Stephen Phillips

Stephen Phillips (28 July 1864 – 9 December 1915) was an English poet and dramatist.

• She drugged her brain against realities,
  And lived in dreams, and was with music fed.
  • A. S. P., ll. 9–10

• The illumed unconscious faces of the crowd!
  • Faces at a Fire, l. 4

• The listless ripple of Oblivion.
  • Christ in Hades, l. 77

• How good it is to live, even at the worst!
  • Christ in Hades, l. 103

• As rich and purposeless as is the rose:
  Thy simple doom is to be beautiful.
• Thy simple doom is to be beautiful.
  • ll. 51–2

• Beautiful Faith surrendering to Time.
  • l. 62

• The fierce ingratitude of children loved,
  Ah, sting of stings!
  • ll. 63–4

• The greenly silent and cool-growing night.
  • l. 66

• What is the love of men that women seek it?
  • l. 74

• The fiery funeral of foliage old.
  • l. 114

• With slow sweet surgery restore the brain,
  And to dispel shadows and shadowy fear.
  • ll. 120–1

• Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea.
  • l. 144

• Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
  It has been died for, though I know not when.
  It has been sung of, though I know not where.
  • ll. 145–7

• Sea-faring men with their sea-weary eyes.
  • l. 204

•      ... how shall I know
  That I myself may not, by sorrow taught,
  Accept the perfect stillness of the ground?
  • ll. 215–6

• The half of music, I have heard men say,
  Is to have grieved; when comes the lonely wail
  Over the mind.
  • ll. 244–6

• And though with sadder, still with kinder eyes,
  We shall behold all frailties, we shall haste
  To pardon, and with mellowing minds to bless.
  • ll. 284–6

• The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun.
  • l. 296

• But we shall sit with luminous holy smiles,
  Endeared by many griefs, by many a jest,
  And custom sweet of living side by side.
  • ll. 296–8

• Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind,
  Durable from the daily dust of life.
  • ll. 312–3

• We cannot choose; our faces madden men!
  • Act 2, sc. 1 (Nita)

•      ... who shall set a shore to love?
  When hath it ever swerved from death, or when
  Hath it not burned away all barriers,
  Even dearest ties of mother and of son,
  Even of brothers?
  • Act 2, sc. 1 (Lucrezia)

• You must know that love is a thing physical. It can be sweated out of a man by hard riding; it evaporates from the body like any humour.
  • Act 2, sc. 1 (Corrado)

•            Think you the old would die?
  At any cost they would prolong the light.
  'Tis we, in whose pure blood the fever takes,
  Newly innoculate with violent life,
  'Tis we who are so mad to die.
  • Act 3, sc. 1 (Paolo)

• So still it is that we might almost hear
  The sigh of all the sleepers in the world.
  And all the rivers running to the sea.
  • Act 2, sc. 1 (Paolo and Francesca)

•                      ... can any tell
  How sorrow first doth come? Is there a step,
  A light step, or a dreamy drip of oars?
  Is there a stirring of leaves, a ruffle of wings?
  For it seems to me that softly, without hand,
  Surely she touches me.
  • Act 2, sc. 1 (Francesca)

• The dead who frown I fear not: but I fear
  The dead who smile!
  • Act 4, sc. 1 (Francesca)

•          ... when we women sin, 'tis not
  By art; it is not easy, it is not light;
  It is our agony shot through with bliss:
  We sway and rock and suffer ere we fall.
  • Act 4, sc. 1 (Francesca)

• A sense of something coming on the world,
  A crying of dead prophets from their tombs,
  A singing of dead poets from their graves.
  • Act 1, sc. 1 (Young Councillor)

• It is the fault of dreamers to fear fate.
  • Act 1 (Gadias)

•            What if the powers permit
  The doing of that deed which serves us now;
  Then of that very deed do make a spur
  To drive us to some act that we abhor?
  The first step is with us; then all the road
  The long road is with Fate.
  • Act 1 (Herod)

• The gentle are tame birds that feed the hawk.
  • Act 1 (Gadias)

• To me it seems that they who grasp the world,
  The Kingdom and the power and the glory,
  Must pay with deepest misery of spirit,
  Atoning unto God for a brief brightness,
  And ever ransom, like this rigid king,
  The outward victory with inward loss.
  • Act 3 (Physician)

• I tell you we are fooled by the eye, the ear,
  These organs muffle us from that real world
  That lies about us, we are duped by brightness.
  The ear, the eye doth make us deaf and blind;
  Else should we be aware of all our dead,
  Who pass above us, through us and beneath us.
  • Act 3 (Herod)

• A mighty spearsman, and a seaman wise,
  A hunter, and at need a lord of lies.
  • Prologue (Athene)

• True to a vision, steadfast to a dream.
  • Act 1, sc. 1 (Penelope)

• I have learned to dread what cometh suddenly,
  And sniff about a sweet thing like a hound:
  And most I dread the sudden gifts of gods.
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Ulysses)

• O death, thou hast a beckon to the brave,
  Thou last sea of the navigator, last
  Plunge of the diver, and last hunter's leap.
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Ulysses)

• Duty, that grey ash of a burnt-out fire,
  That lie between a woman and a man!
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Calypso)

• With sward of parsley and of violet,
  And poplars shivering in a silvery dream,
  And smell of cedar sawn, and sandal-wood,
  And these low-crying birds that haunt the deep.
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Ulysses)

• I would not take life but on terms of death,
  That sting in the wine of being, salt of its feast.
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Ulysses)

• The love that shall not weary, must be art.
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Calypso)

• She hath no skill in living—but to love.
  • Act I, sc. 2 (Ulysses)

• When did a lover heed a mother's woe?
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Calypso)

• A shambling shadow, a wrecked, mumbling ghost,
  A man no more.
  • Act 1, sc. 2 (Antinous)

• I'll crouch before I spring, spy ere I leap.
  • Act 3, sc. 1 (Ulysses)

• These draught-boards, ivory inlaid with silver.
  • Act 3, sc. 2 (Ctesippus)

•            Behold me now
  A man not old, but mellow, like good wine."
  • Act 3, sc. 2 (Ctesippus)

• The touch that's gracious, deft, and feminine.
  • Act 3, sc. 2 (Eurymachus)

• What were revel without wine?
  What were wine without a song?
  • Act 3, sc. 2 (Phemius)

• Alas! I am a woman utterly!
  • Act 3, sc. 2 (Penelope)

• ... she who sits enthroned may not prolong
  The luxury of tears; nor may she waste.
  In lasting widowhood a people's hopes,
  So hard is height, so cruel is a crown.
  • Act 3, sc. 24 (Eurymachus)

• Helena Swan (ed.) Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations: English (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, Ltd, 1904)