Stephen Spender: Quotes about the sun

“Then, as they land, they hear the tolling bell
Reaching across the landscape of hysteria,
To where larger than all the charcoaled batteries
And imaged towers against that dying sky,
Religion stands, the church blocking the sun.”

Stephen Spender

"The Landscape near an Aerodrome"
Poems (1933)

Religion , Sun

“The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.”

Stephen Spender

"I Think of Those Who Were Truly Great"
Poems (1933)
Context: Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted in the waving grass
And by the streamers of the white cloud
And whispers of the wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Life , Travel , Sun , Heart

“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

“History is theirs whose language is the sun.”

Stephen Spender

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum"
Ruins and Visions (1942)
Context: Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,
This map becomes their window and these windows
That shut upon their lives like catacombs,
Break O break open 'till they break the town
And show the children green fields and make their world
Run azure on gold sands and let their tongues
Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open
History is theirs whose language is the sun.

History , Sun

“One, a poet, went babbling like a fountain
Through parks. All were jokes to children.
All had the pale unshaven stare of shuttered plants
Exposed to a too violent sun.”

Stephen Spender

"Exiles From Their Land, History Their Domicile"
The Still Centre (1939)

Children , Sun

“Surely, Shakespeare is wicked and the map a bad example
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal —
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.”

Stephen Spender

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum"
Ruins and Visions (1942)

Love , Children , Time , Sun

“Here where I lie is the hot pit
Crowding on the mind with coal
And the will turned against it
Only drills new seams of darkness
Through the dark-surrounding whole.
Our vivid suns of happiness
Withered from summer, drop their flowers;
Hands of the longed, withheld tomorrow
Fold on the hands of yesterday
In double sorrow.”

Stephen Spender

"The Separation"
The Still Centre (1939)

Lie , Flowers , Sun , Summer