English writer & poet (1892-1962)
Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
The Colonel's Daughter
I looked at the world as God did when first He made it. I saw that it was good.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"At Nights"
Love me, for I must depart.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"The River"
I dream of silent verses where the rhyme glides noiseless as an oar.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"At the British Museum"
Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else -- above all, a travel bureau -- arrange everything before-hand?
RICHARD ALDINGTON
Death of a Hero
By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a presence, a genius loci, a potency.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
introduction, Complete Poems
The chimneys, rank on rank, cut the clear sky; the moon, with a rag of gauze about her loins, poses among them, an awkward Venus.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"Evening"
Millions of human vermin swarm sweating along the night-arched cavernous roads. (Happily rapid chemical processes will disintegrate them all.)
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"Cinema Exit"
At night, the moon, a pregnant woman, walks cautiously over the slippery heavens.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"London"
We must grow out of religion. It is either bugaboo, formalism, or hysteria. Besides, what proof is there that "the churches" know more about "God" than the Cockney sentry on duty outside the camp? We have only their say-so.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"Sacrifice Post"
The god, September, has paused for a moment here, garlanded with crimson leaves. He held a branch of fruited oak. He smiled like Hermes the beautiful cut in marble.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"Church Walk, Kensington"
All nations teach their children to be "patriotic", and abuse the other nations for fostering nationalism.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"Sacrifice Post"
There is a silence, a truce; the old earth-gods retreat, sullen, beaten and disconsolate; London has beaten them, swallowed, engulfed their territory, crushing their flowers into mud.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"A New House"
How on earth did it come about that all the things denounced in the Gospels are violently defended by the Christian sects?
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"Sacrifice Post"
The gulls are coming up from the sea, crying, and drifting across like pieces of mist, like fragments of white cloth. They turn their heads and peer as they pass.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"Dawn"
We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret. We took our risk with you; you died and we live. We take your noble gift, salute for the last time those lines of pitiable crosses, those solitary mounds, those unknown graves, and turn to live our lives out as we may.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
Roads to Glory