“For fire flames but in the heart of a colder fire.
All voice is but echo caught from a sound-less voice.
Height is not deprivation of valley, nor defect of desire.
But defines, for the fortunate, that joy in
which all joys should rejoice.”
"To a Little Girl, One Year Old, in a Ruined Fortress" (1956)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Robert Penn Warren49
American poet, novelist, and literary critic 1905–1989Related quotes
Philip Doddridge (1702–1751) English Nonconformist leader, educator, and hymnwriter
Published 1755, Hymns, "Hark, the Glad Sound", Chambers Dictionary of Quotations, p. 278
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 465, Ode (23 August 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
George MacDonald book At the Back of the North Wind
Source: At the Back of the North Wind (1871), Chapter 18
Edwin Markham (1852–1940) American poet
Source: The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913), The Crowning Hour, II
Context: p>If this is a dream, then perhaps our dreaming
Can touch life's height to a finer fire:
Who knows but the heavens and all their seeming
Were made by the heart's desire?One thing shines clear in the heart's sweet reason,
One lightning over the chasm runs —
That to turn from love is the world's one treason
That darkens all the suns.</p
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship
Miscellaneous Quotes
Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist
Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage
“Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.”
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.
John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright
Matt, Act II, sc. i, air 19
The Beggar's Opera (1728)