William Empson
William Empson
Sir William Empsonwas an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his first, Seven Types of Ambiguity, published in 1930...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 September 1906
boys english-poet
Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.
good understand
A humanist, as I understand the term, says, "This world is good enough for me, if only I can be good enough for it.
brother careful cry doll few flesh mine shall sister unity whose
So your flesh shall be part of mine And part of mine be yours. Brother and sister we shall be Whose unity endures. Always the sister doll will cry, Made in these careful ways, Cry on and on, Come back to me, Come back, in a few days.
blood effort failure nor poison remains slowly stream waste
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.It is not the effort nor the failure tires.The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
heart standing
The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.
reading writing faces
Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry
boys two waiting
Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end. What is there to be or do? What's become of me or you? Are we kind or are we true? Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.
people different literature
The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
haphazard
Poetry contains nothing haphazard.
reason-why impossible remember
Proust has listed a great many reasons why it is impossible to be happy, but, in the course of being happy, one finds it difficult to remember them.
blood effort waste
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
men law long
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
refined knows seems
It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.
maintaining analysis contradiction
Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.