“When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things?"”

— Thomas Hardy

" Afterwards http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Hardy/Afterwards.htm", lines 1-4, from Moments of Vision (1917)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like …" by Thomas Hardy?

Thomas Hardy photo

Thomas Hardy171

English novelist and poet 1840–1928

Related quotes

“I say this about everything: when I was on Neighbours I said, 'These are the best years of my life!' When I was filming 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' I said, 'These are the best months of my life!'”

Margot Robbie (1990) Australian actress

I always think I'm having the best time ever, and that I'll never have so much fun again.<br><br>Nojan Aminosharei, “There's something about Margot” https://www.elle.com.au/culture/theres-something-about-margot-7683, Elle, (Mar 25, 2014).

“I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing”

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

Emmonsail's Heath in Winter
Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

“And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah

“The cock does not crow till it has thrice flapped its wings; the parrot in moving among boughs never puts its feet excepting where it has first put its beak. Vows are not made till Hope is dead.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

“When we're young, we notice things that are young, like ourselves. New grass on old graves. New leaves on old trees”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 3: Caldé of the Long Sun (1994), Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

“God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

“Take that singing bird away!
It has too glad a lay
For an ear so lorn as mine!
And its wings are all too light,
And its feathers all too bright,
To rest in a bosom like mine!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

“I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be — that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)

“Tis May again, another May,
Looking as if it meant to stay;
So many are its thousand flowers,
So glorious are its sunny hours,
So green its earth, so blue its sky,
As made for Hope's eternity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - title poem - The First Day
The Golden Violet (1827)

“Like a delicate butterfly to us, who, carefree and exhilarated, fluttered right into the lamp of life, scorching her fine wings.”

Related topics