Conrad Aiken

Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk, before the purpose of speech is gone.

— Conrad Aiken

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

— Conrad Aiken

Music I heard with you was more than music,All that was once so beautiful is dead.

— Conrad Aiken

My heart has become as hard as a city street,They ring like the hooves of time.

— Conrad Aiken

My heart is torn with the sound of raucous voices,Shoot arrows into my heart.

— Conrad Aiken

O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh!Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.

— Conrad Aiken

All lovely things will have an ending,Will beg a penny by and by.

— Conrad Aiken

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!—And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.

— Conrad Aiken

The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.

— Conrad Aiken

'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

— Conrad Aiken

We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamerMoves among us like light, like evening air . . .

— Conrad Aiken

Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,We have built a city of towers.

— Conrad Aiken

What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

— Conrad Aiken

There, in the high bright window he dreams, and seesFrom wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.

— Conrad Aiken

Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked.And night came down again.

— Conrad Aiken

From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,And some strange shadows threw.

— Conrad Aiken

From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:From some, a dazzling desire.

— Conrad Aiken

And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,As she blew out her light.

— Conrad Aiken

We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,We shall lie down again.

— Conrad Aiken

One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.

— Conrad Aiken

And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.

— Conrad Aiken

And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.

— Conrad Aiken

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.

— Conrad Aiken

A chorus of elfin voices blowing about meI run among them, reach out vain hands, and drown.

— Conrad Aiken

'I am the one who stood beside you and smiled,'I am the one who loved you but did not dare.'

— Conrad Aiken

'I am the one you saw to-day, who fellInvisible, in a cloud of secret pain.'

— Conrad Aiken

Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain!Thousands of voices weave in the rain.

— Conrad Aiken

My veins are afire with music,I shall dream to her secret heart tonight...

— Conrad Aiken

'I bound her to me in all soft ways,There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.

— Conrad Aiken

The wind shrieks, the wind grieves;And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.

— Conrad Aiken

We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads,Our curious separate ways through life and death.

— Conrad Aiken

We rub the darkness from our eyes,Compassionate over our towers bending.

— Conrad Aiken

Each gleaming point of light is like a seedEach hurrying face records its strange desires.

— Conrad Aiken

Something had changed—but it was not the street—The street was just the same—it was himself.

— Conrad Aiken

He would not yield, he thought, and walk more slowly,Taking his ease . . .

— Conrad Aiken

Was forty, then, too old for work like this?But dreams had meanings.

— Conrad Aiken

His thoughts were blown and scattered like leaves;Because he would not need it?

— Conrad Aiken

I walk in a cloud of wonder; I am glad.We loiter, dreaming together, along the street.

— Conrad Aiken

Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.And soon the pond must freeze.

— Conrad Aiken

Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream;Even a dream grows grey at last and falls.

— Conrad Aiken

Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.

— Conrad Aiken

Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple,They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree.

— Conrad Aiken

'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?'Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.

— Conrad Aiken

Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music,We tremble like wind-blown grass.

— Conrad Aiken

What was this dream we had, a dream of music,The red sun drops, the walls grow grey.

— Conrad Aiken

The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street,And one goes out to death.

— Conrad Aiken

In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover,And thinks the air is fire.

— Conrad Aiken

As darkness fallsThrough half-lit halls which reach no end.

— Conrad Aiken

The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,For his lover was dead, he never would love again.

— Conrad Aiken

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

— Conrad Aiken

Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass,Or see a skeleton fall . . .

— Conrad Aiken

Let us retrace our steps: I have deceived you:Let us return, hear music, and forget . . .

— Conrad Aiken

The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurryThe flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.

— Conrad Aiken

Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened.The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.

— Conrad Aiken

In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,I suddenly face you

— Conrad Aiken

I love you, what star do you live on?

— Conrad Aiken

And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leavesTo divide us forever.

— Conrad Aiken

Let us describe the evening as it is:— And strangle it, and with it, rhetoric.

— Conrad Aiken

Whitman had a profound influence on me. … He was useful to me in the perfection of form, as a sort of compromise between the strict and the free.

— Conrad Aiken

We developed a shorthand language of our own which we fell into for the rest of our lives whenever we met, no holds barred — all a matter of past reference, a common language, but basically affection, along with humor, and appreciation of each other’s minds, and of Krazy Kat . Faced with England, and the New World, and Freud and all, we always managed to relax, and go back to the kidding, and bad punning, and drinking, to the end. It really was marvelous.

— Conrad Aiken

I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It’s simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.

— Conrad Aiken

A small but brilliant advance made today by someone’s awareness may for the moment reach a very small audience, but insofar as it’s valid and beautiful, it will make its way and become part of the whole world of consciousness. So in that sense it’s all working toward this huge audience, and all working toward a better man.

— Conrad Aiken