Conrad Aiken quotes

Conrad Aiken was an American poet, novelist, and critic, recognized for his explorations of consciousness and psychological themes in literature. His poetry often blended musicality with deep philosophical questions about existence. He received numerous prestigious awards and was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Here are 72 of his quotes:

Separate we come and separate we go, And this, be it known, is all that we know.

Conrad Aiken

I love you, what star do you live on?

Conrad Aiken

The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, the eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, and lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.

Conrad Aiken

We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain. We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, but we know that we rose and walked, that after a while we shall lie down again.

Conrad Aiken

The days, the nights, flow one by one above us. The hours go silently over our lifted faces. We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea. Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together. We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee.

Conrad Aiken

The wind shrieks, the wind grieves; It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again; And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.

Conrad Aiken

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!- But time goes on, and will, unheeding, Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn, And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.

Conrad Aiken

Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.

Conrad Aiken

My heart has become as hard as a city street, The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron, All day long and all night long they beat, They ring like the hooves of time.

Conrad Aiken

Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Conrad Aiken

Was forty, then, too old for work like this? Why should it be? He'd never been afraid- His eye was sure, his hand was steady... But dreams had meanings.

Conrad Aiken

'I bound her to me in all soft ways, I bound her to me in a net of days, Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word. How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you? There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.

Conrad Aiken

You know, without my telling you, how sometimes A word or name eludes you, and you seek it Through running ghosts of shadow,-leaping at it, Lying in wait for it to spring upon it, Spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: Until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, You hear it, see it flash among the branches, And scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it- Well, it was so I followed down this music, Glimpsing a face in darkness, hearing a cry, Remembering days forgotten, moods exhausted, Corners in sunlight, puddles reflecting stars-.

Conrad Aiken

Of what she said to me that night-no matter. The strange thing came next day. My brain was full of music-something she played me-; I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories, Seeking for something, trying to tell me something, Urging to restlessness: verging on grief. I tried to play the tune, from memory,- But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed And found no resolution-only hung there, And left me morbid . . . Where, then, had I heard it? . . .

Conrad Aiken

We rub the darkness from our eyes, And face our thousand devious secret mornings . . . And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending, Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamer Compassionate over our towers bending.

Conrad Aiken

One white rose... or is it pink, to-day?' They pause and smile, not caring what they say, If only they may talk. The crowd flows past them like dividing waters. Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.

Conrad Aiken

The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry To go our devious secret ways, forgetting Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed, We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves. The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.

Conrad Aiken

Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam ... and after a while they will fall to dust and rain; or else we will tear them down with impatient hands; and hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

Conrad Aiken

When you are dead your spirit will find my spirit, And then we shall die no more.

Conrad Aiken

Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked. And death was observed with sudden cries, And birth with laughter and pain. And the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies And night came down again.

Conrad Aiken

As darkness falls The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by one in myriads we descend By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades, Through half-lit halls which reach no end.

Conrad Aiken

There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees What we are blind to,-we who mass and crowd From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.

Conrad Aiken