John Hollander > Quotes

“We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.”
― John Hollander

“Who will put an end to this great sadness?”
― John Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Volume 18)

“If the Garden has been properly laid out, there need not be a maze in it. For the quest, the puzzlement, the contingency of the place of rest with its bench and rosebushes in the center of it all, the ease of entrance and its welcoming entrapment, the problems of homing, will all have been provided by the Garden itself. And the maze's parable, unrolling beneath the hurrying feet of the last wanderers on a summer evening that now chills and darkens - the parable of how there can be no clarity of truth without puzzlement, no joy without losing one's way - will be propounded by the Garden's final perfection, namely, that in it is no trace of the designer, that no image of him can ever be found. He - you - will have disappeared into the ground of the place that had been made.”
― John Hollander, Harp Lake

“Late August on the Lido"

To lie on these beaches for another summer
Would not become them at all,
And yet the water and her sands will suffer
When, in the fall,
These golden children will be taken from her.

It is not the gold they bring: enough of that
Has shone in the water for ages
And in the bright theater of Venice at their backs;
But the final stages
Of all those afternoons when they played and sat

And waited for a beckoning wind to blow them
Back over the water again
Are scenes most necessary to this ocean.
What actors then
Will play when these disperse from the sand below them?

All this over until, perhaps, next spring;
This last afternoon must be pleasing.
Europe, Europe is over, but they lie here still,
While the wind, increasing,
Sands teeth, sands eyes, sands taste, sands everything.”
― John Hollander