“And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
Lest any dream that fare
— Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
Hints of Reality.”
"Clowns' Houses"
Clowns' Houses (1918)
Context: p>The busy chatter of the heat
Shrilled like a parakeet;
And shuddering at the noonday light
The dust lay dead and whiteAs powder on a mummy's face,
Or fawned with simian grace
Round booths with many a hard bright toy
And wooden brittle joy:The cap and bells of Time the Clown
That, jangling, whistled down
Young cherubs hidden in the guise
Of every bird that flies;And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
Lest any dream that fare
— Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
Hints of Reality.</p
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Edith Sitwell 50
British poet 1887–1964Related quotes
“When the star dies, its eye closes; tired of watching, it flies back to its first bright dream.”
“The Star and the Eye,” p. 46
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Grain”
(zh-CN) 一样是月明，
一样是隔山灯火，
满天的星
只使人不见，
梦似的挂起。
"Do Not Throw Away" (《别丢掉》), translated by Michelle Yeh in A Chorus for Peace: A Global Anthology of Poetry by Women (University of Iowa Press, 2002), p. 41
Variant translation:
The moon is still so bright;
Beyond the hills the lamp sheds the same light.
The sky besprinkled with star on star,
But I do not know where you are.
It seems
You hang above like dreams.
Xu Yuanchong, Vanished Springs: The Life and Love of a Chinese Intellectual (Vantage Press, 1999), pp. 44–45
“Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought.”
Source: Elegies, Line 985.
The Indian Serenade http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/the_indian_serenade.html (1819), st. 1
“In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves
For a bright manhood, there is no such word
As "fail."”
Act iii, Scene i.
Richelieu (1839)
Variant: Where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go.
Source: A Moveable Feast