“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 Warren 49
American poet, novelist, and literary critic 1905–1989Related quotes
Published 1755, Hymns, "Hark, the Glad Sound", Chambers Dictionary of Quotations, p. 278
No. 465, Ode (23 August 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
Source: At the Back of the North Wind (1871), Chapter 18
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
Miscellaneous Quotes
Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage
“Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.”
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.
Matt, Act II, sc. i, air 19
The Beggar's Opera (1728)