Edwin Muir Quotes

One foot in Eden still, I stand And look across the other land. The world’s great day is growing late, Yet strange these fields that we have planted So long with crops of love and hate.

Barely a twelvemonth after The seven days war that put the world to sleep, Late in the evening the strange horses came.

Since then they have pulled our ploughs and borne our loads. But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts. Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

The life of every man is an endlessly repeated performance of the life of man.

Kindness and courage can repair time’s faults, And serving him breeds patience and courtesy In us, light sojourners and passing subjects.

We have seen Good men made evil wrangling with the evil, Straight minds grown crooked fighting crooked minds. Our peace betrayed us; we betrayed our peace. Look at it well. This was the good town once.

Oh these deceits are strong almost as life. Last night I dreamt I was in the labyrinth, And woke far on. I did not know the place.

It was not meant for human eyes, That combat on the shabby patch Of clods and trampled earth that lies Somewhere beneath the sodden skies For eye of toad or adder to catch.

All through that summer at ease we lay, And daily from the turret wall We watched the mowers in the hay And the enemy half a mile away. They seemed no threat to us at all.

There is a road that turning always Cuts off the country of Again. Archers stand there on every side And as it runs time’s deer is slain, And lies where it has lain.

The hills and towers Stood otherwise than they should stand, And without fear the lawless roads Ran wrong throughout the land.

The curse of Scottish literature is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind.