Iris Tree > Quotes

“You preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs
With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,
You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,
You stop my heart and turn it into wood.”
― Iris Tree

“….Nancy now gave herself to the wider problems surrounding friends and lovers, igniting her torches from theirs, yet following her own. One much disputed loyalty to an American Negro fired her to battle for recognition for his people, compiling and publishing her "Negro Anthology." Another friendship drew her to Spain during the Civil War, in which she participated actively on the side of freedom and composed a series of Spanish poems. Because of these and further deviations from the United status quo, she was refused permission to re-enter America, where she had hoped to join her closest companion, whose absence in Europe left her solitary at heart.

On Nancy Cunard”
― Iris Tree

“We make a gaudy havoc of our life
And live a thousand ages in an hour.”
― Iris Tree

“But since we are children of this age,
In curious ways discovering salvation,
I will not quit my muddled generation,
But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.”
― Iris Tree

“Age creeps upon your timid little faces
Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,
Proud in the unimportance of your places
You sit in twilight prophesying woe

So dim and false and grey, take my compassion
I from my pageant golden as the day
Pity your littleness from all my passion
Leave you my sins to weep and whine”
― Iris Tree