ELSA BARKER QUOTES II

American novelist & poet (1869-1954)

Sometimes I love thee so I wish thee dead.
I would devour thy being as my bread;
Would drain thy hidden veins dry, as of wine,
Red drop by drop, for all my heart has bled!

ELSA BARKER

"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love

Tags: love


There is a crevice in Love's garden wall
Where mandrakes thrive, with lilies rank and tall;
Where stealthy Death peers through a purple veil
In madmen's eyes, and strange worms crawl and crawl.

ELSA BARKER

"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love

Tags: death


Concentration is the secret of power.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: power


Wisdom is a tree of slow growth; the rings around its trunk are earthly lives, and the grooves between are the periods between lives. Who grieves that an acorn is slow in becoming an oak?

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: tree


It is undoubtedly true that there is no spirit without substance, no substance without spirit, latent or expressed; but a painting of a man may seem at a distance to be a man.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: painting


Always it seems
That only a thin veil--
Sheer as the music of the nightingale--
Trembles and streams
Between me and the mystery of dreams.

ELSA BARKER

The Frozen Grail and Other Poems

Tags: dreams


But they who drink the Muse's breath
Pay for the draught with many tears--
Their destiny until their death
To seek her shadow down the years.

ELSA BARKER

The Frozen Grail and Other Poems

Tags: destiny


Deep Love is slow of speech and void of art;
Silence and timid tears reveal his heart.
But shallow Love is ever eloquent
To mouth his meagre passion -- and depart.

ELSA BARKER

"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love

Tags: love


If you knew the meaning of light you would yourself be a light in a dark place.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: light


It has been said that he is a fool who works for philosophy instead of making philosophy work for him; but a man cannot give to the world even a little of a true philosophy without reaping sevenfold himself.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: philosophy


Then I sped across the prairies of ether and stood upon the moon. It was no longer luminous, its hardness hurt my feet; And I found that it had nothing either to sell or give me; Its empty frankness was brutal as a blow.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: moon


We have a bitter power who laugh at pain,
Who laugh and laugh -- for tears are shed in vain.

ELSA BARKER

"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love

Tags: pain


Imagination has great power. If you make a picture in the mind, the vibrations of the body may adjust to it if the will is directed that way, as in thoughts of health or sickness.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: health


In these unquenchable desires we feel
The thirsty future's dominant appeal;
And through the fire of our impassioned dust
A thousand ancestors their loves reveal.

ELSA BARKER

"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love


My friend, there is nothing to fear in death. It is no harder than a trip to a foreign country—the first trip—to one who has grown oldish and settled in the habits of his own more or less narrow corner of the world.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: death


She is the idol of the wise,
The mistress of the rhyming race;
But pain lurks in her luring eyes,
And bitter-sweet is her embrace.

ELSA BARKER

The Frozen Grail and Other Poems

Tags: pain


And after all our toils and dreams and prayers,
'Tis only Love for which the future cares;
Labour and fame are steps along Love's way,
And art is but the garment that he wears.

ELSA BARKER

"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love

Tags: art


Bear this in mind: I merely tell you stories, as an earthly traveler would tell, of the things I see. Sometimes my interpretation of them may be wrong.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man


There are horrors out here—far worse than the horrors on earth.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man


Even a cricket knows the difference between a man and an angel; For a man looks not at the ground whereon he walks, he crushes many a life; While the passing of an angel leaves all the world a-thrill.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: leaves