the world's being hides in the volcanoes
And the foul history pressed into its core;
And to myself my being is my childhood
And passion and entrails and the roots of senses;
I'm pressed into the inside of a mask
At the back of love, the back of air, the back of light.

Love , Light

“Opening, my eyes say 'Let there be light',
Closing, they shut me in a coffin.”

Stephen Spender

"The Human Situation"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: And if this I were destroyed,
The image shattered,
My perceived, rent world would fly
In an explosion of final judgement
To the ends of the sky,
The colour in the iris of the eye.
Opening, my eyes say 'Let there be light',
Closing, they shut me in a coffin.

Light

“I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing.”

Stephen Spender

"I Think of Those Who Were Truly Great"; also in Collected Poems 1928-1953 (1955)· Full text online and audio file of recitation by Spender, at the Poetry Archive http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7523
Poems (1933)
Context: I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.

Soul , History , Thinking , Light

“The iron arc of the avoiding journey
Curves back upon my weakness at the end;
Whether the faint light spark against my face
Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight,
Centre and circumference are both my weakness.”

Stephen Spender

"Darkness And Light"
The Still Centre (1939)

Light

“My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse
And shut upon obscurity; my acts
Cast to their opposites by impatient violence
Break up the sequent path; they fly
On a circumference to avoid the centre.”

Stephen Spender

"Darkness And Light"
The Still Centre (1939)

Light , Flying

“And then the heart in its white sailing pride
Launches among the swans and the stretched lights
Laid on the water, as on your cheek
The other kiss and my listening
Life, waiting for all your life to speak.”

Stephen Spender

"Two Kisses"
The Still Centre (1939)