Eleanor Farjeon

"In Arcady there lies a crystal spring Ringd all about with green melodious reeds Swaying seald music up and down the wind. Here on its time-defaced pedestal The image of a half-forgotten God Crumbles to its complete oblivion."

"Great Britain has blessed the world of children with a number of poets and storytellers. … But perhaps no one was more loved by children in the British Isles or published more books than Eleanor Farjeon. She once said that she was "singing songs before she could write, and even before she could speak, and as soon as she could guide a pencil she began to write them down." When she died in 1965 at the age of eighty-four, she had published more than eighty books of stories and poems for children."

"Upon your shattered ruins where This vine will flourish still, as rare, As fresh, as fragrant as of old. Love will not crumble."

"Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots."

"I was a little overworked. I had been reading a great number of manuscripts in the preceding weeks, and the mere sight of typescript was a burden to me. But before I had read five pages of Martin Pippin, I had forgotten that it was a manuscript submitted for my judgment. I had forgotten who I was and where I lived. I was transported into a world of sunlight, of gay inconsequence, of emotional surprise, a world of poetry, delight, and humor. And I lived and took my joy in that rare world, until all too soon my reading was done. My most earnest wish is that there may be many minds and imaginations among the American people who will be able to share that pleasure with me. For every one who finds delight in this book I can claim as a kindred spirit."

"Praise with elation, Praise every morning, Gods re-creation Of the new day!"

"Women are so strangely constructed that they have in them darkness as well as light, though it be but a little curtain hung across the sun. And love is the hand that takes the curtain down, a stronger hand than fear, which hung it up. For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love."

"His tail was a fountain. His nostrils were caves. His mane and his forelock Were musical waves. He neighed like a trumpet. He cooed like a dove. He was stronger than terror And swifter than love."

"He could not be captured, He could not be bought, His running was rhythm, His standing was thought; With one eye on sorrow And one eye on mirth, He galloped in heaven And gambolled on earth. And only the poet With wings to his brain Can mount him and ride him Without any rein, The stallion of heaven, The steed of the skies, The horse of the singer Who sings as he flies."

"Once she kissed me with a jest, Once with a tear — O wheres the heart was in my breast, And the ring was in my ear?"

"No love-story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning."

"It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing."