Allen Tate

Death's long anabasis.

— Allen Tate

In the cold morning the rested street stands up To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.

— Allen Tate

How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or…

— Allen Tate

I believe the term modulation denotes in music the uninterrupted shift from one key to another: I do not know the term…

— Allen Tate

And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane…

— Allen Tate

We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.

— Allen Tate

No head knows where its rest is Or may lie down with reason When war's usurping claws Shall take heart escheat....

— Allen Tate

Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing; the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood.…

— Allen Tate

Good manners, Madam, are had these days not For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's. The day is a loud grenade that…

— Allen Tate

The idiot greens the meadow with his eyes, The meadow creeps implacable and still; A dog barks, the hammock swings, he lies.…

— Allen Tate

What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.

— Allen Tate

Let us lie down once more by the breathing side Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep As if the Known Sea…

— Allen Tate

William Blake cursed the flesh for a clod, Yet of some of his sayings we Moderns have heard tell: 'The nakedness of…

— Allen Tate

The day's at end and there's nowhere to go, Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying; Get up and once…

— Allen Tate

Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism,…

— Allen Tate

Men expect too much, do too little.

— Allen Tate

Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.

— Allen Tate

The dreary flies, lazy and casual, Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall. O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould…

— Allen Tate

All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.

— Allen Tate

Struck in the wet mire Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city I thought of Troy, what we had built her…

— Allen Tate

We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.

— Allen Tate

we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.

— Allen Tate

So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.

— Allen Tate

This is the man who classifiedthe bits Of his friends' hells into a pigeonhole He hung each disparate anguish on the spits…

— Allen Tate

Our loss put six feet under ground Is measured by the magnolia's root; Our gain's the intellectual sound Of death's feet round…

— Allen Tate