# The Complete Poems

- Author: [William Empson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-empson.md)
- Quotes: 20
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-empson/the-complete-poems

## Quotes

> All those large dreams by which men long live well
>
> Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.

p. 52

> Stars how much further from me fill my night.
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> Strange that she too should be inaccessible,
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> Who shares my sun. He curtains her from sight,
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> And but in darkness is she visible.

> Your rights reach down where all owners meet, in Hell's
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> Pointed exclusive conclave, at earth’s centre
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> (Your spun farm's root still on that axis dwells);
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> And up, through galaxies, a growing sector.

p. 37

> Liberal hopefulness
>
> Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.

p. 78

> Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.

p. 290

> Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death
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> Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
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> The Communists however disapprove of death
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> Except when practical.

p. 78

> Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.

p. 79

> Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake.
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> My house was on a cliff. The thing could take
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> Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row.
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> Then the long pause and then the bigger shake.
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> It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

p. 69

> Man, as the prying housemaid of the soul.

p. 52

> Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend,
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> Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end,
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> Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend,
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> Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?

p. 81

> Attending there let us absorb the cultures of nations And dissolve into our judgement all their codes. Then, being clogged with a natural hesitation (People are continually asking one the way out), Let us stand here and admit that we have no road. Being everything, let us admit that is to be something, Or give ourselves the benefit of the doubt; Let us offer our pinch of dust all to this God, And grant his reign over the entire building.

p. 55

> But as to risings, I can tell you why.
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> It is on contradiction that they grow.
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> It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
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> Up was the heartening and the strong reply
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> The heart of standing is we cannot fly.

p. 70

> Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

p. 37

> It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
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> The more things happen to you the more you can't
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> Tell or remember even what they were.The contradictions cover such a range.
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> The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
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> You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.

p. 99

> Feign then what's by a decent tact believed
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> And act that state is only so conceived,
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> And build an edifice of form
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> For house where phantoms may keep warm.

p. 52

> Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
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> It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
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> The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

p. 79

> It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.
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> Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through.
>
> Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

p. 33

> Ripeness is all; her in her cooling planet
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> Revere; do not presume to think her wasted.
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> Project her no projectile, plan nor man it;
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> Gods cool in turn, by the sun long outlasted.

p. 24

> Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves;
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> Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems;
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> Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.

p. 34

> There is a supreme God in the ethnological section; . . . His smooth wood creeps with all the creeds of the world.

p. 55