ELSA BARKER QUOTES IV

American novelist & poet (1869-1954)

As to the use of will-power in your present everyday problems, there are two ways of using the will. One may concentrate upon a definite plan, and bring it into effect or not according to the amount of force at one’s disposal; or one may will that the best and highest and wisest plan possible shall be demonstrated by the subconscious forces in the self and in other selves. The latter is a commanding of all environment for a special purpose, instead of commanding, or attempting to command, a fragment of it.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: environment


Do not fear death; but stay on earth as long as you can.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: fear


Our sorrows are the golden grain
Of the great reaper--Art.

ELSA BARKER

The Frozen Grail and Other Poems

Tags: art


For me the cosmic aeons lie complete,
O Love, between thy forehead and thy feet!

ELSA BARKER

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

Tags: love


I know a logic beyond time and space; that is why I am so illogical, why space cannot hold me nor time make me old.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: time


Life can be so free here! There is none of that machinery of living which makes people on earth such slaves. In our world a man is held only by his thoughts. If they are free, he is free.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: slaves


Philosophy will go on being taught in the world and all over the world. Only a few, perhaps, will reach the deeps of it in this life; but a seed sown to-day may bear fruit long hence.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man


Ah, the joy of loving a sleeping thing! All true lovers know that wonder. Sleep is a great magician. His spells are woven in the darkness between the worlds; His philtres are made of herbs that grow by the great river of forgetfulness which flows by the throne of the All-knowing.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: joy


I love to love, but I know not jealousy. If you find another fairer than I, I shall weary of you and go love him -- So beware, if you would hold me!

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: love


Sweet is the oblivion of sleep;
But sweeter far is the sleep beyond oblivion.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: sleep


No desert waste is lonelier than I.
The arid pain of Love has burned me dry.

ELSA BARKER

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

Tags: desert


Only the Lord of Change has endless sway.
The vanished Love of our dead yesterday.

ELSA BARKER

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

Tags: change


Indomitable must be God's desire
To realize Life's secret and acquire
Mastery, when he sends you, one by one,
Eternally, to question the bright sun
And the dark earth and the indifferent stars!

ELSA BARKER

The Frozen Grail and Other Poems

Tags: question


For a body of dust is a limit to the loving of a soul.
It sees a face and finds it fair, forgetting the myriad who are unseen.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: soul


The discords of dragon-laughter are often heard in the orchestra of God.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: dragon


One is only safe with shadows if one carries light within.

ELSA BARKER

Songs of a Vagrom Angel

Tags: light


Is there no anodyne despair may buy,
No draught of dreamless sleep for such as I?
Discordant singer in the choir of Love,
Who neither cares to live nor dares to die.

ELSA BARKER

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

Tags: despair


Thy love is like deep waters all around--
Warm pulsing waters, in whose brooding sound
The lone wail of my heart is lulled with dreams,
And the far clamour of the world is drowned.

ELSA BARKER

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

Tags: dreams


When I entreated Life to make me wise,
It drew aside Love's broidered veil of lies;
And perilous Beauty, undivined before,
Beckoned me from the mazes of his eyes.

ELSA BARKER

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

Tags: beauty


To get, one must give. That is the Law.

ELSA BARKER

Letters from a Living Dead Man

Tags: law