TED HUGHES, A 20TH CENTURY ENGLISH WRITER OF POETRY, NON-FICTION AND CHILDREN'S BOOKS.
“You were overloaded. I said nothing.
I said nothing. The stone man made soup.
The burning woman drank it.”
“Do as you like with me. I'm your parcel. I have only our address on me. Open me, or readdress me.”
“I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars...”
“The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.”
“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”
“So we found the end of our journey.
So we stood, alive in the river of light,
Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.”
“Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business”
“In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness
But the jewel you lost was blue.”
~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
“The brassy wood-pigeons
Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
Rises upon a world well-tried and old.”
“You could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove.”
“The world’s decay where the wind’s hands have passed,
And my head, worn out with love, at rest
In my hands, and my hands full of dust,”
“There is no better way to know us
Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.”
“He could not stand. It was not
That he could not thrive, he was born
With everything but the will –
That can be deformed, just like a limb.
Death was more interesting to him.
Life could not get his attention.”
“The Shell
The sea fills my ear
with sand and with fear.
You may wash out the sand,
but never the sound
of the ghost of the sea
that is haunting me.”
“where are the gods
the gods hate us
the gods have run away
the gods have hidden in holes
the gods are dead of the plague
they rot and stink too
there never were any gods
there’s only death”
“The dreamer in her
Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it.
That moment the dreamer in me
Fell in love with her and I knew it”
“You were overloaded. I said nothing.
I said nothing. The stone man made soup.
The burning woman drank it.”
~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
~ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes
~ Ted Hughes, The Iron Man
~ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes
“So we found the end of our journey.
So we stood, alive in the river of light,
Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.”
~ Ted Hughes, River
“Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business”
~ Ted Hughes, The Thought-Fox
“In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness
But the jewel you lost was blue.”
~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
“The brassy wood-pigeons
Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
Rises upon a world well-tried and old.”
~ Ted Hughes, Stealing Trout on a May Morning
“You could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove.”
~ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes
“The world’s decay where the wind’s hands have passed,
And my head, worn out with love, at rest
In my hands, and my hands full of dust,”
~ Ted Hughes, Song
“There is no better way to know us
Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.”
~ Ted Hughes, A Modest Proposal
“He could not stand. It was not
That he could not thrive, he was born
With everything but the will –
That can be deformed, just like a limb.
Death was more interesting to him.
Life could not get his attention.”
~ Ted Hughes, Season Songs
“The Shell
The sea fills my ear
with sand and with fear.
You may wash out the sand,
but never the sound
of the ghost of the sea
that is haunting me.”
~ Ted Hughes, The Mermaid's Purse
“where are the gods
the gods hate us
the gods have run away
the gods have hidden in holes
the gods are dead of the plague
they rot and stink too
there never were any gods
there’s only death”
~ Ted Hughes, Seneca's Oedipus
“The dreamer in her
Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it.
That moment the dreamer in me
Fell in love with her and I knew it”
~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
