E. E. Cummings citations

Page 6

“because it's Spring
thingS dare to do people”

“Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain…
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep”

“love is more thicker than forget
…it is more sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky”

“the axis of the universe
—love”

“and liars kill their kind
but' her, my 'love creates love only' our”

“hugest whole creation may be less
incalculable than a single kiss”

“a million thousand hundred nothings seem
—we are himself's own self; his very him”

“all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again”

“out of the mountain of his soul
comes a keen pure silence”

“that strictly(and how)scienti
fic land of supernod
where freedom is compulsory
and only man is god.”

“now I lay me down to dream of(nothing
i or any somebody or you
can begin to begin to imagine) something which nobody may keep.”

“a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat”

“i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth”

“What concerns me fundamentaly is a meteoric burlesk melodrama, born of the immemorial adage love will find a way.”

“they flock and they flee through the thunder of seem
though the stars in their silence
say Be.”

“true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;”

“Why do you paint?
For exactly the same reason I breathe.
That’s not an answer.
There isn’t any answer.
How long hasn’t there been any answer?
As long as I can remember.
And how long have you written?
As long as I can remember.
I mean poetry.
So do I.”

“my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height”

“each ignorant gladness —unteaches what despair preaches”

“nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we are not poets.”

“i feel that(false and true are merely to know)
Love only has ever been, is, and will ever be, So”

“So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty." This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.”

“the courage to receive time's mightiest dream”

“pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness”

“the cunning the craven
… they live for until
though the sun in his heaven
says Now”

“unlove's the heavenless hell and the homeless home”

“measureless our pure living complete love
whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow”

“nothing false and possible is love
(who's imagined, therefore limitless)
love's to giving as to keeping's give; as yes is to if, love is to yes”

“more each particular person is(my love)
alive than every world can understand
and now you are and i am now and we're
a mystery that will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before—
and shining this our now must come to then”