30 Quotes by John Crowe Ransom

Captain Carpenter rose up in his prime Put on his pistols and went riding out But had got wellnigh nowhere at that time Till he fell in with ladies in a rout.

I would not knock old fellows in the dust But there lay Captain Carpenter on his back His weapons were the old heart in his bust And a blade shook between rotten teeth alack.

I am a lady young in beauty waiting Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.

In all the good Greek of Plato I lack my roastbeef and potato. A better man was Aristotle, Pulling steady on the bottle.

Great lovers lie in Hell, the stubborn ones Infatuate of the flesh upon the bones; Stuprate, they rend each other when they kiss, The pieces kiss again, no end to this.

Would you ascend to Heaven and bodiless dwell? Or take your bodies honorless to Hell? In Heaven you have heard no marriage is, No white flesh tinder to your lecheries

God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No bellyand no bowels, Only consonants and vowels.

The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The imageis in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.

When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.